Grimmsdorf is a 2-4 player coöperative town-building game of lore, exploration, and survival set in a dark fairytale forest sometime in Europe's distant past. In this world of struggle and ignorance, wearied villagers are never sure where reality ends and fantasy begins. Fairies, famines, wolves, and witches seem to lurk around every bend. Real history and oral mythologies are blended together in one world of mystery, fear, and adventure.

Players have to work together to avoid starvation, overcome magickal curses, build up their town, and explore the vast wilderness beyond their small world if they want a chance to survive. The themes and mechanics are tightly woven together, to create a rich and compelling experience for players.

If they don't meet a trickster dwarf or a pack of hungry wolves first, 40 unique fairytale characters - both familiar and obscure - can strike out on their adventures based on their original fairytales. They'll have to balance their thirst for glory with the need to work the land, and construct helpful buildings such as apothecaries, scriptoriums, and hunting lodges. But if they succeed, their stories will live on and they can become the stuff of legend.

Games run between 90-150 minutes and involve a mix of autonomous actions and team strategizing. Players work to feed the town while also playing through their characters' stories (which ultimately garners point and satisfies the win condition). When certain terrain tiles are discovered via exploration, they can farm or harvest resources to build new buildings, which in turn multiply the yield from these resource tiles. Buildings also boost characters' stat points (Charm, Fortitude and Wit; tracked on a household ledger) which helps them satisfy the requirements to start on their stories (for example, Snow White needs a certain amount of charm to be the fairest of them all and start on her story). When a new terrain tile is uncovered, players also have a chance for an event card, bring additional narrative elements to the game - and in this way players can explore and adventure independently of their story and of other players' actions. The risks and rewards increase the farther from town a character strays.