The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
The game takes place on a grid, where the player can move Jorj by attacking monsters with his sword. Jorj can move in eight directions: up, down, left, right alongside diagonal movements. Jorj has three ability slots which can be filled with unique powers such as a bow, which lets you pick one enemy off from around the map. Jorj can only attack one color of monsters at a time, but if the player smashes through 10 monsters, a Grindstone will spawn. This allows Jorj to switch the color of the monster he is attacking, allowing him to chain together larger combos.
While most enemies can be dispatched in one hit, special and boss enemies have additional health points that need to be depleted in order to defeat them. Monsters over time become enraged, meaning that if Jorj lands next to them at the end of a turn, they will attack him. Each level has a goal, which could be defeating a certain amount of enemies, or fighting a boss. Levels also have secondary items to unlock or collect such as a treasure chest.
Development
The original concept for Grindstone dates back to the development of two of Capybara's previous games, Critter Crunch and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. The original idea for Grindstone was a color based matching game where the player would move around the board. The setting was designed to be a brutal, "barbarian" world, but with a cartoonish take on the idea. In the early stages of development, the game's standard enemies would be able to attack Jorj in diagonal directions, but the team found it too frustrating and restricted the ability to special enemies only.
Grindstones were added to help the player create long combos. The game also had a coin based currency system, but it was removed as Capybara felt it didn't incentivise the player to create long combos.
Reception
Grindstone received positive reviews from critics, who praised the game for its color-matching puzzles and mechanics. The game has "Generally favorable reviews" on Metacritic. Nathan Reinauer of TouchArcade enjoyed the lack of in-app purchases and the cartoon-like visuals. Writing for Destructoid, Jordan Devore praised the gameplay as being easy to pick up and play, but disliked the length of the game, feeling that many of the stages felt like padding.
Grindstone was nominated for Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2019, as well as Portable Game of the Year at the 23rd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. The game also won Best Mobile Game in Edge magazine's 2019 Game of The Year awards.
