American McGee's Grimm

American McGee's Grimm is a 23-part episodic video game series based upon Grimm's Fairy Tales, designed by American McGee, developed by Spicy Horse and distributed online initially by GameTap starting July 31, 2008. Grimm was originally thought to resemble the warped fairy tale style of American McGee's Alice, but the art style appears to be much more child-friendly and simplistic. Grimm is written and executive-produced by the same person as American McGee's Alice, R. J. Berg. The original announcement was made in the June 2007 issue of PC Gamer.

Spicy Horse Games is using Unreal Engine 3 technology for American McGee's Grimm.

There are 23 weekly episodes, divided into three seasons of eight or seven episodes each. Each episode offers approximately a half an hour of gameplay, although different playing styles (either for "complete conversion" or "speed-runs") make for different times. The game has been referred to as "highly accessible" and American McGee has commented that the game experience shares a similarity with Katamari Damacy.

A five-issue comic book mini-series based on the game will begin in April 2009. Published by IDW Publishing, the book will be written by Dwight L. MacPherson with art by Grant Bond.

Gameplay
In American McGee's Grimm, the player controls Grimm, a dwarf who creates a trail of darkness wherever he goes. The premise is that Grimm's become sick of how saccharine sweet fairy tales have become, and has made it his goal to revert lighthearted fairy tales to their darker original versions by running and jumping through fantasy worlds, making things darker as he passes by them, using a downward move (called a "butt-stomp") to increase the distance his dark powers reach. By converting enough objects, Grimm can increase the level of his Dark-O-Meter (a bar that shows the effect of Grimm's powers), increasing the power and radius of his dark aura as well as his running and jumping abilities. Certain characters complicate this process by attempting to clean the areas Grimm has converted, but these enemies can be stopped once Grimm's Dark-O-Meter reaches a high enough level. Of course Grimm does more than simply restore classic tales to their original unedited versions, he practically reduces many to dark parodies, the original message of the story obliterated, which suits Grimm just fine. Thus a level of irony is reached, as Grimm takes the parable object lessons and removes the added bland elements that dissolved the story's subtext, then proceeds to add in his own tastes in their place: effectively becoming what he detests simply on the opposite end of the scale.

Distribution
Following the traditional television distribution model, every episode of Grimm is available free for 24 hours on the day of release. After that, episodes are available for purchase on multiple distribution channels and also to GameTap Gold (paid) subscribers. There are currently three volumes of Grimm slated for release with Volume 1 launched on July 31, Volume 2 fall 2008, and Volume 3 coming in early 2009. In a recent interview with GameSpot, McGee said that he would like to put this game on Xbox Live and may release it in retail form.

Season 1

 * 1) "A Boy Learns What Fear Is" (Released July 31)
 * 2) "Little Red Riding Hood" (Released August 7)
 * 3) "The Fisherman and His Wife" (Released August 14)
 * 4) "Puss in Boots" (Released August 21)
 * 5) "The Girl Without Hands" (Released August 28)
 * 6) "Godfather Death" (Released September 4)
 * 7) "The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs" (Released September 11)
 * 8) "Beauty and the Beast" (Released September 18)

Season 2

 * 1) "The Master Thief" (Released October 30)
 * 2) "The Singing Bone" (Released November 6)
 * 3) "King Midas" (Released November 13)
 * 4) "Cinderella" (Released November 20)
 * 5) "The Golden Goose" (Released November 27)
 * 6) "Iron John" (Released December 4)
 * 7) "The Pied Piper" (Released December 11)
 * 8) "A Christmas Carol" (Released December 18)

Season 3

 * 1) "The Frog King" (Released February 12)
 * 2) "Jack and the Beanstalk" (Released February 19)
 * 3) "Mulan" (Released February 26)
 * 4) "Pinocchio" (Released March 5)
 * 5) "Sleeping Beauty" (also including "Rapunzel" and "Rumpelstiltskin") (Released March 12)
 * 6) "The Adventures of Thumbling" (Released April 16)
 * 7) "Snow White" (Released April 23)

The delays of the last two episodes in season 3 were caused because of GameTap's migration to a new website.

It is not known at this time if the series will continue after season 3.

Reception
The first season of Grimm was met with mild praise. As of March 2009, the average rating of the first season is 6.77 out of ten, according to GameTap users.

IGN rated the episodes as follows:


 * 1) "A Boy Learns What Fear Is": 6/10
 * 2) "Little Red Riding Hood": 6.1/10
 * 3) "The Fisherman and His Wife": 6.2/10
 * 4) "Puss in Boots": 6.1/10
 * 5) "The Girl Without Hands": 5.7/10
 * 6) "Godfather Death": 6.3/10
 * 7) "The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs": 6.2/10
 * 8) "Beauty and the Beast": 6.3/10

Season one had an average IGN score of 6.1

As of March 2009, the second season had an average of 6.7 out of ten, according to GameTap users.