Initially launched on PC back in 2012, Legend of Grimrock is a first-person dungeon crawler inspired by old school RPGs like Bard’s Tale III: Thief Of Fate and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. Despite flying under the radar for the longest time, the game eventually garnered a cult following and was ported to numerous platforms over the years, including Mac, Linux, and iOS. Now, almost 12 years since its initial launch, Legend of Grimrock is finally making its way to the Nintendo Switch as well.
According to Finnish developer Almost Human, Legend of Grimrock is scheduled to launch on the Nintendo eShop on January 15th. The port will stay faithful to the original and will not include any additional content. However, the Switch version of Legend of Grimrock does bring to the table some neat quality-of-life features, including a modernized user interface. As is the case with all of these ports, the game has also been optimized to work with Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons.
The decision to develop a Switch version of Legend of Grimrock was motivated primarily by a desire to rekindle interest in the franchise. While there’s no doubtsomefinancial incentive for re-releasing a game so many years after its initial launch, that’s not the main reason why we’re getting a Nintendo Switch version of Legend of Grimrock later this month.
“All of us at Almost Human have had other things to do besides Legend of Grimrock in recent years so why should we do a port of a game that’s almost 11 years old already?”said Almost Human co-founder Antti Tiihonen.“The idea of the port arose when our programmer, Petri Häkkinen, had a Nintendo Switch developer kit and he thought it would be a fun and educational side project to get the game running on our favorite console platform.”
The co-founder went on to clarify that most of the studio’s decisions aren’t driven by business or finances. Rather, the studio decided to undertake this project“simply because it was enjoyable for us.”Tiihonen went on to say that,“We anticipate this release will rekindle the excitement of many of the old fans of the game and we hope some new adventurers will discover the delights of old school dungeon crawling too.”
Two years after the release of the original, Almost Human launched a sequel to their beloved dungeon crawler known simply as Legend of Grimrock 2. Combined, the two titles sold over 1.5 million units across all platforms, an already impressive figure that’s undoubtedly going to grow even more once Legend of Grimrock launches on the Nintendo Switch later this month.
There are currently no plans to develop a Switch version of Legend of Grimrock 2 as far as we know. However, if the original does well on the platform, there’s a strong possibility that the sequel will receive a similar treatment as well at some point in the future
