Grim Grimoire
Grim Grimoire
Description updated on 08/02/2025
Game Developed for the Construct Jam 2025. Theme: Though Choice
You have been cursed and your body has been sent to the Moon, but you could cast a last spell to save yourself, putting your spirit in your grimoire.
Your only hope is to add enough spells to the grimoire in order to have enough power to bring back your body and break the curse.
Your spells can be used to cast a creature that will become your avatar and bring the grimoire around, while searching for new spells. The problem is that if the avatar dies, you will die too.
In addition to that, adding new spells to the grimoire will require magic power that will delete some of the spells already present.
NOTE:
- The game is a prototype expect some bugs. Check last update.
- At the moment the game doesn't have and end and continues endlessly or until the player is defeated.
- The Escape button during the player Avatar's turn, is not active yet, so it's not possible to escape a battle.
- The game will be developed until the core mechanics will be completed, once those will be ready, the game will see new features if the goals that will be set will reach enough funding to cover the cost.
BECOME A SUPPORTER!
You can contribute to the development of Grim Grimoire with a contribution that will help me to reach the next Funding Goal. With every contribution of $2 or above, you will also have access to the Supporters Files, a bonus pack of game information as the Card List, containing all the Cards stats, the Encounters mechanics and all the future documents and gift that will be created during the game development.
Go to the Download section to become a Grim Grimoire supporter!
Index:
INSTRUCTIONS
GAME GOAL
GAME MENU
DECK CREATION
BATTLE
Avatar Selection
Initiative Order
Your Hand
Available Actions for Creatures
- Move
- Melee
- Range
- Intercept
- Retire
End of Battle
Battle Loot
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
FEEDBACK AND SUGGESTIONS
The following instructions are related to the last uploaded version. Once the game will be completed, it will have more features and instructions will be present in the game itself too.
The game goal would be to reach a size of 10, 20 or 30 spells in your Grimoire, at the moment the ending part of the game still need to be developed, so the game continue endlessly or until the player has been defeated in a battle.
At the current stage, change difficulty level between Normal, Hard and Challenge does not provide any difference.
The only challenge available would be to choose between 'Create your Deck' and 'Get a random Deck'.
On the left side of the book, there are the cards that you own already, while on the right side the ones that you can acquire. Selecting any creature will show their stats in their respective info field.
If you want to get a particular card, drag the creature from the 'available Cards' page and drop it on 'Your Cards' page. Doing so will cause one random cards of your owned one to be swapped with the new card. This is part of the first challenge related to the game jam theme "Though Choice". If it's your first time to play the game, don't worry much about the choice, just pick the ones that feel right for you. Soon, you will learn to recognise which cards suits you better.
During the deck creation you MUST complete all the choices before moving on, that means even if you have all the cards that you like, you can't proceed to the battle screen. This is part of the first "Tough Choice" challenge.
Tip: If you really like a particular creature that is on the 'Available Cards' side, wait to bring it on your deck with the last choice, that will ensure that you will have at least one card that you like in your deck. If you really feel disappointed about the luck, you can just restart the game and see what sets of cards you get. It's ok at this stage of the game, but it might ruin your experience with the full game where more diverse things should happens depending on your Grimoire assortment.
At the beginning of the battle you will have to choose a card from your Grimoire to be your Avatar. The choice is among 5 random cards taken from your Grimoire, at the beginning of the game, that's all your card you have, but later when increasing your Grimoire size, the choice might become tougher.
If the Avatar is killed, you lose the game. The Avatar can't fight, but can only on its turn play a card from the hand. If you have finished the cards, you can only pass the turn during the Avatar's turn. There is also a button to Escape the battle during the Avatar's turn, but since it hasn't been implemented yet, at the moment the button doesn't work, it's just there to show a future feature. Deciding which creature use as Avatar is the second time where the game put you in a "Tough Choice" as part of the game jam theme.
While choosing a weak creature can seems a good choice for an Avatar, keep in mind that if the creature dies, you lose the game. Weak creatures might resist less to damage, but generally they have an high defense that increases the chances to avoid to be hit.
To start, drag and drop the Avatar on the tile at the extreme left, the one under the Grimoire with the eye. You can notice that on the contrary of the other tiles, that one is not transparent. Keep in mind that during the game, the transparent tiles cannot be chosen as destination of a card or an action. So the same rule will apply when you want to summon, move or attack a creature.
Once you place the Avatar on the battlefield, the enemy's Avatar will appear too. Then a initiative roll will be performed by the game to see who goes first. Each time in the game there is a roll of die you can hear its typical sound, and every time a single die is added to the current creature that is selected. In case of the initiative each creature present on the battlemap rolls a die and adds the result to their base initiative stat, so for example, your Avatar that is a Goblin, has initiative 4, adding to that value the result of a die that goes from 1 to 6, will give to the Goblin a minimum initiative of 5 (4 for the initiative stats + 1 for the minimum value of a die) to 10 (4 for the initiative stats + 6 for the minimum value of a die). The enemy has a Ghoul as Avatar with a initiative stat f 2, bringing the minimum initiative roll from 3 up to 8. The Goblin has therefore, overall more chance to act first.
When more creatures are present in the battlefield the roll is performed for everyone at the beginning of a new turn, then the creature with the highest initiative result will act first, followed by the others in order. Since every time that it's your turn you don't know if you or the opponent will act and exactly which card will come next, you will have to consider well your next move. Deciding what to do with your card in the unknown initiative order, is the third way that the game puts you in a "Tough Choice" as game jam theme.
When it's your Avatar's turn, you can play one of the Cards from your hand. At this stage there are only Creatures Cards, but later there will be other type of Cards too.
When playing a Creature, you are summoning it, and it can be placed on your Defence line only. The other Cards that were part of your hand are lost. They will not be any more available on your Grimoire, unless you will find again them as part of a loot from a battle or exploring the map.
Since choosing once Card and lose the rest of the hand is sometimes a difficult choice, that is the fourth type of "Tough Choice" presented you by the game, as the game jam theme suggests.
### Available Actions for Creatures ###
When it's the turn of one of your creatures you will see 5 different action icons. Some might not be available depending on the battlefield position of your creatures or the ability of the creature itself. If an action is not possible, the icon will be opaque. Move, Melee attack and Range attack are the actions that might not be possible to use, depending on the situation, while Intercept and Retire are always possible.
Move, simply move forward or backward on the green tiles. You can choose any free tile that is just one step distance from your position. The vertical position is indifferent, you can choose to be on top, middle or bottom of the column.
When a creature is initially summoned its position must be on the Defense Line, the green tiles closer to your Avatar. It's not possible to summon a creature if those 3 tiles are already all occupied. Similarly, your creature can't move backward or forward if all those tiles are already occupied.
When moving from one line to another, if there are one or more enemies on the path with the Intercept icon on (crossed swords), they will have a chance to attack your creature while it's moving. The creature on top goes first, then if your creature is still alive, the second in the middle attacks and again if your creature is still alive the third one attacks. If your creature survive all the attacks it can move to the destination tile.
It's possible to attack an opponent creature that is in front or back of your creature if there are no tiles between the two cards. In that case the Melee icon will be active and once select, the tiles of the potential targets will bright up in red. You can see the stats of your card related to the attack, including the minimum and maximum value to hit the target (Melee attack stat + die roll 1 to 6) and the damage dealt in case the creatures hits the target. Before selecting any icon, you can check any card stats in the battlefield clicking/touching and holding on top of them the cursor/finger. That will help you to understands how many chances you have to attack and damage.
To hit the opponent, your attack total (Melee attack stat + die roll) must be higher than the defence total of the opponent (Defence attack stat + die roll). If the attack hits, the opponent loses a number of Hit Points equal to your creature's Melee Damage minus the Target's Armour value.
If you miss, you will see a gust of wind blowing dust animation on the target's creature, if you hit, but the damage is not enough to pass the opponent armour you will see a shiny animation and finally, if you hit and deal damage, you will see blood splashing from the target creature (yes, even if the target is a Skeleton! :-D ).
Range attacks works in a similar way to the Melee ones, just using the Range stats. Some creature might not have the ability to attack at distance, like a Troll. In that case, rather than numbers, you will see (None) written under the Range icon, even if the creature would have the right conditions to attack at distance.
When attacking in range, the target tiles cannot be enemy tiles just next to the attacked, but they need to be at 2 column of distance. So from your Defensive line, you cannot attack the Frontline or Centre line of the enemy, but you can attack their Defensive line. If your creature is in the Centre line, then they can either attack the enemy's Frontline or directly the enemy's Avatar.
Use this action to skip your creature's turn and at the same time give it the chance to attack an enemy unit that wants to trespass over your creature's position.
When creatures are summoned in game from the owner's hand, they gain automatically the Intercept status and cannot do anything else until their next turn.
In the future released versions of the game, creatures that are in their Frontline with the status of Intercept, will attack opponents card that are Summoned, before that comes into play.
Once an Intercept action is triggered by the enemy, the creature becomes used and they can't Intercept anymore until the order will be given again to the creature.
This action let you to save your favourite creature to be killed, sending it back to the Grimoire for be used again in the next battle (unless it's lost during a trade for new cards). Keep in mind that injuries are carried over, so next time your creature will start with the same number of HP it had when it left the battlefield last time.
Unless you escape from the battle during your Avatar's turn (action that is not possible in the current version of the game), the battle can end up with yours or the enemy's avatar defeat. If your avatar die it's game over for you, while if the enemy's avatar dies, you will be able to keep all the cards that are still in your Grimoire and all your Cards that are in the battlefield, including your Avatar. As for the Retire action, at the end of the battle, all injuries are carried over.
Once you defeat an opponent, you are presented with a screen similar to the Deck Creation one. On the left you will have your cards that survived the battle and on the right the whole Grimoire of the defeated enemy. You can take as loot one card from the opponent's Grimoire for every 5 of their cards. Once the choice is done, 2 random cards of your old ones will be lost. This is the forth challenge for the "Tough Decision" of the game jam. More tough decisions are present in the exploration game, some related to the Battle Loot as well, for example, if you fight with an enemy that has few cards, you might end up loosing one card at the end of every battle, in addition to the ones you have lost already during the battle. While fighting with opponents that have a larger Grimoire, even if tougher, will in the end give you more chance to increase your Grimoire (if you didn't lose too many cards during the battle).
I will continue to develop the core game mechanic and once those will be completed, further development will continue every time the set goal will reach the funding needed.
Future development with goals will see:
- Additional Map Exploration Features (where the player can be surprised by sudden battles, learn new skills like increasing their hand size or getting quest to complete).
- More Creature Cards (these are just a small amount of the planned cards, though I am not sure if I will be able to have custom lines for all of them).
- Magic Cards (healing magic card, boosting cards and such will be available in addition to the standard creatures. This will also give a new twist to the Card acquisition phase, choice of the Avatar at the beginning of the battle where less creatures might be proposed, and hand during the battle, so you might have to be creative with your decision about which card to play and which one lose for good).
- Equipment Cards (similar to the Magic Cards, they will add new twist to the game choice, but also give opportunity to re-evaluate cards that now might seem weaker than others and let you create nice combinations)
- Multiplayer (the game offers good potential for a multiplayer game, though it will require longer and more intense work. I might add a local multiplayer first as two players on the same device and later give the option for online peer to peer battles. This last case would be justified only if there is a real large interest and support of the game.)
I am always happy to read constructive criticism. Knowing what you like, what you dislike and how I could improve the part that doesn't feel right is very useful. While I will be happy to hear from you, I can't promise to be able to implement what you asked, but let's start a conversation and go from there. Got a new idea for a new card? It could be done! I am actually thinking about a vote style system to create some creatures together!
THANK YOU
Thank you for checking the game, giving your feedback, vote, recommend and share it.
I really appreciate that!
Simone
Download
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Development log
