Gruntz

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This article is about The PC game. For the person, see George Gruntz.

Gruntz

Developer(s)	Monolith Productions
Publisher(s)	Monolith Productions
Platform(s)	PC
Release date	^USA February 28, 1999 ^[1]
Genre(s)	Strategy
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone(E)

Gruntz is a puzzle/strategy game for the PC, released in February 1999 by Monolith Productions.

[edit] Gameplay

Gruntz is a puzzle/strategy game where players must solve a variety of puzzles and/or tasks to complete the game. The playing field consists of an overhead view of a map, which you must guide your Gruntz through. Moving requires the player to select a grunt and then click on the desired location on the map. Gruntz can receive a variety of items which they must use to get through the levels.

Tools are to be picked up by Gruntz to use in battle or for puzzle solving purposes. Each tool does a certain amount of damage. The weakest tool is nothing at all, also called barehands. There are several ways of getting a barehand Grunt, which include a Grunt just created, or a Boomerang Grunt that forgot to catch the boomerang. The only Grunt a Barehanded can defeat is another bare hand if he strikes first. The strongest weapon is the Timebombs, which kills any Gruntz within the 1 square radius (including the Grunt himself if he's not careful). Most weapons can be used for other purposes, such as walking over spikes, swimming, breaking objects or digging holes. A grunt can only have one tool at a time.

In addition to tools, toys can be used against enemy Gruntz to force them to stop and play with the toy for a given amount of time, while you sneak by them. Just like tools, there are quite a few of them. The worst toy is the yo-yo, which breaks almost instantly, leaving your Grunt little time to do anything but run away. The best toy is the Beach Ball, which take the longest to break. The only thing that works as well as a Beach Ball is the Go-Kart, which doesn't last quite as long in information terms, but the animation of the toy actually breaking is quite long, making the Go-Kart last as long as the Beach Ball. Just like tools, a Grunt can only have one Toy at a time, but he can always put his current toy down and get another one, use that toy, and pick up the original toy.

Powerups are collected pretty much just like tools or toys, but the difference (apart from the red sparkles) is that they only last for a limited time. Most powerups will just enhance a Gruntz abilities, such as boosting his health, increasing his speed, or defending him from harm, but two of the powerups (Deathtouch and Conversion) have affects on different things. Deathtouch is a temporary tool that gives the grunt a short-range one hit kill attack that requires no recharge time like tools do, for as long as the Powerup lasts. Conversion allows a Grunt to convert any other Gruntz for the rest of the game, but the converters health continually goes down until he dies, although converting another grunt will restore health.

Curses only appear in battles, but they are definitely useful. Only human players will actually be affected, computer players continue as normal. Curses work a bit like powerups only they affect other Gruntz instead of that grunt, and they have green sparkles.

There are two playing modes in Gruntz, Quests and battles. A quest is based where you have to puzzle out how to get a grunt to the Warpstone, and then bring that Grunt to the King. In battles, there are 2 to 4 players. The players can be human or computer controlled (but there can only be one human player unless playing multiplayer, and there always must be 1 human player). The objective is to defeat the opponents by getting a Grunt into their fort. The game ends when there is one player left (or all the human players have resigned).