Grimm Investigation

I had a Deja Vu that i played Deja Vu when i played this game.

I remember when i was a little kid and got my first console, a Nintendo Entertainment System, and a game called Deja Vu came with it. Now, that had not been my first videogame, as even then I was mostly a pc gamer and if there was a genre of games that I knew well at that time, were Text Adventures!

And just as I read this game's summary, and played it for a while, I realized that's what Deja Vu had felt like, a text game with pictures!

Now, Grimm Investigation is not a point and click adventure game but in spirit it's the same. Again, it's a text game with visual eye candy of the retro variety. The story is told via a text prompt on the bottom side of the screen while a visual representation of the scene you're in appears in a window at the top left corner.

The artwork is very nice, it really echoes the style of art that these kinds of games used back then which was composed of pixel-based illustrations with no antialias and with stylish details in them.

Funnily enough the game is a detective story, going back to the Deja Vu example, and one that will hook you right in as you meet pianotm's representation of a few characters from the stories and tales of the brothers Grimm while you try to solve a mysterious case of theft. You can choose to be either a male or female detective, who have their own story each, and both of them have different endings depending on your actions in the game.

Lacking point and click capabilities, the actions you take in certain cutscenes decide what ending you're getting at the end of the game. The game is a bit linear in some respects but the game is short, so it doesn't grate on your impatience glands. That one particular scene with Little Red Riding Hood when playing as the male detective was uncomfortable to read, but I guess that was the intention.

It initially had a few bugs that froze the game at certain points, but thankfully they've been fixed, so enjoy this very retro game about a bygone era.