Grimsorrow Academy · build 25659071 · published
The clerk has been keeping a list. The faculty has asked that it be read out before it grows any longer. It begins with a castle. Hollowmere opens in the free demo today. Below it, everything else that has gone into Grimsorrow Academy since the demo's last update on 1 October, and at the end, what waits in the full game beyond the demo's first term.
At apprentice level 8 the Academy grants you Hollowmere, the drowned lord's ruin on its crag across the black mere. Click a building to open it, and raise it.
Tenants are the castle. A steward shares out the hands by one measure: toward the fields for food, toward the sites for timber, stone and nightwine and more scribes at their desks. Every job has a slider of its own under it: move one and the steward stands back, until you give the hands back to him.
Contentment grows the castle, up to what the Keep and the Curtain Wall house. Nightwine poured in the Great Hall is the surest comfort.
Tidings come as the whole castle grows: a heron in the reeds, fishers on the mere, a hamlet on the shore, and eighteen more, the last when everything stands at level 20. Each that comes adds 0.5% to every XP the Academy grants, 10% with all twenty.
One menu at the map's top right holds Tenants, Tidings, the Flood and Hide UI, and three short cards teach the page the first time you open it.
Away from the game the castle works at half pace, for eight hours at mos.t
The first time you open it, Hollowmere has a short film of its own. The castle you build here comes with you into the full game, along with the rest of your save. The drowned lord kept his keep for three hundred years and his debts for longer. The Academy took both in payment.
Nothing rises past the flood's ceiling, level 7 at first. With the Keep at it, let the mere rise: the castle sinks and begins again, and the mere leaves silt for the boughs of the Drowned Oak, which last through every flood. Each flood raises the ceiling, to 20 by the fifth, and the Academy is grateful: 2% more umbra a flood, and 5% more for Hollowmere made whole. The first flood opens the way down to the Sunless Sea. Under every building hangs its twin, and the same rules run there for the dead. As above, so below
The school's dead are drawn again, pale and breathing, and every cast is done in the dark's own way: smoke, ash and dried blood where there were once bright flashes. Pinprick of Night is a needle of night, the Lash a whip of black smoke, the Unlidded Eye an eye of smoke that weeps soot.
All hundred and one foes on the ladder are drawn again, flat and soft, of the dark's own smoke. The Academy's beasts have joined the dead: hares and stags, owls and herons, crabs, snails and beetles, a jelly from the mere.
Your spells run down the right of the glass as bars of ink: a mark empties its bar when cast and fills again from the left, and a mark drawn too soon flashes red.
The vale walks on with you through the first four zones, level by level, the dusk coming down and the sun sinking as you go.
The Lectern's roster is one list now: the marks you know, the marks you can learn (a click puts one on the slate, with its hint), and the marks not yet taught. Two tabs over the board name what you are looking at, the Slate and Mastery, and a mark past rank 20 carries its Mastery at the end of its row: a small tree, and the Insight it has to spend. At rank 20 a mark's Mastery opens: inscribe its tree with umbra and reagents, then spend Insight to make the mark yield more on the Mirror, or change it in the Proving. Each of the twelve marks grows a tree in a shape of its own, with three Keystones that change what the mark is. The Unlidded Eye's, for one: Long Stare makes it stronger with every Precise trace, Second Sight makes every 7th cast burst half again as strong, and Held Open, in the Proving, lets the first trace open the Eye and the next shut it, striking for all it burned in between. Held past six seconds, it turns on you. Click a node to read it, and again to spend Insight in it. A card shows you the way the first time a mark gets there, and Reset Mastery gives your Insight back. The free demo gives a taste of it: a mark's rank runs to 25 there.
The Stair is a well cut down through the earth, lit like dusk where you have walked it and dark where you have not. Every station is a Fragment of Memory, a wisp over its landing. The earth changes as it goes down, from grey soil through clay and packed stone to the dark of embers, and each act's caption gives its depth in fathoms. The first visit teaches it in two steps.
Husbandry's plots are one bed now, under the moon, with a ruined chapel on the fells. Pick a crop on the sowing bar, with its growing time, yield and XP beside it, then click an empty plot to sow it and a ripe one to harvest it. The garden's header tells you at a glance how many plots are ripe, growing and empty, and when the next is due.
The demo is the Academy's first term, up to apprentice level 9, with every other level stopping at 60. It has been updated with everything above that falls inside it: Hollowmere from level 8 up to its first flood, the made-over Proving Grounds and the first four tiers of their ladder, the Lectern as one list and a first taste of Mastery, the redrawn Stair and Garden, the quicker first levels and the smoother loading. Where the term ends, the game says so plainly: on the ladder, on the rail and on the Stair. The term now ends at apprentice level 9, where it ended at 12. You play the ninth level through; when its bar fills, the Headmaster writes to you, and the term is over for that apprentice. The letter stays, with the way to the store and back to the title. Either way the save is not lost: on the demo's Load Game screen, bottle it ("Bottle a soul"), and it carries on in the full game where it stopped.
The demo is one term. The full game is all ten years of it, and then Tenure.
Hollowmere in full: the Flood, five ceilings up to level 20, the Sunless Sea below, and all twenty tidings.
Fifteen Disciplines where the demo has four, from Husbandry at level 12 to the Vampiric Council, each with its own Attunement, gear, potions and permanent Sigils.
All twelve spells, drawn by hand: instant Maledictions, sustained Litanies, and Bindings that scry in your place. Each one grows its own Mastery tree.
The Night Errands, past the demo's term: 23 zones, 12 dungeons and over 90 monsters, their uniques and sets, and the Anvil that reforges gear +N until it sings, or shatters.
The Black Covenant. When the umbra runs deep enough, sign a new Indenture. It shatters the mirror and pays you for it: Seals that bless every life after this one, and Oaths spent down a 16-node tree. You keep the power. You keep signing.
Tenure across 120 levels, and beneath the Winding Stair a second realm, the Undercroft, and below that a six-zone descent to the Nadir.
The whole Stair: 233 Fragments of Memory across fifteen acts, and the dark that waits below them.
The Dark Summon from level 14, and a ledger of over 300 deeds.
The full game is coming to Early Access. Wishlist Grimsorrow Academy and keep your calendars at the ready since it is coming out soon! The clerk thanks you for reading the whole list. He had not expected it. Do not feed the staircase.