One of my favorite recent game franchises is Legend of Grimrock – the grid-based dungeon crawler is a modern take and a throw-back to classic games like Eye of the Beholder. The game has been released for Mac and PC, and a PC sequel arrived recently, now we get to see the iPad port in action and more!
In my review I called the Legend of Grimrock “Classic PC Gaming Made Thoroughly Modern”, saying:
Legend of Grimrock is an extremely well designed game, with excellent class and combat balance, great puzzles, and just loads of stuff to explore. Also, at ~15 or so hours long, it feels like just the right length. If you want more, just start with a new group – or wait for the upcoming level editor to add your own dungeons to the mix. This is definitely one of the best games I have played all year, and at times it is hard for me to remember that it only costs $15.
From the start the game felt like it would be perfect on the iPad, and it has been rumored for quite a while, so finally seeing it in action is awesome. Also knowing it is coming this spring is very exciting! From the official blog:
Hello all! The blog has been silent for sometime but do not fear, we have been hard at work. The long overdue iPad version of Grimrock 1 is finally nearing completion and it has entered the closed beta testing stage. This means that the game is playable from start to finish and all features have been implemented. Juha Pinola, the man responsible for the conversion, is currently busy fixing the remaining bugs, smoothing the hard edges and balancing the game.
To celebrate the beta, we have recorded some footage and screenshots of the game. Enjoy!
They also commented on the Mac status for Legend of Grimrock II, which is being delayed by DirectX to Open GL coding differences:
The Mac version of Legend of Grimrock II is also progressing well. The game is now fully playable but the new OpenGL renderer still needs a performance improvement or two. Our DirectX version of the renderer has been much thoroughly optimized because that’s our primary development platform, so additional optimizations are needed for OpenGL to achieve good frame rates. Our goal is to release a beta version still during this month and those who already have the game on Steam will be able to participate in the OS X beta. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s available.
You can also get more information and keep track of progress on their Facebook page.
Check out the video of the iPad beta:
