Gridsmith: Blacksmith Crafting

You are the blacksmith, not the swordsman. You never swing the weapon. You forge it cell by cell, and the fight only reports what you built.

THE FORGE

A weapon is a grid of cells, and you lay a material into each one: the tip that lands first, the edge that cuts, the core that carries the shock, the spine, the bolster, the tang, the grip.

- Thirty materials, each with real properties: hardness, toughness, density, heat resistance, corrosion resistance.
- Six material families to forge in: wood, bronze, steel, bone, stone and meteoric.
- None of them is good at everything. Voidglass is the hardest thing on the bench and it is brittle; meteoric iron is the densest, and every gram of it costs you swing speed.
- Lay a hard edge over a tough backing and the seam between them holds the shock. Get that pairing wrong and the seam is exactly where it cracks.
- Six weapon forms: dagger, sword, warhammer, spear, axe, glaive. Each is a different grid asking a different question.

NO DICE

There is no random damage roll anywhere in this crafting game. An encounter is a simulation of the object you designed: energy out of mass and swing speed, penetration out of hardness, armour subtracted from every hit, wear accumulating in the particular cells taking the blows.

When a run ends, the log names the cell that failed and what failed it. Change that cell, or change what sits behind it, and go again.

A thrust answers a third of a foe's armour where a cut or a hammer blow answers all of it, which is why a dagger is not simply a small sword.

THE SMITH AND THE RACK

Tam carries what you forge, and Tam has a strength figure: a weapon too heavy to swing well costs stamina on every blow.

Your rack holds what you have built, and grows as Tam gains levels. A damaged weapon can be repaired, or salvaged back into materials at half return. Materials are kept even on a failed run, so a bad run still pays for the next design.

THE DAILY PUZZLE

One puzzle a day, identical for every player: a fixed form, six granted materials, one design, no second attempt at the layout. The gauntlet escalates until either your weapon or your smith gives out, and your score is how far down it you got.

The puzzle is generated from the date itself, so every blacksmith opening the game on the same day is solving exactly the same problem.

FIVE REGIONS

Hollow Quarry, Ironback Warrens, Ashfall Reach, Skittering Deep, Saltmere. Each drops materials the previous one did not, and each asks a different question of a blade: raw armour, heat, corrosion, or sheer mass on the other end of the swing. Each region ends at a boss, armoured beyond anything else in it.

Clear the Hollow Quarry and the sword is yours; clear the Ironback Warrens and the warhammer follows. Forms are earned by clearing the region that guards them, never bought.

PREMIUM, AND OFFLINE

One purchase, once. No advertisements, no seasons, no battle pass, no energy timers, no currency, nothing at all sold by the unit.

Free: the Hollow Quarry and the Ironback Warrens, the wood, bronze and steel material families, the dagger you begin with, the two forms those regions grant, and the daily puzzle. The one-time unlock opens the other three regions and material families four through six.

The game has no account and no sign-in, and it collects nothing about you. It requests internet access for exactly one purpose, Google Play Billing, so the unlock can be bought and restored. No analytics, no tracking, no cloud save. Everything else runs with the radio off.

Forge a blade, send it out, and read what comes back. Download Gridsmith and build something that holds.

A single-player offline blacksmith game about weapon crafting: a forge simulator built on material physics, with deterministic combat, a daily puzzle, five regions to clear and six weapon forms to earn. No ads, no in-app currency, no internet needed to play.

Type set in Cinzel by Natanael Gama, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Recent changes:
Gridsmith has a soundtrack: a title theme, and new music for the forge, the Hollow Quarry and the Ironback Warrens.

Painting a cell strikes the anvil, and harder materials ring higher. A finished forge lands with a hammer blow and a quench.

Combat is no longer silent. Hits, blocks, wear, shatters and a weapon giving out all have a sound, and the sounds carry the numbers: a heavier hit rings lower, and a more brittle material snaps higher.