Despite being based on fairy tales, American McGee's Grimm is not an adventure series. There are no characters to talk to, no major interactions of any kind, and no direct experience of the fairy tale in question. Players are instead treated to a platform/puzzle game that's very similar to Katamari Damacy. First there's an initial run-through of the fairy tale, in this case, a boy asks his father what fear is. The father then recommends that his son leave the protected confines of the town to learn on his own. The boy takes his father's advice and wanders across the land, surrounded by cheery people teaching a poor lesson. That's where Grimm comes in.


Grimm is both the narrator and the controllable character. He's a dirty, creepy looking, guy with an aura of darkness surrounding him. His goal is to run through the entire story, scene-by-scene, using his aura to transform the bright and happy landscape to a dark, macabre world. The point of the game is to change as much of the level to darkness in the shortest amount of time possible. Certain enemies will work to counter Grimm's progress by cleaning up after his mess, but changing over landscape increases his darkening potency to change over tougher objects, including the janitorial characters. Everything culminates into performing a butt-stomping move at a checkpoint to either move on the next area or end the scene.

Altogether, there's not much to American McGee's Grimm other than running around and transforming the environment. It's a very simple game, but that's what makes it charming. It doesn't take long to run through the story's six levels, nor are any of them especially difficult. Grimm can only die when he falls into something like lava or water, but these incidents are just minor setbacks. The only challenge the player faces is beating his or her best time and finding the secret coins hidden in each scene. At the end of it all, Grimm tells the story again, this time with more violent, angry, characters and notably darker scenery. To the game's credit, A Boy Learns What Fear Is plays out significantly better and somewhat more believably in dark mode than in light. The story already has dark themes by itself, and Grimm uses his changeover abilities to make them more apparent.

Brevity plays in the game's favor. Players can complete all six scenes in well under an hour. This is a game that can be easily picked up for a few minutes and put down again in time for the next weekly installment. Paying GameTap subscribers can have their top scores uploaded to leaderboards for bragging rights, but the true joy of playing Grimm comes from watching the world's transformation. The dim-witted father turns into an angry domestic violence case. Characters smiling in spite of having nooses around their necks at the gallows turn into gruesome, choking, blue marionettes. The cartoon art style comprised of matchstick characters (at one point, that becomes quite literal) keeps the game from crossing over into Mature rated territory, which is the most sensible approach for a game like this.

We could have done without the minor toilet humor, where Grimm lets out a steady unending stream of pee if left standing still for too long. It turns out that the urination actually serves a purpose: it marks where Grimm can jump to. Unfortunately, even with a marker showing where Grimm will land, the jumping puzzles are game's weakest aspects. The level design by itself is good, but tilting the mouse too far points Grimm straight down and even slight adjustments make him pee too far, allowing for him to slip off edges. As stated earlier, these setbacks are very minor and players won't lose anything but time, but these sequences badly interrupt the pacing.

Ultimately, we can't complain too much about American McGee's Grimm. The game is simple and short enough for short bursts of entertainment, and watching the scenery change doesn't get old. Best of all, A Boy Learns What Fear Is can be played for free without a GameTap subscription. The humor is a little low brow but not offensive, and it'll be interesting to see how long American McGee can use this gimmick before it starts to get a bit stale, but this game is a very promising start to the series.

Download American McGee's Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear Is [Full Game] (193 Mb)