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Grim Designs press kit

Fact sheet, description, logos and screenshots. One zip, no sign-up.

Download the press kit (zip)

Logos and 1920-wide screenshots plus the fact sheet below. Studio material (the bison mark, the ident, the About text) is in the studio kit on the hub.

Fact sheet

Developer
Iron Buffalo Studios, a one-person, veteran-owned studio
Based in
Houston, Texas
Platform
PC first
Status
In development; no date, no store page yet
Engine
Unity
Genre
Dark dungeon-builder strategy
Players
Single-player
Press contact
bfreitas@ironbuffalostudios.com
Website
grim.ironbuffalostudios.com

Description

A dead man climbs out of the town well every ten years to pay a monster in souls, and the town knows he is coming. In 1866 the village of Gladmoor stoned its chemist and sin-eater, Sterling Vane, nailed him to the oak crossbeam of the town well and threw him down it. Something very old was waiting at the bottom: Vrykolakas, which lent him a life on one condition, a soul for every stone they threw. Grim Designs is a dungeon builder with two worlds on screen at once: the living town above, going about its routines through day, night and weather, and Vane's realm in floors of clay below it. You play the Master. He walks his own dungeon, rules from the Crossbeam and works through a handful of grotesque gnomes. You win a level on Opening Night, when you open the Gate to Vrykolakas's deep and pay over the souls you hold.

Features

  • Two worlds at once: the living town above, paced by a storyteller rather than a script, and your realm in floors below, with the rock cut away as you look in.
  • You are the Master: he walks his dungeon in person, rules from the Crossbeam, and works through grotesque gnomes who were once townspeople; they dig, haul, sleep in their own beds and eat rats.
  • The Draw and the portals: an adult whose resistance runs out walks down of their own accord; later your creatures come up through hidden portals. The town watches and fights back.
  • Opening Night is the Gate: open the door to Vrykolakas's deep and pay over the souls you hold. Each level is one Return, ten years after the last; all are open from the start.

Logos

Screenshots

Sterling Vane seated on the Crossbeam, the well's oak frame, on a plinth of stones ringed with candles and black waterThe Master on the Crossbeam from the side, coat, hat and hands on the rests; a gnome in torn clothes beside himGnomes and creatures gathered on the ring round the Crossbeam in the Hollow, the walls cut awayLevel one, floor two from above with the rock cut away: the round Hollow, its timber shoring, the rooms and the stairGladmoor Rise by day: a clapboard house, gardens, a car on the drive and adults walking the pavementBack gardens, pools, sheds and hedges of two rows of houses, seen from high aboveThe same rows of gardens and pools at night, porch and garden lights on under blue moonlightThe Gate: a stone-and-bone arch with its oak leaves open on the dark, cold mist rolling out over the black pool

About the media

All screenshots are real captures from the current work-in-progress PC build, HUD hidden. AI-assisted: the 3D models come from AI image-to-3D tools working from the studio's own concepts; the Master's animation, the levels, systems, camera and interface are the studio's own work.

Logos and screenshots may be used in coverage of the game. Game footage is from a work-in-progress build and may change.