Shown off for the first time at this year’s Anime Expo, GameSamba’s JollyGrim weaves an interesting tale. What began as a Kickstarter project by a team of programmers, JollyGrim could not have existed without Funimation’s backing. Gamesamba, the game division of Funimation, saw JollyGrim’s unique gameplay and overhauled the necessary art assets, production, and voice acting to make it a cohesive title.
Its real-time strategy, card battling, and a role-playing game all-in-one. The premise of JollyGrim is based off a real book that lives in the real world. Supposedly, if you read the book, you become trapped in the world of JollyGrim: a land that combines mythical fairy tales and various mythologies from history. It’s an episodic single player story-driven game and it follows the adventures of a student named Will (what a coincidence) at JollyGrim academy searching for treasure that sounds important. The storyline progresses in Disgaea-like cutscenes with moving part cinematics.
JollyGrim main focus is its unique grid-based, card battle gameplay that is reminiscent to Chess. Each card on the field has its own movement and attack range. There’s a cooldown period attached to moving and attacking and enemy cards have the ability to counterattack if the card is within their attack range. If the cards on the field aren’t up-to-par, you can call in reinforcements and replace the card in play with another. The objective is to wipe out all the enemy cards before your opponent can do the same. No random events occur during the match so winning is purely based on how well and quickly you strategize. The length of game time doesn’t vary either, once the match starts nearing the 14 minute mark, the grid begins to shrink. So in case you’ve been avoiding your opponent the whole time, be prepared for a rude awakening.
The first episode of JollyGrim is free, promising a nine-hour storyline, and additional episodes in JollyGrim will cost around $3 to 4 dollars. More features such as animated player avatar and an alchemy lab, where you can combine multiple cards to form a rare card, are in the works and the development team at JollyGrim hopes to have it integrated into their playable builds soon. GameSamba estimates a closed beta up by August, but if you’re curious already, JollyGrim will be presented at Comic Con and PAX so we’ll be sure to keep you updated as the game develops.
