After a few years covering mobile games at Gamezebo, I had experienced enough match-3 mobile games to feel like I never needed to play another. Yet here I am, writing about Grindstone, a matching game by Capybara Games. My experience with Grindstone was a refreshing reminder that even one of the most saturated mobile game types, with the right creative minds, can be blessed with a hit from time to time.
Calling Grindstone a match-3 game is a bit misleading. A more accurate description would be a “match-all-that-you-can game.”
In Grindstone players control a barbarian who is tasked with clearing out caverns of spooky baddies, all of which are conveniently color-coordinated. The barbarian can only attack one color type per move (with some exceptions), so naturally you’ll want to plan your movements and chain attacks together to clear out as many enemies as possible with each move.
The enemies randomly refill any cleared spots, so you’ll never run out of monsters to attack. Instead of killing all the monsters, the goal of each level is to clear out a certain number of monsters and then escape before enraged monsters overwhelm the barbarian. With each turn that passes, more monsters in the cave become enraged. Ending a turn next to an enraged monster causes that monster to attack the barbarian. With only three health points to lose, ending a turn surrounded by enraged monsters is deadly.
Between levels, players get the opportunity to modify their barbarian with attacks and armor that provide unique benefits. The blueprints for those modifications (which are found sporadically within the game’s levels) require a certain crafting materials to complete.
Crafting materials are collected by slaying specific types of monsters. Players who stick around just long enough to kill the designated amount of monsters and then dash out of the level will likely need to repeat some levels to stock up on resources. Also, players who run out of the cave at the first chance they get will miss out on the game’s most important resource: crowns.
Crowns are collected from king-like monsters that plop down into the cavern once the barbarian kills enough regular monsters. Along with the king monster, a treasure chest falls down and a random minion monster is designated as the key holder. To unlock the chest, the player must eliminate the key holder and then chain together enough monsters to match or surpass the treasure chest’s unlock requirement. So if the treasure chest has a 5 next to it, the player must chain together at least five monsters to unlock it.
Taking down the king is similar, but a bit easier. To topple the king, players must also chain together enough monsters to match or surpass the king’s designated requirement. The main difference is that each king is of a certain color, so players must chain together the required number and color of monsters to slay the king.
Once the king is defeated and the treasure chest opened, the player gets that level’s crown and treasure. Players can choose to go after either (or both), but it’s worth noting that the crowns are used to unlock later levels.
Without enough crowns, players will have to go back and clear out a level until the king shows up. Then they have to survive long enough to get the crown and then get out.
Going back through levels may annoy people, but “grind” is in the name of the game. While collecting the crowns can get difficult, I found the difficulty to be consistently in a sweet spot. When I’d win I usually felt like I was challenged fairly and when I died it was usually due to multiple bad moves on my part and not because the game was ramping up the difficulty just to be a hassle. What did get to be a slight hassle was Grindstone’s health point system.
The barbarian’s health doesn’t refill between levels. If the barbarian takes damage, he’ll need to visit the tavern and pay for some health concoction that the bartender mixes. Those drinks cost gems that are dropped by the monsters. If you don’t have enough gems, you can’t refill your health.
In this regard, I sympathize with players who feel frustrated. Having to go back to an easier level for the chance of regenerating the barbarian’s health felt uncomfortably familiar to all of the free-to-play mobile games that encourage people to spend a dollar or two on handy resource packs. While I understand, and appreciate, grinding for the crowns, grinding easy content just to get my health back felt like an unnecessary shackle.
Grindstone’s visual style is its special sauce. It’s what kept me coming back after frustrating levels and repeated attempts to get challenging crowns. Lining up the barbarian’s attack chain and then launching him into a hack-and-slash frenzy were always fun to plan and satisfying to watch. The Saturday-morning-cartoon design helped Grindstone stand out to me and that style held up throughout my entire experience with the game.
Grindstone is one of the best mobile matching games I’ve played. Its visual style tickled my brain in all the right ways, the matching puzzles were challenging but rewarding, and the gameplay loop (while a little redundant) is tied together by a lighthearted story about a barbarian with a very messy job to do.
Grindstone was reviewed using a subscription to Apple Arcade purchased by Epic Brew.
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