Cut / Thus Far Unused Content

[Own]

For my own curiosity, I decided to go through a list of 'unused' content. These are NPCs who seemed to originally have something greater planned but was trimmed along the way, or items that have no application but vendoring, or key items that do nothing. Vendoring is itself a sort of use as a little extra gold, but judging by the text some of these seemed like they had plans beyond vendoring? I don't expect Stick or Jar Shard ever had much use planned, though.



Next is NPCs. People who seem like they were originally going to have a function beyond quests, worldbuilding or set decoration.



Astrid is a fortune teller who hasn't ever had much to say, but ultimately found a use in Arcade Mode. Haddock spent much of the games lifespan acting as if he was meant to give a fishing quest, but now just gives you a fishing rod. There was an idea of a card game maaany years ago, but that was nixed. Plushies... seem to be nixed? Ji seems as if he was meant to teach shielding lessons, but that was given to Arcade Mode. These days he finds use teaching newbies to shield in the exam.

Trick and Treat were meant to be a miniboss, but are now a neat easter egg with Twisight. Meatball head there was originally meant to be Marino's strong-yet-silent sidekick and is now mainly silent. Carpenter is introduced on the road with a broken cart for no apparent reason, but then shows up when housing is introduced without a word. Seems like there was originally an intention to help him with his cart?

Content for blog that was designed, but has not yet been implemented or has been cut:

Secrets of Grindea » Weekly Recap #504: A Whole Bunch of Items

www.secretsofgrindea.com

Some of these might be NG+ or Arcade score rewards for the final update? Not sure.

* A phonograph that let’s you change the music in your house
* A hat in the shape of a cloud
* A trinket thet lets you have a Lood as a pet
* A trinket that lets you levitate
* A trinket that makes you look similar to Grindea
* A cursed figurine that makes things in your house levitate

Secrets of Grindea » Weekly Recap #503: Statues Galore!

www.secretsofgrindea.com

Statue shop, housing statues

Puzzle tower, for optional, endgame puzzles



Hats and facegear galore! But Vilya indicated some or all of these might be in the game before the devbook is finished, so, woo!

Demon mask was originally in the game, able to be a one-or-the-other loot in Tai Ming, so it's still in the game files but normally inaccessible.



I might make another comment for plot threads that were never fully explored, but that one is a bit murkier because they could have been left unanswered for a bit of mystery.

 

[Own]

Pretty much just a random assortment of passing thoughts or other oddities or throughout Grindea!




1. Santa Fae treestump room. Seemed rather elegantly decorated, possibly a meeting hall for elders, but ultimately never used.

2. Seasonne flower circle. A teleport plate was originally meant to go here. Now it's just a curious, empty feature by the wayside.

3. Originally you were going to be able to find seeds to plant at the empty field outside of Oak's, either for pet food or for equipment like in Seiken Densetsu 3, or... something else? A later blogpost just show generic crops put there to spruce it up, but that got cut as well.

4. Dragons were made to seem to be a Very Big Deal in Dragonbone Dunes. They had lore on the wall to emphasize their existence, their bones littered the dunes and the area was named after that fact, you could see on egg hatched and one egg solid at the end of the temple. Beyond this point, however, there is no further mention of them or what happened to them. In hindsight it seems strange that so much importance be focused on them when nothing in the history of the world suggests their existence.

5. Professor Mandrake. Probably just a red herring in the grand scheme of things to make Ivy look evil, but fizzled out after he couldn't get in the temple. Even in the post-game he receives no change, sitting around in the desert lamenting his failure and pining for Ivy. Probably a decent fate for him!

6. Every other smashable in the game has drops, but none of the cacti throughout Dragonbone Dunes drop anything. It would probably just drop a vendorable cactus skin if it did, though.

7. Up until the first (and scrapped) iteration of the final dungeon was being designed, the Card Cave in Mt. Bloom had a strange fairy dragon-esque design on the floor. The devblog even refers to the symbol as a 'dragon floor' when showing it being replaced. The dragon lore not having any bearing on the world alongside this being nixed almost makes me think Grindea was originally meant to be a dragon or tie into the dragons and Fred at some point threatened to jump out a window if they made him animate another dragon. I wonder if Slan'kerz was meant to be in there, and if so, for what purpose?

8. We never did find out who Slan'kerz was, where they were, how they got Brand or anything else. Tai Ming doesn't make mention of dragons, they're hopped up on Grindea juice. Did they give Brand to Slan'kerz to protect, did Slan'kerz loot it, or...?

9. Captain Bones and the Curse of the Moon. By all appearances Captain Bones is as much a normal, innocent victim of Braazlet opening up some rift to the... ghost realm, I think it was, as anyone else. Despite all of this, Captain Bones is shown to have overwhelmingly great strength compared to all other ghosts, even having a bonier form. Bones also has some insane curse that can trap people in a dream of their greatest desires, which is pretty... odd for a ship captain? It's noteworthy enough that even Bishop shows up to marvel at you escaping from it.

If I had to headcanon to make sense of it, I would assume that Bones was the one who got lured by the temptation of Braazlet and put Braaz on, only to have everyone die and Bones gradually wither away down to skeletal ghost form over a millennia unable to sail his ship alone. Would explain his immense power and ability to inflict curses, but that has no merit with any in-game dialogue.

10. The crown has no name. It has no dialogue. It shows up as a toy crown and grows into what we see on Zhamla's head at some point during his genocide. After Zhamla dies it turns back into a toy crown, implying it was never really an artifact at all? The only thing we see it capable of doing is boosting Dad's defense and a few of his attacks, like summoning Plantae Hostilis. Seems doubtful we'll ever have any idea what this things actual deal was, beyond possibly something like The One Ring was to Sauron, something he poured power into to dominate other artifacts.

1134. This is part 1 of 32 of my thesis on the Season Temple Sun Door. Now, first we need to talk about parallel universes,

 

[Literally Who]

I'd be delighted to get my hands on that plain black hairband (row 3 column 2) ingame. Sometimes less is a lot more. That black bandit hood (row 1 column 8) is also very neat, as is the knife next to it.