(Read on for the full review!)

Secrets of Grindea is a fantastic homage to the golden age of RPGs with a lot of modern comforts mixed in. It is very much feature complete and well polished for a game in early access, and not just features relating to gameplay mechanics, but actual activities you can occupy your time with. Campaign, a roguelite arcade mode, and co-op make for a healthy bit of longevity. Presentation is great, with good graphics, animations, and sound.

Pick it up!


+ Graphics: Clean sprites, animation, and backgrounds. Fun colorful palette.
+ Audio: Music is nice, sound cues are all reasonably distinct, excluding skill sfx.
+ Story: There's enough humor baked in to make it less pointless, albeit hit and miss.
+ Grind: Permanent buffs through card collection, tons of items, skills, etc.
+ Design: Satisfying level design, puzzles, dungeon length, progression, etc.
+ Heart: Some definite love has been poured into this product.

- Waiting: It's not finished, yet.
- Balance: Some playstyles fare better than others, but that isn't to say they aren't viable.

± Binds: Controller binding slightly limited.


Did you ever wish there was a game where you could just sit around and fish, collect, craft, fight, dungeon dive, level up, and more as you choose, with each element being satisfying, but ALSO you wanted it to be similar to games like The Oracle of Ages/Seasons in the Zelda series? Secrets of Grindea is for you! If you don't want the last aspect, go look at Stardew Valley.

Gameplay in Secrets of Grindea is simple. Interaction and weapon/skill use are on separate keys. With a keyboard, skills can be rebinded to specific keys. With a controller, skills can be swapped out inside of specific binds, you can't change the binds for shield and weapon use. Essentially, you're either interacting with an NPC, moving around, or fighting with your weapon and skills of choice. The fun comes from how many ways there are to execute these actions.

You can fish, which involves keeping a bar lined up over an icon, horizontally. It's relaxing, satisfying, and you can even fish up equipment from time to time! You can use ingredients and even previous armors and weapons to craft new armors and weapons. Talk to NPCs for fun, or quests (many of which reward skill or talent points.) Refight bosses with ease and convenience whenever you want. Fight mobs with specific spawn zones whenever you want. Respec your build and play a different way. Redo your hair and clothes, including colors. Progress in the campaign, solving puzzles and completing challenges to complete dungeons. Kill monsters and critters to try and complete your card collection, which grant permanent buffs. Capture specific critters/monsters as pets, which can be used to boost your stats. Amass wealth by selling drops you farm. Try your builds in the roguelite arcade mode. Play alone. Play with friends. Play with strangers.

No matter who you are, I maintain there is something to like in Secrets of Grindea...

Except those annoying bees.


Oh, did I mention you can do all of this while being immersed in a cute colorful world with gorgeous sprites, backgrounds, and simple fun animations? Because you totally can do that.

The screenshots should speak for themselves.


So the sound in Secrets of Grindea may be the one weak point of the game. That isn't to say it is terrible, but simply that the rest of the game is so good, it has a bit of trouble keeping up with its current implementation. You won't find yourself buried in 100 different sounds blurring together and deafening you like some games, but at the same time, the diversity of sound applied to skills and actions can be a bit unsatisfactory. If all the skills had more distinct, appealing, impactful sounds that gave them more individual identity, the game would feel a lot better, as your character would then be something more individual you can be more attached to as well. Now, all that said, you probably won't be muting the game or anything, and the music is nice, although you may end up muting that if you hang out in certain hubs a lot. On the other hand, I found myself muting the music less often than other games, because it is appropriately relaxing and/or fitting for the areas and situations they go with.


Secrets of Grindea is an RPG about variety and freedom. Oldschool gamers, adults, kids, casuals, and hardcore players can all find something fun here. I recommend Secrets of Grindea at:

Full price.
2x Full Price.
3x Full Price.
Maybe even 4x Full Price.

This endorsement approved by The Reviewers' Union,
providing better standards for reviews and reviewers.

The game shows promise. It's a love letter to games like Zelda: A Link to the Past. The animation of the sprites is awesome, and the environments are varied. The dungeons are absolutely fantastic and are definitely the highlight of the game.

But it's been incomplete for an absurdly long time at this point. I understand that they want to ensure that it is polished and as good as they can make it for when it gets a full release, but there is really no excuse at this point for why this game is taking so long to make. I can't recommend a game that may only get released a year from now. What we have now is solid and polished, but short and leaves you hanging. I'm worried that when this DOES finally get released (if it ever does), that the hype train will have already left.

There's just those few times where an early access game comes out, and it's brilliant. This is one of them. I first saw Secrets of Grindea debut on Desura, way back when. I've had my eye on the game for years as I've been skeptical of unfinished indie titles. Now a friend and I own Secrets of Grindea and it's fantastic. It's everything a good RPG needs and it's not even finished yet. Here are some points.

• Fantastic, and I mean absolutely extraordinary pixel graphics. Some areas completely blew my mind because of how wonderful the scenery looked.
  
• Expertly crafted levels give a smooth feel to the game. The plains in the beginning felt chaotic. Felt like it had a sense of wildlife. The town had a clever building layout, the flying fortress felt symmetric and not too maze like. The Halloween map had a wonderful border effect, winding and narrow paths and perfect but not too difficult maze-like structure.
  
• Upbeat and catchy soundtrack deserving of it's own DLC.
  
• Excellent, sometimes halarious sidequests keep the player engaged every time a main story plot was advanced through.
  
• Mindboggling puzzles and secrets that make you think in order to get the reward rather than have you kill a generic miniboss (While minibosses are a thing in the game, they are rare and require some skills to take out.)
  
• Up to 4 player supported co-op that really shines. The main story has subtle changes to accomodate to a party with the host being considered the 'main character' while the others were his equally as powerful and important friends.
  
• Competetive or Uncompetitive loot share allows for a race-to-the-loot type of co-op gameplay or a relaxed type of co-op gameplay where everyone gets the same items from chests but generic enemy loot drops are split randomly throughout the group so that everyone get's a slice of the bloodied pie.
  
• Extensive skill system and trees allowed for all types of gameplay with no class restrictions. Be a Claymore weilding mage, or a Duelist that uses both a Sword and Shield and Two-Handed. Become a jack-of-all-trades with the 4 magic types (Fire, Air, Water, Earth) and a master of none.
  
• Ingenious inventory system allows for both and equipment and vanity slots and also allows you the ability to 'transmog' your equipment such as wands, swords, and shields to look like previously collected weapons without the sacrifice in stats. Same goes for armor.
  
• You can have a smiling cloud that craps lightning on your foes.

• With up to 4 player co-op, the screen can end up having a lot going on in one small space. This is especially true in some small boss arenas like the GUN-DAM fight where you have to really pay attention to where you're going. While also making sure you and your friends stay out of harms way.
  
• In some areas like the Halloween Forest, a lot of enemies can be in the same areas at once. This can make solo-play challenging especially as enemies respawn on a seemingly short respawn timer that can make battles turn hairy at a moments notice.
  
• The mix of magic, skills, basic attacks, and enviornmental awareness can sometimes really disorient people. It's difficult to fight multiple small enemies at once while also keeping an eye on your remaining energy, switching between normal and special attacks, blocking with your shield, AND keeping an eye on your shield-block meter. This sort of combat inspires a rushed and adrenaline-fueld high octane battle enviornment giving people a rush to smash their keys as quickly as possible. At least that's what happens with me. And this usually ends up with me not noticing my health dropping or my friend ending up dead right next to me.
  
• The crafting system is intuitive and mysterious, with some recipies not being able to be unlocked until you find a certain item from a dropped creature. For example, the icon for Honey was greyed out until I managed to kill a bee and get myself one unit of Honey. Along with this, the item your crafting tells you the stats OF the item BEFORE you make it, just so you don't accidentally make something you can't use. Why is this a flaw? Well this isn't a flaw in itself, the flaw comes from the process of MAKING the item. For example, to make an Apple Hat I had to take a Straw Hat and gather 60, count 'em, SIXTY APPLES. This can make the game feel grindy, no pun intended. I'm not exactly sure if that's an intended feature or not, but it's not a huge problem since crafting isn't the main focus of the game, and more likely a menu you will look through every-so-often just to check if you gathered enough items to fill a certain criteria.

That's pretty much it. I think this may be the longest review I've ever written, but I think SoG deserves it. At the time of writing this, I'm only 2 hours into the game and I can't wait to see what I can uncover next. This is truly an amazing RPG/Adventure game.

I will update the review throughout the early access process and with my advancement of the game. Thank you for giving the time to read this review, and I'll see you in Grindea.

Whats there is mindblowingly brilliant, but i wouldn't currently recommend a purchase simply because i feel this game deserves to be experienced fully.

Updates to Secrets of Grindea come in really really slowly, and while i love the game, i feel it should have been finished a long time ago.

When the game releases content complete, i will without a doubt alter this review to reflect that and recommend it heartily, if i haven't feel free to poke me on Twitter (Squishydew)

Funny game to play with a friend, pretty entertaining if you like a good story, a bit of fighting and some puzzles

9/10
Secrets of Grindea is a completely fun experience wether playing it solo or playing it with a group of friends. The combat is extremely fun and so far the story has been entertaining. The game's replayability is definantly high, especially when you go on to a harder difficulty. The developers keep fueling up my love for this game with every update that comes every few months.

Fun classic style RPG that you can enjoy with a friend!

better when played with freinds. great story and amazing gameplay

no updates anymore. game isnt even done. it will never leave early access

>Open Game
>Makes Character
>Gets Weapon
>Slays first slime
>10 hours later completes game
>10000000000000000000 years later developers finish
>play for another 10 hours


Do not buy unless you are patient as ♥♥♥♥.

However I liked it.