Grime II

GRIME II is a 2026 Metroidvania developed by Clover Bite in collaboration with Team Malignant, published by Kwalee, and released March 31, 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. It’s the sequel to 2021’s GRIME, trading that game’s black-hole-headed vessel for a new shapeshifting protagonist and a reworked version of its signature absorption combat. It holds a Metacritic score of 80 and an OpenCritic average of 82 (“Strong,” 75% Critics Recommend) — reviews that consistently describe it as a meaningful step up from a cult original that never quite broke into the mainstream.

It also marks a change of publisher: where the original GRIME was released through Akupara Games, GRIME II is exclusively licensed to Kwalee, though director Yarden Weissbrot returns from the first game to keep creative continuity intact.

Technical Specifications

A New Publisher, the Same Director

GRIME II was announced August 23, 2023, roughly two years after the original game’s release, once Clover Bite had finished the extended run of free content updates that kept the first GRIME alive well past launch. For the sequel, the studio brought in Team Malignant as a co-developer and moved to a new publisher, Kwalee, while director Yarden Weissbrot — who also wrote and designed much of the original — stayed on to steer the sequel’s creative direction.

The Formless

Rather than returning to the original vessel, GRIME II casts players as the Formless, an art mimic referred to in-game as White — a shapeshifting entity that manifests its power through explosions of paint rather than a black hole. The opening cutscene sets the tone directly, with a cosmic entity telling White: “The world beyond is yours. A buffet, to satiate your hunger.” Reviewers have noted the story leans on sparse, deliberately oblique dialogue in the same tradition as the first game, with OpenCritic reviewer Mark Steighner describing the narrative as “only slightly less impenetrable” than its predecessor’s.

A World Obsessed With Art

GRIME II trades the original’s anatomical, living-rock aesthetic for a new region within the same universe, built around landscapes of painted nails, colossal vases, and civilizations organized around art and creation as much as survival. Recurring imagery of hands and fingers runs through the world’s design — as enemies, as environmental detail, and as the shrines players use to save progress and level up — reinforcing the game’s fixation on the act of making and unmaking as a central theme, alongside the same violence-and-creation duality the first game explored.

Molds Instead of Absorb

Combat builds on the original’s Absorb system rather than replacing it outright. Players deploy hand-tendrils to either parry incoming attacks or “grasp” and absorb defeated enemies directly, transforming them into Molds — reusable forms that unlock special attacks, letting players throw enemies, fire projectiles, stun opponents, or summon them as temporary allies. Environmental combat plays a bigger role than in the first game, with hazards usable against enemies and vice versa, and the build variety has expanded substantially: more than 30 weapons, 60 armor pieces, and 12 abilities give players considerably more room to specialize than the original offered.

A Direct Improvement, Mostly

Critical reception has been strongly positive and largely framed around comparison to the first game. GameSpew called it a huge improvement over its predecessor and one of the more distinctive Metroidvanias of 2026, specifically praising more frequently placed rest points as a fix for one of the original’s most common complaints. Several outlets echoed that framing almost exactly, describing GRIME II as a direct upgrade across the board rather than a reinvention. That said, reviews weren’t uniformly glowing: OpenCritic’s own critic summary noted a handful of frustrating platforming mechanics alongside the narrative’s continued opacity, and Slant Magazine’s review, while broadly positive, flagged the game’s sparse dialogue as prone to dragging in places. The overall picture is a sequel that fixed several of the first game’s rough edges without changing its fundamental identity.

Where to Play It Today

GRIME II is available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. No Nintendo Switch version has been announced as of this writing, unlike the original GRIME, which received a Switch port roughly two and a half years after its own initial release.