---
name: Grimoire Minions
slug: grimoire-minions
tags: [dark fantasy, psx, low poly, pixel textures, dot-matrix, dithering, cute grotesque, wizard tower, dungeon crawler, fake strategy guide]
best_for: [co-op chaos and horror-comedy, dungeon crawlers, first-person dark fantasy, monster compendiums and bestiaries, lore-heavy menus and codexes]
seen_in: []
---
# Grimoire Minions
## The idea
A wizard's tower seen through a PS1 camera and drawn like the official guide to a dungeon crawler nobody can
remember. The world is damp, dark and crawling: stone corridors swallowed by fog, candlelight that barely reaches
the floor, things with far too many teeth. But you're not a hero. You're one of the little ones, a squat robed
minion with a pointy hat and a big nose, there to break things and run. It's the nostalgic dread of a 90s dungeon,
low-res and grimy, shared with creatures you can't help loving. The menus, maps and monster entries feel like pages
of a guide: framed plates, stat boxes, a boss's weakness in red, a line of grim lore underneath.
## Touchstones
- **_YAPYAP_ (Maison Bap, 2026)**: a co-op horror game where up to six minions summoned by a wizard vandalise a
rival's tower. Its makers describe the look as a dark, horror-esque vibe with PSX graphics and relatable, cute
characters: chunky low-poly bodies and pixelated textures, lit by modern real-time shadows and cloth in deep
indigo and candle amber. Take the cute-in-the-horror tone, the lo-fi surfaces under real lighting, and an ornate
gothic UI frame around the play.
[More: Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/3834090/YAPYAP/)
- **Plastiboo, _Vermis I: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods_ (Hollow Press, 2022) and _Vermis II: Mist & Mirrors_
(2023)**: the official guide to a game that doesn't exist, in grimy dot-matrix pixel illustrations, each page a
framed plate with a gothic title, a lore box and a few lines of second-person warning. Take the page as a game
object, the halftone and dither in two or three inks on black, and monsters (with plenty of teeth), insects and
fungi drawn with love.
[More: Hollow Press](https://hollow-press.net/products/vermis-i)
- **_King's Field_ (FromSoftware, 1994)**: first-person PlayStation dungeons of warped stone textures, fog and slow,
heavy combat, with a compass and HP bars in the corner. One of the games Plastiboo names as an influence on
_Vermis_. Take the claustrophobic first-person dread, textures stretched and swimming across low-poly walls, and
darkness standing in for draw distance.
[More: Hardcore Gaming 101](http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/kings-field/)
- **_Dark Souls_ (FromSoftware, 2011)**: ruined kingdoms, crawling bosses and lore tucked into item descriptions;
also named by Plastiboo. Take the melancholy, the grotesque boss as a set piece, and lore told in fragments.
[More: Steam (Remastered)](https://store.steampowered.com/app/570940/DARK_SOULS_REMASTERED/)
- **_The Immortal_ (Will Harvey, 1990)**: an old wizard descending an isometric labyrinth of brick floors, goblins and
gruesome deaths, framed in carved Celtic stone; another Plastiboo names. Take the old wizard as the hero, the
carved frame around the play, and death as a little horror show.
[More: Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1539080/The_Immortal/)
- **_Light Crusader_ (Treasure, 1995)**: an isometric Mega Drive dungeon under a town, ornate gilded rooms, puzzles
and grotesque blobby bosses; the fourth game Plastiboo names. Take bright, ornate rooms as a counterweight to the
murk, and a boss that's both gross and funny.
[More: Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Crusader)
- **Old-school RPG print: TSR modules and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks (late 1970s–80s)**: _Tomb of Horrors_ (Gary
Gygax, 1978), _The Warlock of Firetop Mountain_ (Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, 1982, illustrated by Russ
Nicholson), and the 90s official strategy guides that followed them. Hollow Press describes _Vermis_ as drawing on
"old dungeon crawler games"; this print lineage is what its guide format echoes. Take hand-inked monsters, the
second-person "you" in the text, stat blocks, maps and callout boxes.
[More: Fighting Fantasy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy)
- **_The Sorcerer's Apprentice_ (Goethe's ballad, 1797; Dukas, 1897; Disney's _Fantasia_, 1940)**: an apprentice
borrows the master's magic and floods the house. Not a stated influence of either source: it stands in for
YAPYAP's mischief. Take magic as slapstick, and the servant's-eye view of the wizard's house.
[More: Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tovenaarsleerling_S_Barth.png)
## The core
1. **Low-res surfaces.** Everything is built from coarse texels or dots: pixelated textures on low-poly forms,
or dithered, halftoned dot-matrix illustration. Resolution is a material, never smoothed away.
2. **A dark, damp, crawling world.** Stone, fog, rot, candlelight, swamps and mines. The darkness does most of the
work, and the light is small and warm.
3. **Cute grotesques.** Lovable little creatures (squat, big-nosed, pointy-hatted, caricatured) share the screen
with teeth, insects, fungi and things that shouldn't move. The horror is real, and so is the affection.
4. **Information as an artefact.** Menus, HUDs, maps and bestiary entries look like guide pages or carved frames:
a gothic title, a framed plate, a stat box, a line of lore. No clean modern flat UI.
## Dials
| Dial | One end | Other end |
|---|---|---|
| Tone | Cute and slapstick (YAPYAP's minions) | Grotesque and dread (Vermis's mines) |
| Surface | Crisp pixel or dot-matrix, every texel sharp | Smeared PS1: affine wobble, vertex jitter, fog and blur |
| Light | Baked and flat, darkness painted in | Modern real-time shadows, cloth and volumetrics over lo-fi assets |
| Colour | Two or three inks on black (Vermis plates) | Saturated candlelit pops: indigo night, amber flame, red health orb |
| Presentation | Fully in-world 3D, diegetic UI | Guide-page 2D: plates, stat boxes, framed panels |
| Camera | First person in the corridor (King's Field) | Isometric, looking down on the labyrinth (The Immortal, Light Crusader) |
| Cast | Playing the little minions | Facing the big monsters |
## Directions to try
- **Living bestiary**: the whole game is a Vermis-style guide; every room is a plate, every monster a page that
fills in as you meet it, and the turn of the page is the transition.
- **Minion's-eye King's Field**: first-person PS1 corridors, but you're a knee-high goblin servant, the furniture is
huge and the guardian is a slow, heavy thing in the fog.
- **Apprentice's flood**: an isometric Immortal-style tower where every spell goes a bit wrong, chaos stacks up
room by room, and a little tide of brooms and buckets follows you.
- **Pestilent mines in three inks**: black, mustard and rust only, dot-matrix lighting on a low-poly mine, your
lamp as the only colour.
- **Silver swamp**: sepia fog, a figure on a raft, almost no UI. Melancholy instead of mischief.
## Traps
- Clean, high-res or smoothly filtered surfaces: a sharp 4K texture or a soft bilinear gradient breaks the spell.
- Grimdark with no warmth: if nothing is cute or funny, it's just another bleak soulslike.
- Cute with no dread: if nothing is scary, it's a cosy game in a costume.
- Flat modern UI (rounded cards, sans-serif buttons, toggles) over the world.
- Darkness that hides gameplay: keep silhouettes, threats and interactables readable through the murk.
## Starting points
`tokens.json` holds an indigo night sampled from YAPYAP's screenshots with candle amber, wizard purple and a red
health orb, plus variants for a Vermis plate (black, goblin green, rust and parchment), the pestilent mines in three
inks, a sepia silver swamp, King's Field's grey stone and The Immortal's brick labyrinth. Type is Jacquard 12, a
pixel blackletter, for titles and VT323, a terminal face, for lore and stats. These are suggestions.
## Seen in
Nothing yet.