Grizzland is ok. It is an abstract 8-bit mini Metroidvania, where not much is explained. It plays very retro, in good and bad ways. It honestly was great in the early game, but kinda lost steam.

It has some really solid labyrinthian level design, intriguing theming, and decent character progression. The game doesn’t explain much at all, but I liked how it just throws you in the water from the beginning.

But, its got some real cons. The clunky character movement has zero animation cancelling, so if you attack you can’t stop and move away to defend yourself, and it makes later game combat encounters a nightmare. The overall level design gets really tedious late game as well, where it seems not to add anything new from the previous “levels”. The story and grey color palette just end up feeling under baked after a while.

I think it would’ve been a perfect game if it was just that first hour or two, but the overall pacing and trajectory ended up leaving a pretty bad taste for me.