Grimrock's Second Life: Why This Dungeon Crawler Fits Handhelds
Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson grew up “terrified, in a good way” by Legend of Grimrock. In a new YouTube video, he credits Almost Human’s 2012 grid-based dungeon crawler as the game that “brought this particular style of RPG to a wide audience,” before lamenting that “people stopped making games like this” once Doom, Quake, and Diablo reshaped the real-time RPG. His nostalgia is more than a history lesson — it’s a perfect excuse to revisit Grimrock on the formats where it belongs: Steam Deck and Switch.
Grimrock’s loop of four-character party management, environmental puzzles, and real-time combat was designed for a mouse-and-keyboard era, but its grid movement translates cleanly to a d-pad and analog stick. More importantly, the whole thing is built around tension in small, contained spaces — the kind of game you can play in a bus seat with headphones on, pause at a moment’s notice, and resume without losing your place. That’s exactly what suspend/resume on Deck and Switch was made for.
Bite-Sized Grids, Zero Session Anxiety
Grimrock’s grid cells are effectively turn-based when you stop moving: you can survey the room, read the runes, swap weapons, and plan your next step without a dynamic camera rushing you. On a handheld, that granularity is a quiet superpower. The Switch version translates the grid-based presentation cleanly to a small display, and the Steam version is a 2012-era PC game — meaning the Deck’s APU isn’t going to break a sweat. I’m not going to invent frame-rate numbers because Valve hasn’t published Grimrock-specific performance targets, but the game’s age and scope make it a safe bet for portable play.
“People Stopped Making Games Like This” — Handhelds Are the Cure
Wilson’s deeper point is genre extinction. The first-person blobber fell out of favor not because it was bad, but because 3D engines and Diablo’s loot loop redefined what an action RPG could be. For handheld players, that’s a supply problem: there aren’t enough modern Grimrock-likes, so older games carry the torch. The good news is Grimrock’s design is timeless in exactly the way portable play demands — pick up, solve one puzzle, put down. Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck become the format where this forgotten genre lives on, one suspend at a time. If you’ve never played it, your Deck or Switch is the best argument for giving Grimrock a try.