Until now, most Grimm stages have felt like nothing more than pseudo interactive guided tours: look around, see happiness, darken it, ooh and ah at the devastation you've caused, then move on to the next level. Spicy Horse has spiced things up by crafting a few environments that actually feel like video game levels. One setting is a village with tall buildings connected via a network of bridges. At the end of one walkway, nestled behind a cart of barrels, is a secret coin. To get it, Grimm must sprint down the walkway, grab the coin, and hide behind the cart until the barrels rolled by a mischievous giant who sits atop the level have passed by. The barrels are quite fast, so Grimm can't often simply run down the bridge and grab the coin - the bridge extends slightly to one side approximately halfway down its length, giving Grimm a nook to hide in before continuing on.

Also improved are each stage's dark transformations. Being short, dumpy, and in possession of vertical ability enviable only to the morbidly obese, Grimm obviously has some difficulty reaching the lofty bridges in the aforementioned village. To reach the platforms, Grimm must corrupt the villagers until they all begin to vomit profusely -- so much, in fact, that the streets flood with puke, which lifts Grimm up to the bridges.


Nastier still is the birth of Three Golden Hairs' protagonist, who bursts from his mother's canal in a gush of blood, pus, and embryonic gunk. Later in the same level, Grimm turns river water of a river into green sludge, which causes four villagers standing on a raft to spill into the muck. They choke on the thick slime, drowning. Their bodies then drift lazily down the river and into a waterwheel, which promptly grinds them into gory bits.

That is not to say the environments are unique, though. Most stages in Three Golden Hairs are rather drab due to many backdrops such as woodland, villages and castles being repeated not only throughout the entire season, but multiple times within this episode.

Most of the glitches that have become synonymous with each Grimm episode are present in Three Golden Hairs. In the Hell stage, players must guide a diminutive Grimm across the rotund belly of a sleeping Satan. The devil's hairy gut is riddled with infested hairs and puckered scabs. Navigation is tedious and aggravating, with Grimm often becoming stuck between hairs and pimples, and failing to respond to jump commands for whatever reason.


The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs is a small step forward, one that marginally evolves the series' gameplay but lacks the spectacle of Godfather Death, arguably the most aesthetically pleasing episode of the season. Because next week is the conclusion of Grimm's first season, it's doubtful that the gameplay will evolve too dramatically. But there is hope for season two to expand on season one's precedent: a fun, colorful adventure good for a weekly half-hour romp, but one that lacks the depth to commit to purchasing each installment.