After completing the main game, i'm confused about the ending. What exactly happened there?

The Goromorg had originally harnessed the power of the 'cube' to construct the dungeon, but they found that they couldn't properly control it, and thus engineered its imprisonment. However, they'd also become bound to the 'beast' (as they called it) in the process, thus the tapestries depicting them chained to a gear.

The cube retained enough power to reach out into the minds of visitors, and it became (literally) a game between the two (equally malicious) forces. Both sought release from their respective bondage, although in the case of the Goromorg, that release would also mean their demise, especially since the cube couldn't be destroyed without first repairing it, something they were unwilling or unable to do.

For its part, the cube hadn't counted on the contingency laid down by the architects in the form of the weapon of power (and the fact that only outsiders could reach it). It figured that, once it had been released, there would be nothing capable of stopping it, and the story implies that, given time, its power would rapidly have grown and made it a threat to the whole region.

The story falls apart in the end.

Apparently, there was this giant box that was alive and had magical powers. A long time ago, an ancient race decided to build a prison on top of that, and a temple to keep the box imprisoned, and also a weapon that can destroy it if it is ever released.

When you actually destroy the box, it releases huge amounts of energy, and it destroys the whole mountain. But the prisoners you control manage to escape via a secret tunnel... and that's about it.

I was hoping for a big monster, and not a stupid box that moves, but guess the developers wanted the game to end this way.

Well i couldn't work out whether the characters made it out of the tower, or whether they got blown up. There was about 3 different still pictures at the end, which explained very little.

For all we know, the place could have teleported somewhere else (just like the evil tower in the movie Krull). It looks as if they could make another Grimrock that would expand on the lore.

I have to admit, it was probably the only remotely good way the game could have handled a boss fight. It was already a stretch that the monsters were playing along with the grid based system and not moving at 45 degree angles, thus making combat a matter of dancing around the enemy until they died, all the while counting on exploiting holes in the AI, but had the boss turned out to be some great abomination out of time and space (like, say, a beholder), I would have thrown my hands up over the fact that the bad guy was playing a little too nicely. The concept of designing a boss that, by its very nature, could only move in 90 degree angles did save me from doing that. That said, I still got some Ultima 3 flashbacks; sure, it wasn't as outlandish as learning that Exodus was a computer that had to be defeated via punch cards, but I still felt mixed afterward. The only thing that keeps me from accusing the twist from coming out of left field were all the tiny drops of foreshadowing that are far more blatant in hindsight (gears, the sounds/characters made by the prisoner when it talks, etc.).

tl;dr: Eh, it could have been worse.

As I understand it, the prisoners did escape at the end.

I don't know about another Grimrock game, but the current one will be getting more dungeons - the toolset for players to build new ones is under development and the devs may well release more official ones after that.

Yeah, i read about the dungeon editor. It certainly looks interesting. And you'd think that alot of the "mods" would be free.

Hopefully the editor will be "idiot proof" so that even i will be able to make a level :)

Sorry for the thread necro, but I just beat the game last night.

Thanks for this explanation. You caught some things I missed, particularly that the Goromorg's fate was bound to the Undying One. Without that bit of information, I was really frustrated with why they didn't just kill the Undying One as easily as I did. Their "binding" to him also kind of explains why he's called "The Undying One" when he was, in fact, quite killable (die-able?).

One thing that disappointed me: hiding Toorum's bones in a secret area. He's a major "character" in the game (in a certain sense), and I think it's a little unfair that you can only find out what happened to him through a secret area. I missed it, but admittedly, I was playing it late at night and got caught up in trying to finish the game more than find all the secrets. Maybe it was a fairly obvious "secret" that I just rushed past.

Finally, I found the final battle to be extremely frustrating. To me, it didn't just seem to be a matter of "git gud." There were so many spawned enemies clustered together that if you got a bad teleport into the room, there was practically no way to avoid getting trapped and smashed by the Undying One. Let alone getting torn to pieces by the Ice Lizards, Ugguardians, and others. The result was that I kind of gave up on playing it "fair" and used "pit-scumming" to beat the Undying One--I'd stun him, take a piece out, and then jump down a pit, rest, and finally teleport back to the room. It was cheesy, but whatever, it worked.

The deeper I got the worse the scarce story became, down to a disappointing and bad ending. It's crystal clear what the development team was missing - a proper writer. The urge to bring back dungeon crawl nostalgia is simply not enough to make a good game.

Using the pits to your advantage is part of the battle tactics by design - they're all over the place for a good reason!

As for Toorum's fate, you can find out what happened on level 10, IIRC; it's a secret but it's one of the easier ones to spot. If you missed it, you can either reload a save from that point just to find it, or skip that and enable Toorum Mode for a more challenging second playthrough.

I guess that makes me feel a little better. Mostly, I really enjoyed the game, but I thought that battle was more frustrating than fun.

I LOVED THE STORYLINE. SHUT UP.
J, but I do love it, I think it was awesome.

I liked the story. What kind of boss did people want, another dragon? Games recycle "big bad" concepts so much, it's nice that Grimrock had this peculiar and unique boss.