January Assassination #3

Steam Review - Consider liking it - it means a lot to me :)

Grindstone is a completely underrated gem. It has one of the best animations I've seen in a 2D game yet, with a distinctive artstyle that is so fluid and fresh. It's like watching Cartoon Network's golden age shows non-stop, and characters ooze personality and emotion on their reactions and expressions. The sound is crunchy and the gameplay is snappy, and even after dozens of hours with the game, it never ceases to be satisfying to chain a massive combo, seeing your enemies cower in fear, you smush through them with a ravenous hunger, and the crowd cheering your gratuitous display of violence (in particular once you pardon a slob and the kids cheer you on haahahah).

There's a semblance of a story going on, but it doesn't matter - the gameplay here is what carries everything else. It's an easy-to-pick, hard-to-master kind of game where situational awareness and gear loadout help you, but won't save you from a bad scenario, and you constantly need to balance creating props that allow you to combo (such as grindstones or enemy guts and drops) vs. making quick work at a level. There's such a massive amount of content here, from levels to worlds to side-dungeons to daily and weekly quests to 200 levels in the main path, it's wild. I was afraid of starting the game because I thought it would be too much, but now I see myself playing almost 2h every day just because it is that fun.

Seriously, this game is criminally underrated and underappreciated. For me it's on par with indie darlings such as Slay The Spire, Stardew Valley, and Hades. Buy it, play it, GRIND IT!