Grindstone

Grindstone‘s premise is simple in the best way possible: this is the sort of puzzle game that really gets its claws into you and doesn’t let go. Getting a high score in a daily challenge is a thrill, and getting a record-breaking chain is oh-so-satisfying. It helps that it looks fantastic, too, with a sumptuous hand-drawn art style. If you’re after a casual puzzle game with some substance, you really can’t get any better than this. Just prepare yourself to be unable to put it down.

Compelling to a fault, with a hypnotic and exhilarating central conceit, Grindstone is a tiny bit special. Hopefully, it won't be dismissed by players for being a mobile port, or being mistaken for a "match-three" game akin to Candy Crush – it's not. A full-featured, elegantly designed experience, Capybara's action-puzzle-tactics game is a tiny marvel and we'd strongly recommend it to any and all Switch owners. Ever-so-slight resource exhaustion is the only thing letting it down, but it's easily forgiven when smashing seven shades of shawarma out of creeps is so flipping fun. We say it's time ...

While the gameplay in Grindstone thrives despite mobile convention, there are a few things about the port over to Nintendo Switch that could have gone smoother. Jorj's health doesn't carry over between runs, so taking damage means heading all the way back to the inn at the bottom of the mountain. Players also have to dig through menus to repair items and build new ones once they acquire blueprints, and everything just takes a few too many button presses in what is otherwise a fast-paced experience. It takes a long time before players will worry about running out of any of the various currencie...

Nintendo has some of the weirdest affiliation with indie titles. On one hand, you have some of the most spectacular games, like Ori, Hades, and Shovel Knight. On the other hand, the eShop is also so full of shovelware that it’s hard to find anything worth playing. During the last Indieworld Direct in 2020, a bunch of games were announced, with some being slated for a 2021 release, and a few coming out the same day. One of those was Grindstone, an interesting looking puzzle game full of mons...