Grom News and Screenshots

Grom News and Screenshots

Developer: Rebelmind
Scheduled Release Date: Late 2001
Platform:

A time devoted to vengeance is the time spent in hell.
Sometimes, however, gods are on the same side.

It’s the year 1942. Nazis are searching for the Lost City, which is believed to be the place where the mysterious twelve weapons of King Arjuna are located. Each one of these is capable of destroying entire nations. However, the expedition runs into difficulties–somebody is trying to thwart their plans, and it’s only one man. He wants to settle an old score. His name is Grom, Colonel Grom.

Introduction

After releasing Odium (a.k.a. Gorky 17), a group of people that created this game decided to leave Metropolis and follow their own path. They joined Rebelmind. Now a new project is growing up, and this is its story …

The Concept

Grom is a light-RPG game, delivering a great dose of adventure, real-time combat system, and rich story, partially based upon unknown facts of World War II, but with a strong share of fiction and mystique. One may think of it as a mixture of James Bond and Indiana Jones movies.

RPG

Being a light-RPG game means that in order to make it generally accessible, rules were greatly simplified, keeping the best of the genre while avoiding hardcore-only stuff.

Game Features

• Alive and independent world, including characters with AI controlled personalities, living on their own instead of waiting for player’s actions,
• Game progress-dependent hero profile development,
• Well-balanced basic skills and statistics with clear relation between them and character actions,
• Additional characters to accompany main hero, AI controlled with possibility for player to give them orders or force to perform specific actions,
• Nonlinear storyline with a lot of minor stories and subquests.

Combat System

This part looks slightly like sophisticated RTS games, but lets you focus on individual characters, main hero in particular. You’ll discover:

• Real-time combat, with dynamics of RTS games, but outcome of the battle depends more on mind (and RPG statistics) than agile hands,
• With the exception of main hero, every squad member is controlled by sophisticated AI (artificial intelligence), but there’s a possibility to give them orders using few simple commands,
• Battles incorporate a lot of tactical elements and demand strong planning–firepower is not enough,
• RPG statistics (such as sharpshooting skill, strength or agility) have strong influence on characters’ behavior,
• Each skirmish is unique, with own reasons and story.

Adventure

Grom brings back to life that “thing” that seems to have sunk into oblivion–the mysterious charm of old adventure games from LucasArts or Sierra. Of course, it doesn’t mean searching a whole screen for one particular pixel or absurd puzzle constructions. These times are gone. This game has a clear interface, almost iconless, with context menu tied to specific items, where different commands appropriate to the situation can be found. Puzzles are greatly simplified, always going along with adequate suggestions, so no one will be forced to use all inventory items on every other. Additionally, RPG approach allows to avoid problems with linear storyline and player-oriented world as found in old school adventure games.

What’s great in Grom is this feeling of being a part of something huge, of participation in a twisted and exciting story, a scent of pure adventure, and this breath-taking movie style, which fully absorbs, stuns, and leaves you with an expression of mysterious satisfaction on your face.

Overall

One can safely call Grom a typical Hollywood production–on one side, it has lofty subjects and extraordinary characters with dark pasts, while on the other, the story gives an impression of being “light” and accessible, keeping a little distance with ironic comments or behaviors. Thanks to this carefully balanced construction, the player becomes easily involved in the plot and starts to identify with main hero, experiencing a lifetime adventure in the world on the edge of eruption. Together with gorgeous graphics and orchestral soundtrack, Grom is a truly epic game, providing the player with loads of pure adventure, a bit of humor, and a touch of big mystery to arouse imagination.

The game has so far been a self-financed project from Rebelmind. The team is currently looking for a publisher.