Grim Fandango Remastered (iOS) Review

For those unfamiliar with the original game, Grim Fandango Remastered stars one Manuel "Manny" Calavera, a smooth-talking, down on his luck salesman within the Land of the Dead. Manny works for the Department of Death as a travel agent of sorts, welcoming the recently deceased into the afterlife, and then attempting to set them up with travel arrangements to the Ninth Underworld.

At the onset of Grim Fandango, Manny hasn't had much luck as a salesman. His boss hates him, he gets little to no love from office receptionist, and every single person assigned to him barely qualifies for the most basic of travel packages. Things start to look up for Manny after a mass poisoning event occurs in the real-world, but thanks to a series of delays, Manny manages to come back to the office empty-handed. It's at this point that Grim Fandango's neo-noir adventure tale really kicks off.

The transition from PC game to iOS remaster is deftly handled by the developers at Double Fine. Controlling Manny is as simple as tapping an area of the screen for him to travel to. Double-tapping an area will make Manny run, speeding up gameplay considerably. For objects in the environment that Manny can interact with, or for other characters to speak to, tapping is still the primary function. Interacting with objects once tapped is simple and intuitive enough, with a small number of icons to commit to memory that indicate whether an object can be picked-up, spoken to, or observed.

The core mechanic of Grim Fandango, outside of it's fantastic humour and dialogue, is solving puzzles. This might come as a shock to those who have only been exposed to adventure games via the Telltale Games properties, but adventure games were at one point quite challenging, and this certainly proves that.

However, unlike other similar titles of its era, Grim Fandango isn't unfair. Clues abound via dialogue with other characters, and by interacting with all objects. Most pairings are pretty logical, like an early puzzle requiring the use of balloons filled with liquid to jam the works of a pneumatic tube machine. There are also plenty of head-scratching moments throughout, but persistence and patience typically pay off. Seeing Grim Fandango through to the end delivers a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment that is different from other modern adventure titles, which makes the overall experience seem worth it.