There have been few mobile games that I’ve been as excited about as Grimvalor ($5.99), and there’s a reason for that. Developer Touch Foo released one of my all-time favorite mobile games with the gravity-flipping platformer Soosiz (Free) way back in 2009, and then a few years later they released one of the all-time best Metroidvanias on mobile with their wonderful Swordigo (Free) in 2012. After a long hiatus the folks at Touch Foo teamed up with some fellow Finnish developers to form a new studio called Direlight and announced their first project Grimvalor this past July. Billed as “an action platformer with fast-paced combat in a dark fantasy world" Grimvalor took inspiration from classic character action games like Devil May Cry and Dust: An Elysian Tail and sprinkled in some Dark Souls for good measure. All this from the people who made both Soosiz and Swordigo? Yeah, that’s worth getting excited for, and now Grimvalor is available for the world to enjoy.

Due to Grimvalor being available for pre-order and how those games roll out in the various App Stores around the globe, there are a number of people in other countries who have actually been able to play the game for most of today, and the comments from those early players in our forums have been overwhelmingly positive. And you know what? That’s not surprising to me, as there was a brief beta over the past month or so and those lucky ducks who were able to get in on that beta test had similarly positive things to say. Basically I think it’s safe to say that if you like action platformers then Grimvalor is going to be something special, and will likely be on more than a few Best of 2018 lists when all is said and done. We’ll have a full review coming shortly but if you just can’t wait for that I think it’s pretty safe to drop the six bucks on this one and dive in right away.