GRAIN ROT
Review

And instead of getting yet another loot-and-run simulation, I discovered a charming, enjoyable cycle that replaced punishing quotas with meaningful progression.

Not A Copycat But An Original Game With Some Ideas Borrowed From Contemporaries

While GRAIN ROT definitely takes some things from similar titles, it adds enough original elements to become an awesome experience on its own right. However, a severe lack of endgame content keeps it from being a true masterpiece.

The Deep Layers: Scavenging and Possessive Bodies

In the game, you have to go into the elevator to get into the "Deep Layers". Then you break all the junk into scrap and get valuables in exchange for money.

The level design here deserves special praise. The map features various biomes with lots of secrets and puzzles.

Unfortunately, the monsters in the game are rather unoriginal and scary almost never. If you are looking for some hardcore horror, you won't find many scares here because all the enemies are pretty easy to kite and block with obstacles. But the developers saved the game with "Spark" mechanics. So, instead of losing your progress right after dying in your body, you are able to transfer your soul into other, much smaller creatures, which have unique abilities. It changes the hide-and-run scheme to a fun one.

The Outpost: Progression Made Right

But GRAIN ROT stands out not only for the scavenging part. When returning to the base, you are able to use the money you got from scavenging to make your outpost more comfy.

First of all, there are some rooms that you should repair and upgrade. Also, you can create unique furniture and decorations to personalize your rooms even more.

And the most important thing here is that you get various bonuses from upgrading certain rooms. So, the health bar, stamina regeneration speed, and attack stats grow every time you get to a certain milestone. And it is a really cool feature.

The Elephant in the Room: A Premature Stop of the Storyline

As cool as GRAIN ROT is, there is a serious flaw in the game. It was advertised as a finished product, but after about five to ten hours of playing, the main questline just ends.

There are also some rooms on the third floor of the Outpost that are locked. Until the game community started asking why it was released without the third floor, the developers admitted that the content would appear only after some patches. Releasing a game with no story and locked content without any warning is a rather dubious practice. Moreover, there is not enough furniture and decorations available for building now.

Cross-Platform Features & Ecosystem

There is also the question of multi-platform support for the game. Being PC exclusive, it greatly limits the player base since the game depends entirely on multiplayer experience.

From the ecosystem side, GRAIN ROT developers proved themselves to be quite responsive since they added private lobbies quickly after the request came from the community. However, unless the game gets to Xbox and PlayStation, along with crossplay support, it is still isolated.

Conclusion

GRAIN ROT is a very pleasant breath of fresh air in a highly saturated genre. By replacing wipe mechanics with base-building mechanics and a body-swapping system, it created a cozy, fun loop and respected the player's time. It is a very good title for playing with your friends and is worth its modest price of $8.

However, the lack of original monsters and unfinished content made me rate it not that high.