Grimm’s Hollow: A Spooky Indie RPG About Ghosts, Grief, and Cookies

Grimm’s Hollow is a short indie RPG where you play as Lavender, a girl who wakes up dead and sets out to find her missing brother in the afterlife. It mixes turn-based ghost battles with a story that hits harder than its cute pixel art suggests.

Here’s the setup. Lavender opens her eyes in a strange bed, surrounded by people in skull masks holding cake and balloons. Weird, right? Their leader is a being called Grimm, and he drops the news: she died. Now she’s a Reaper — someone whose job is guiding lost souls onward and clearing out the angry ghosts they leave behind.

Lavender doesn’t buy it. Then she learns her little brother Timmy ended up here too. So the whole game becomes one goal: find Timmy and get out.

How Grimm’s Hollow Plays

The game runs on RPG Maker 2003, so everything is 2D and top-down. You explore the Hollow, the central town, and a set of haunted caverns where the fighting happens. Walk into a moving ghost and a battle starts. Swing your scythe, reap the ghost, move on.

Winning fights earns you Spirit Energy. And this is the clever part — it works as experience points and money at the same time. You can spend it on skills in your skill tree, or blow it on snacks at the town bakery. Those ghostly treats heal you, so there’s a real choice there. Get stronger, or stock up on cookies. Sometimes the cookies win.

Between cave runs you can chat with the townsfolk. The Hollow is full of reapers with their own small stories, and talking to them fills out the world more than you’d expect from a game this size.

Four Endings, One Short Playthrough

Players can reach four different endings. Which one you get depends on two things: whether you beat the final boss, and whether Lavender hits her max level. The game only takes a couple of hours, so seeing more than one ending is totally doable in a weekend.

Fair warning — the story deals with loss and family in a way that can sting. It’s still fine for younger players. But bring tissues.

Who Made It

Grimm’s Hollow was made by a solo developer under the name ghosthunter, with music by Natbird and Bruno Buglisi. It came out on Halloween 2019 for Windows. Not bad timing for a game about death. It went on to become one of the most loved RPG Maker games on Steam, and honestly, it earns that spot. The pixel art and soundtrack do more than you’d expect from a student project. You can download and support the game here

Game Controls

• Arrow keys — move Lavender
• Enter / Z — interact, confirm, attack
• Esc / X — open menu, cancel

As always, remember to have fun!