As a young witch seeking apprenticeship with your grandmother, you return home to find her garden a mess. Grimoire Groves has you adventuring through forests, in a fairly easy ARPG style to nurture plants and collect materials to restore the garden, as make a few friends along the way.
The ARPG part, while being a key aspect of the gameplay, still has some cozy vibes. You’ve got a generous dodge on a short cooldown, you can take several hits, each area has a vendor you can pay to restore health (assuming you do fine with the minigame) and most enemies feel harmless. It gets more complex as you go from only knowing fire magic and seeing only enemies affected by it, to when you get water, as opposing elements cause harm to the plants you’re trying to nourish. Care must be taken in mixed groups, though non-opposing is fine (like fire and earth).
Starting each run into the portals will wipe all your materials, turning it into compost, a currency of sorts for the runs themselves. You can partial complete on anything in the garden, so you should make sure to spend what you want before diving back in. That said, there is a balance between having a bunch of compost for the vendors (buying improves your relationship with them) and completing new spells.
Overall, everything’s cool and chill, while a bit grindy, though I think realizing the aspect of partial completion and losing everything starting a new run would have helped me greatly from the get go.
Grimoire Groves launched yesterday, and the demo is still up for those looking to try before you buy. It’s priced at 19.99 USD, with a small 15% launch discount.