You've got until Monday to get 80% off 2 of the best dungeon crawlers ever made

The early 2010s was boom time for retro revival projects, as Steam's ascendency and new funding models like Kickstarter prompted a swathe of developers new and old to cast aside pragmatism and build the games they truly wanted to make. One of my favourite projects to emerge during this era is Legend of Grimrock, a first-person dungeon crawler that took the fundamentals of games like Dungeon Master and Wizardry and revitalised them for a new generation.

If you missed Legend of Grimrock when it launched in 2012, fret not, because both Legend of Grimrock and its sequel are 80% off on Steam this weekend.

One of my favourite things about Legend of Grimrock is how tactile its dungeon is. You're constantly poking and prodding the world, plucking items off the floor with your mouse to stuff in your inventory, feeling along the walls for hidden switches that might reveal secret passageways, wincing as you step carelessly onto a pressure plate and trigger some horrible trap. It does a fantastic job of making you feel like you're in that Dungeon, even though you never actually see your party.

Legend of Grimrock 2 trailer - YouTube

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$6 (£5)Legend of Grimrock 2 blows out the scale of the experience, letting you venture both inside and outside as you explore the mysterious Isle of Nax. It's a more open experience than the first game, while also throwing in more weapons, monsters, spells, puzzles and all the extra goodies you'd expect from a sequel. Alongside the default campaigns, both games also come with their own level editors, which the community has used to build a wide array of custom adventures.

Legend of Grimrock 2 was, technically, the last project from Finnish studio Almost Human Games. Its key talent sort-of reformed under the name Ctrl Alt Ninja, where it made 2019's well-received tactical RPG Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest. It's not wholly clear what happened to the developer after that, but it doesn't appear to still be active. Most of its key individuals seem to have moved back into traditional game development, working at studios like Remedy Entertainment and Next Games.

It's a shame that we're unlikely to see Legend of Grimrock return (or Druidstone, for that matter). But this doesn't change the fact that the original and its sequel are brilliant games. Both are available separately at $3 (£2.55) and $4.79 (£4) respectively. Alternatively, you can grab both in a bundle for $6 (£5). The discount ends on Monday.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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