Grim Dawn is an action role-playing game for Windows created by Crate Entertainment. It was released in February 2016 and later became available for Xbox One in December 2021. The game uses the Titan Quest engine and is set in a dark, fictional world inspired by the Victorian era. Critics gave it mostly positive reviews, and by February 2022, it had sold 7 million copies, including downloadable content.

Plot

Grim Dawn is set in a world called Cairn, where humans are almost wiped out because of a war that happened between different dimensions.

The war began when humans in Cairn started communicating with beings called Aetherials from another dimension. Humans used knowledge gained from these beings to open a portal and bring one Aetherial into their world. They discovered that Aetherials could take control of humans, and when the Aetherial left the human body, the human gained special powers. Because of this, humans released more Aetherials into their world. These Aetherials then opened more portals and planned to use humans for their own goals.

This action caught the attention of another race called the Cthonians. The Cthonians started a war to destroy humanity before it could be fully controlled by the Aetherials. The war caused many human deaths and damaged the way reality worked, leading to new dangers appearing.

The few humans who survived now live in small, scattered groups. They watch the war carefully to learn about their enemies' weaknesses. They also use powers they gained from exposure to a strange force called the warp to prepare for future attacks against the invaders.

Gameplay

Grim Dawn is an action role-playing game that includes fast-paced real-time combat and focuses on collecting loot, such as armor, potions, weapons, and money (in the form of Iron Bits). The game's crafting system is similar to the one used in the popular mod Defense of the Ancients from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Grim Dawn also includes features from Titan Quest, such as better physics, damage effects that depend on location, changing weather, a camera that can be rotated, dismemberment, the addition of factions, and a redesigned quest system.

There are nine different character classes in the game:

• Six from the base game (Soldier, Demolitionist, Occultist, Nightblade, Arcanist, Shaman).
• Two from the Ashes of Malmouth expansion (Inquisitor, Necromancer).
• One from the expansion, The Forgotten Gods (Oathkeeper).

Each player character can combine two of these classes and their skills and modifiers.

The game includes several non-player character (NPC) factions. Some are friendly to the player, while others are hostile. Players can gain favor with certain factions to unlock new quests, receive discounts from vendors, and obtain special items and augments. Some neutral factions can become allies, but helping one faction may make others enemies. Hostile factions remember the player's actions and may send stronger enemies to hunt the player. Some factions that are initially friendly may become hostile based on the player's choices.

A skill system provides an additional way to develop a character. The devotion system allows players to find and restore destroyed or corrupted shrines hidden throughout the game world. Players can use devotion points to unlock bonuses and abilities from a large constellation map.

The game's crafting system lets players combine salvaged components into unique items. These basic items can later be used with more advanced recipes to create powerful equipment and consumables. Blueprints and recipes can be found by defeating enemies, opening chests, or completing quests.

Grim Dawn has three difficulty levels: Normal, Elite, and Ultimate. Like Titan Quest and other action role-playing games, each difficulty level is unlocked by defeating the Final Boss of the base game on the previous difficulty level (for example, Elite Difficulty is unlocked by completing Normal Difficulty content).

Normal Difficulty also has a "Veteran" mode, which increases monster damage and strength and gives players more experience points.

When creating a new character, players can choose Hardcore mode. In this mode, a character's death is permanent, and the character becomes unplayable. Any equipment a Hardcore character has at the time of death is lost forever. Hardcore mode characters do not share a stash with Normal mode characters and can only join multiplayer sessions with other Hardcore characters.

Players can form a party of up to four members. The strength and toughness of monsters increase with the number of players, as does the amount of loot. Items and Iron Bits can be traded between players in a party. The host of a multiplayer session can also enable Player vs. Player (PvP) mode, where players not in the same party can attack and kill each other.

Development

Crate Entertainment shared news on July 27, 2009, that they had been allowed to use the Titan Quest engine from Iron Lore. They also announced the start of developing a game called Grim Dawn on January 21, 2010. At first, little information was given about the game, except that it is set in a dark, fictional world inspired by the Victorian era.

The development of Grim Dawn is known for Crate Entertainment’s request for help from fans to fund the project. On the game’s official website, the developers said they added a pre-order page after receiving many emails from fans who wanted to support the game. Fifteen days later, the company reported that they had received financial help from the website Gamebanshee and one of the writers of the web comic Penny Arcade. Despite this support, Crate’s manager, Arthur Bruno, told The Escapist that pre-orders only covered a small part of the game’s budget. Later, Bruno confirmed to Big Download that donations and pre-orders were not enough to fully fund the project. He also said that Crate planned to release new game content through expansions every six to ten months.

On April 17, 2012, Crate Entertainment started a Kickstarter campaign for Grim Dawn, aiming to raise $280,000. Half of this goal was reached in four days. The campaign ended with $537,515, which was much more than the original goal. On May 15, 2013, Crate released an early version of the game (Build 8) through the Steam Early Access program.

Release

On February 25, 2016, the game was fully released with version 1.0.0.0 (build 31 hotfix 1). The version for Xbox One, which included all previous downloadable content and expansions, was released on December 3, 2021.

On August 3, 2016, a new game mode named The Crucible was added as downloadable content.

On October 11, 2017, Grim Dawn’s first expansion, Ashes of Malmouth, was released.

On March 5, 2018, a second expansion was announced. It was called Forgotten Gods and was released on March 27, 2019.

On August 29, 2023, Fangs of Asterkarn, Grim Dawn’s third expansion, was announced. It was planned for release in 2024. This date was later moved to 2025.

Reception

Grim Dawn received positive reviews from 29 critics, as reported by the review site Metacritic.

Leif Johnson of PC Gamer wrote: "Grim Dawn is both helped and limited by its old-school style. This design prevents features like the changing levels in Diablo III, which offer unlimited chances to play again. However, no recent games provide the classic action gameplay as clearly or as enjoyably as Grim Dawn. Its class system allows players to experience different types of gameplay each time they play. The game often kept me playing until morning, and I greatly respect any game that can do this."

By May 2017, Grim Dawn had sold more than 1 million copies worldwide. Its DLC, Crucible, had sold over 200,000 copies by that time.

In April 2019, Crate announced that the Forgotten Gods expansion had sold over 100,000 copies. This brought the total sales of the base game and its DLC to more than 3 million copies.

In May 2020, one of the game's designers shared in a forum post that the game and its DLC were getting close to selling 5 million copies.

In February 2022, Crate announced that the game and its DLC had sold 7 million copies.