Grindstone originally began life as an Apple Arcade exclusive back in 2019, then an Epic Games Store exclusive in 2022. It eventually landed on Xbox and PlayStation consoles in 2023, and by god I’m glad it did. I technically slept on this game for three years, until I finally mustered up the courage to grab it in the January sales and I feel like I’ve just scratched an itch I didn’t even know I had.
The premise of Grindstone is relatively simple. You control an adventurer killing monsters in a dungeon. In order to do so, you must draw a line through monsters of the same colour to make a chain. If you make a chain of 10 or more, you make a Grindstone that drops into a random point on the field. Including a Grindstone in your chain means you can change the colour of monster you’re currently fighting, allowing you to chain more monsters. Repeat ad nauseum until you meet the clear conditions of the level and then make a beeline for the door. Sure, it gets more complicated the further you go, but that core loop is what you’ll keep returning to and my word is it addictive.
Grindstone is what I tend to refer to as a “2AM game”. As in, you nip on for a couple of rounds once you’ve finished work, then you blink and suddenly it’s 2AM. Each level is just long enough that you aren’t spending more time on menu screens than gameplay, but short enough that there’s always something fresh to stick in front of you. And that is one of the benefits of starting this game in 2026. This game has had constant content updates for around seven years, and the sheer amount of levels and things to do is staggering.
The signs of this once being a mobile game are everywhere. There’s daily leaderboard climbs, resource collection, a currency you have to spend to do basically anything bar actually play a basic level, and seasonal challenges that rotate every week or two. Typically, these additions really irk me, especially in console ports. Sure, if I’m on mobile these features tend to be manageable, almost expected, but I don’t play a mobile app like I do a console game, and this typically causes a lot of friction. Here though? It just makes sense.
Control with a controller feels a little fiddly the first couple of levels, but you soon get used to tapping directions to simulate dragging your finger around to make a path. Gameplay gets a little more complex when craftable equipment (weapons and armour that have various buffs, or that you can activate with limited uses) come into play, and trying to complete the three goals on every level (escape, open the chest, capture a king) can sometimes require a lot of brainpower, and also a lot of luck (which I’ll touch on shortly).
Enemies aren’t going to sit idly by whilst you slaughter their friends. The longer you leave them alive, the more likely they are to freak out and attack back. If you finish a path in a furious enemies attack radius, you’re gonna lose a valuable life. Mini bosses appear that need a “wind up” before you can kill them (i.e. you need a chain of a certain amount to be able to break through them) and groups of levels finish with a boss with a unique twist on the path finding mechanic (one such example requiring you to chain into bombs at a certain angle to knock them into the boss).
As previously mentioned, luck is possibly the only negative I can really find with Grindstone. Because the entire game is played by navigating paths of enemies, the random colours that the enemies fall down in dictates what moves you can make at any given time, and when you’re backed into a corner and can only move one space per turn because of the luck of the draw, or your only path takes you into danger through an unlucky draw, frustration can occasionally rear its head. Whilst these situations can be mitigated with the right items, these require resources you have to earn to create, so if you keep hitting a bad streak you will eventually run out.
Despite Grindstone’s occasionally grindy (ha) nature, the game is incredibly generous with every resource it gives out. I’ve played the game for around 15 hours now and have yet to consciously work my resource pools back up, though I have gotten close to running out of a couple of rarer materials once or twice.
I’ve sung the praises of the gameplay for most of this review, without even mentioning the wacky but charming art style and incredibly satisfying sound design. The game is a treat in its presentation, but as far as I’m concerned it could be scribbles on a notepad for just how moreish the actual gameplay is.
If you’ve ever sat down to play a match 3 game on your phone, or simply see this on sale and have a spare gift card lying around, I truly can’t recommend Grindstone enough.
Grindstone was reviewed on Playstation 5, but is currently available on Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox One Series X/S and Playstation 4.
