Questions, answered plainly

What it is

What kind of game is this?

An idle / incremental RPG. Two halves on one save: an active mana engine, where you scry the Obsidian Mirror for umbra and cast by tracing each spell's sigil on the glass, fused to a grid of 15 occult Disciplines with 353 actions between them, per-action mastery and idle combat.

How much of it idles?

Half of it, honestly. Disciplines and Night Errands work while you are away and pay out when you come back. The engine half wants your hand on the glass: the strongest students eventually teach their Bindings to scry in their place, but that is earned rather than switched on.

How long is it?

Roughly 400 hours of active play, across 23 zones, 12 dungeons, 92 monsters, 659 items and 347 deeds. The first Black Covenant, the prestige, arrives long before any of that is spent.

The demo

Is there a demo?

Yes, free on Steam for Windows, macOS, Linux: press Download Demo on the store page. It holds the first term of the real Academy, up to apprentice level 9: four of the fifteen Disciplines, five of the twelve spells, the Proving Grounds and Hollowmere, your own castle on the black mere.

What happens at level 9?

Your apprentice level stops there, and the evening does not. When its bar fills, the Headmaster writes to you once; press Keep playing and the term goes on, with every other limit of the demo in place. Bottle the save and it carries on in the full Academy, where the Night Errands, the Anvil, the Black Covenant and the Cave wait.

Does my demo save carry over?

Yes, by hand. On the demo's Load Game screen, export the slot ("Bottle a soul") and copy the text; in the full game, import it into a slot ("Restore a soul") and the term goes on where it stopped. It only runs that way: a full save has outgrown the demo and will not fit back in.

Buying it

If I buy in Early Access, do I pay again at 1.0?

No. Buying in Early Access is buying the game: everything released up to 1.0 and after it is yours at no further cost.

When and where?

On Steam, when Early Access opens. The date is not fixed yet; wishlist it and Steam will write to you the day it opens.

What about refunds?

Refunds are Steam's, on Steam's usual terms: under two hours played and under fourteen days since purchase, requested through Steam Support. Nothing needs to be asked of us first.

Early Access

Is it finished?

The school is complete and stable, playable from the first scry through the endgame: the engine, all 15 Disciplines, the Night Errands with their loot and the Anvil, the Black Covenant, Tenure to level 120 and the Undercroft beneath the Winding Stair. Early Access here is not a skeleton; it is the finished school with its two deepest doors still shut.

What is still shut?

The Cave and Hellplore. Both are sealed until 1.0, because they want tuning against real save files rather than against a spreadsheet. They are left out of every total in the meantime, so 100% stays reachable while they are closed.

How long will Early Access last?

Around three months is the working expectation, and it is held in terms rather than dates: the two sealed doors opened, balance settled against real saves, and the faults the first term turns up fixed. 1.0 adds new content on top, and saves are meant to carry forward, so nothing earned in Early Access is lost.

Saves

Where does my save live?

On your own machine, in 5 slots, each with a backup copy it can recover from, so an interrupted write cannot take a term with it. There is no account, no login and no server.

Is there Steam Cloud?

Yes, in the full game: a save follows you between machines on the same Steam account. The demo keeps its saves on the one machine.

Can I move a save myself?

Yes. On the Load Game screen every slot exports to a line of text and imports from one, between machines, between platforms, or into a fresh install. The format is versioned and carried forward, so older saves keep opening as the game is updated.

Idling

How far does offline progress go?

Up to 24 hours of absence are paid out, and the Night Watch Oath raises that to 32. The hours are reckoned from what you were doing when you left, not replayed tick by tick, and a report of what they came to is waiting when you return.

Do the Night Errands carry on while I am away?

In the zones, yes, if offline errands are switched on in the settings, the Bursar has sold you Reflex Gluttony, and there is food in the satchel to eat. Dungeons wait for you.

Does it keep running if I minimise it?

Yes. It keeps working minimised or behind other windows, and a Keep awake setting stops the computer sleeping under it. There is no tray icon: close the game and the offline hours take over.

Is anything gated behind waiting?

Nothing is sold to shorten a wait. No microtransactions, no energy, no ads, no timers you can pay to skip. The only currency the school takes is the one you earn inside it.

Running it

What do I need?

A 64-bit machine with 4 GB of memory and graphics that speak OpenGL 3.3 (integrated graphics are fine): Windows 10 or later, macOS 11 on Intel or 13 on Apple Silicon, or a Linux from 2018 on (glibc 2.27 and up). Under 400 MB of disk. It is a 2D interface, not a 3D renderer, and a laptop on battery is a reasonable place to leave it running.

Is it online? Multiplayer?

Neither. Single player, no server, and playable with the network off.

Controller?

No. It is played with the mouse, with optional keyboard shortcuts.

Something is broken.

Say so in the Steam Discussions on the game's page, or write to [email protected]. Say what happened, what you expected and your platform, and paste the end of the log if you can. It lives in %APPDATA%\grimsorrow-academy\logs on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/grimsorrow-academy/logs on macOS, and ~/.local/share/grimsorrow-academy/logs on Linux.

Accessibility

Settings let you zoom the whole interface from 100% to 200% (the text size control), reduce motion and screen shake, and choose a palette: Contrast, which is the default, Dark, or Colourblind. Every volume has its own slider, the game can mute itself when it loses focus, and nothing is timed against you. The opening film is subtitled.

AI disclosure

In the Steam page's own words:

AI tools were used to assist in creating some of the code and game assets. Even so, every part of the game reflects the creator's vision and passion.

Still asking

Write to [email protected], read the press page for the fact sheet, or go straight to play the free demo.