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Calling all graph paper cartographers! If you’re looking to get lost in a subterranean cesspit teaming with badass beasties, your wait is nearly over.

Finnish indie studio Almost Human Games is about to release Legend of Grimrock, a first-person fantasy RPG that throws way back to the grid-based dungeon crawls of yesteryear. The nostalgia factor, paired with a beautiful game engine, has intrigued fans since the project was announced last summer.

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Grimrock will be released on April 11, but Mashable got the chance to dungeon dive early. If you prefer your corridors dark and your heroes uncomplicated, grab a torch and join us for a hands-on review.

First Impressions

The game is light on its feet, and loads effortlessly. Be sure to check the required specs to see if it will run smoothly on your laptop or older PC.

Before you begin a new game, you’ll see an option to tick “Old School Mode.” This feature turns off auto-mapping. If you choose it, you’ll have to keep track of your progress the old fashioned way — with pen and paper. Without a reliable map, you will become hopelessly lost, so consider it an option for hardcore players.

Once that’s decided, you can jump right in by auto-generating a party, or spend some time in the all-important character creation screen. However, we were disappointed by the lack of choices here. Only four races, three classes and a limited supply of character portraits await you. But if you forgive this scarcity, you’ll find the skill and attribute systems quite rich. Distribute points for skills and talents, pick names for your adventurers (or auto-generate them), and get going.

You won’t encounter any fancy cinematics or long-winded exposition in Grimrock. The back story is simple — your party of prisoners is tossed into the dungeon beneath Mount Grimrock for crimes unnamed. Survival is unlikely. You begin the crawl with your wits alone, but like all good role-playing adventures, the tatters you collect along the way will slowly build your party from zeroes to heroes.

On the Grid

One of the reasons gamers are so excited for Grimrock is that it plays on a grid the way many of its tabletop and PC forerunners did. Grimrock’s dungeon is not an expansive, open world but a series of narrow corridors, sliding walls and trap doors.

You can only walk in four cardinal directions, but you can fluidly survey all 360 degrees by dragging the right mouse button. This is important for spying puzzle clues and keeping an eye on creepers that inhabit the depths. Your party needs to be in a square adjacent to an enemy to fight it, but players will quickly find themselves runing through the corridors during combat to avoid being overtaken.

Gameplay

The Classic Dungeon Crawl

Take your party of four would-be heroes into the depths of Mount Grimrock. As prisoners, you start only with the rags on your back.

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Grimrock’s interface couldn’t be more intuitive. Simply click on doors, buttons and pull-chains to activate them. Drag and drop items from the dungeon to your characters’ inventories. Your party is easily managed from the formation on the bottom-right.

The mechanics are object-oriented. You’ll use specific items to interact with the environment — pairing keys with locks, solving puzzles with scrolls and gemstones. Each party member has an inventory weight limit (dependent on his strength attribute), and your heroes will starve if they don’t eat, so save the escargot you slice off those giant, bloodthirsty snails.

The dungeon gets darker as you progress, so make sure at least one party member is carrying a torch. They burn out, so stock a steady supply.

Combat

Danger is ever-present in the dungeons of Grimrock. You’ll have to master the fight if you hope to survive.

Combat is turn-based, but in real time. That is, it takes time for each party member to ready himself again after dealing a blow, but enemies won’t stand by while you think about your next move. You’ll have to time your attack sequence and movements in order to best foes. It’s easy to lose your bearings as you shuffle to avoid enemies.

Your party of four travels in a square formation — two in front, two in back. You’ll want to arrange and equip them accordingly. Characters in the front will bear the brunt of enemy damage, but they will have a clear line of attack. Characters in the rear are safer, but they’re unable to reach enemies with melee weapons. Arm them with ranged attacks or spells to ensure they pull their weight in combat.

If you’ve got a mage in tow, her spells are readied by combining arcane symbols from a table. Hold them there until it’s time to unleash them on an enemy. As she levels up, you’ll have the opportunity to add attribute points that will unlock new spells.

All the beasts we bested died in a generic burst of sparks. Perhaps this adds to the old-school charm, but the lack of visceral gore is stark, especially as the monsters themselves are extremely well-animated. The sound design is worth noting too — you can hear every squish and squirm as the baddies creep around corners.

The Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a rich and expansive fantasy world, save your gold for a title like Skyrim or The Witcher 2. If you prefer a no-nonsense dungeon crawl that plays by classic DD rules and focuses on one quest at a time, Legend of Grimrock is worth every penny.

Pre-order it now for $11.99. It will be available for $14.99 on Steam, GOG.com and Grimrock.net starting April 11.

Images courtesy of Almost Human Games.

This story originally published on Mashable here.