Grimm's Hatchery Review

Grimm's Hatchery Review

The back story goes as thus. The Evil Lord Dredmond, your stepfather, has died. Instead of simply bestowing his entire estate onto you, he has given all the riches to his ungrateful biological son, Lord Boras. There is one very intriguing stipulation in the will, however, that may grant you access to the huge castle on the hill. You have 80 days to gather up 300,000 gold coins, and if you achieve this goal, you will be granted entrance back to the lavish life. Your step-brother, on the other hand, will be kicked out on the street.

That's the situation that you find yourself in, so you can clearly see how motivated your character is. He really wants to get out of the peasant life and back into a life of excess and luxury. Your 80-day journey begins on a humble farm named, you guessed it, Grimm's Hatchery. It is here that you will raise a variety of animals, all of which hatch from eggs, tending to them and selling them for profit. How is this done?

Clucking, Clicking, And...

You click with your mouse to grab the eggs that the birds and other animals lay. You click again to spread the feed in front of them so that your flock doesn't have to go hungry. You click several times more to defeat invading enemies like crows who want to attack your animals. It's a lot of clicking, and that is what Grimm's Hatchery has at its core. A lot of clicking.

It's a little slow to start, but as you make your way to later stages, you will find that the mouse clicking will get much more frantic, offering some heart-pounding action. This is even more hectic than time-sensitive puzzle games like Bejeweled.

In between these crazy clicking sessions where you're chasing down your flock, collecting eggs, and performing other tasks, you must make your way to the marketplace to do your business. Buy eggs to more exotic and thus, more lucrative animals. Purchase more feed so that they won't go hungry. Sell your animals or their eggs to start collecting gold coins. You'll need 300,000 gold coins to win, remember, so the road will be long and challenging.

Making Progress

Thankfully, there is a distinct feeling of progress in this game. You start out with simple animals with simple needs and not much value. Later on, you manage all sorts of different beasts, and it is here that you start to amass some real money. But the mechanism remains the same: lots of frantic clicking, lots of chasing the little cluckers around the screen.

Conclusion: Fun, But a Little Grim

In the end, Grimm's Hatchery is reasonably fun while it lasts, but it gets terribly monotonous and boring after a while because there is a lack of variety in terms of what you do. Fans of speedy arcade action will find some value here, but you're in search of a deep RPG (like Virtual Villagers), you're in for a big disappointment. The graphics and sound are quite nice, though.