Next up, an interface idea for the Quiz challenge! At present, the placeholder version Teddy uses is this:

But I thought it’d be nice if we could incorporate the speech bubbles a bit more, so my suggestion is this:

And now, the final part (I think) of the menu redesigns, the Sound and Volume settings menu!

Nothing much to say here, except it’s a more visually pleasing version than the one currently in game :)

Moving on in the same vein as the menu upgrades, there are a couple more interfaces that need some touching up! One such thing is the next rewards interface in the arena:

And here we have the new version:

Another similar such interface is the one in Robin’s target practice! So let’s give that some touchups as well!

In Teddy’s department, we’re still looking at more arcade mode challenges! This time there’s a plentitude of archery challenges being designed, so let’s have a look at a couple:

As you can see, we’re including more mechanics into these archery challenges, and different types of enemies that will depend on which floor you’re on! Some of these enemies will need more than one arrow to kill, as illustrated by the HP bar, however hitting a bomb will automatically eliminate them from full HP!

Next up, let’s return to Arcade Mode for a bit, adding some background stuff to that quiz challenge we showed a few weeks back! Let’s have a look:

As for the final parts of the menu upgrades, we have the inventory and crafting menu. Let’s have a look at the inventory menu first:

Still not a 100% sure about this, as it feels a little bit cluttered! We’ll have to think further…

And so, let’s play around with some more basic background detail, more like it looks in the game currently but taking up less space and with some newer graphics! Let’s see what we can do:

This here is our current favourite, giving the interface an updated feel without feeling too messy! Plus we can squeeze in a lot more items than we can currently. What do you guys think?

Next it’s time for the last piece of the ingame menu update: the crafting menu! Let’s have a look:

Almost done with the menu updates now! Really looking forward to when these are all added to the game :)

Meanwhile, Teddy is using his time to make a bunch more Arcade challenges! Let’s have a look at some of these:

Moving on with the interface improvements, we’re not gonna take a look at the options menu! This one is the most basic one, but also the one in the most need of a slight upgrade in my opinion:

A bit more clear? We’ll continue working with this a little bit more… So in the same vein, the controls menu:

Next in our quest to make things a bit more clear and easily read, we decided to make a version of the options menu featuring screenshots (not that the ones provided below are samples to showcase the general design):

This way you’ll more readily see how your various settings affect the game without having to close the menu and trying them out for yourself!

With us deciding to go for the icons rather than the text versions, it’s time to make some slight adjustments to the designs of the journal section, where the icons will only be in a single row:

Note also the changes in the Trophies section, where we’ve decided to do away with the title part, making it fit the other designs a bit more!

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, we have some more sneak peeks of what to come: more grindea fighting and some desert fishes for the aquarium!

Next up, we’re playing around with some other types of icons for the Talent & Skill menu, with a magic orb as the magic indicator and a star for the utility icon. We’re also considering a third option for the magic icon, with an old diagonal wizard staff. What do you guys think?

Now, time to give some more of those icons a colour wash! Here they are in their before and after states:

And now, time for the next menu to be redesigned: the quest info pages! Let’s have a look:

With the text menu being replaced by icons, we wanted to make a more easily read headline available on the left side for each category, so it’ll be quicker to learn which one does what. Currently, we’ve only had a headline for the main category, such as ‘Journal’, with the character box beneath it and another info box below that – however we feel like it’s very rare for people to even pay attention to what’s beneath the character box, and so moving things around might make the menu a bit more easier to understand. Hence:

I wouldn’t say it looks quite as nice graphically, but I do agree that this way it’ll definitely be easier to see and understand what category you’re on. What do you guys think?

Meanwhile, in Fred & Teddy’s corner, Fred’s been continuing on with Grindea animations! Here’s another sneak peek of that, featuring a running animation:

Teddy has also been hard at work, and besides more Arcade Mode stuff, he’s been spending some time optimizing the loading times of the game! Take a look at this before and after:

Taking a little break from the menu reworks and looking towards the future, it’s time to start playing around with sketches and designs for the final dungeon!

Here we have a very basic sketch of the first floor, where you’ll fish and solve a puzzle before battling a ton of Teddy & Fred’s on a really long bridge (it doesn’t look long here, but it’s just placeholder – the actual version will be a lot longer and porbably loopable!) and ending with an encounter in a rather arena looking place:

Very excited to finally take the first steps to getting this final dungeon up and running! :)

Next, let’s make some icons for the skills & talent menu categories I was playing around with last week! I started off pretty basic here, giving melee a sword, magic a wand and utility a shield – however, we’re not completely satisfied with these, so I’ll play around with them a bit more and make a couple more options!

First though, let’s have a look at the Journal icons! For this part of the menu, I decided to go with a single column version, as it’d look better to fit five icons on top of each other rather then going for a 2-2-1 layout in my opinion! If we decide to go for this, it means we get a bit more space in the journal entries as well, which will need to be adjusted later on:

And now, some icons for the options section! As with the journal part of the menu, these needed 5 icons as well. Let’s have a look:

Alright, so what next update will be all about is Arcade Mode, and one key part of that is adding some new challenges for you! If you remember, I made some background stuff for an archery challenge a while back – now it’s finally been implemented, so let’s have a look!

Teddy has also been playing around with a little quiz mini game, which you can see the prototypes of here (there are two types of questions currently):

Of course, I’ll make some background details for the teacher so she’s not just standing in the middle of nowhere, but it’s nice to see some more challenges be up and running, making the coming Arcade Mode runs more interesting!

Now, one thing we’ve decided to do for our translators is to provide each of the shop title backgrounds without the text, so any translator can make their own names for the shops. As such, I spend some time removing said texts and making a bunch of PSD files for them:

(Ignore the Egg Shop one in the middle, accidentally added the text version of that!)

I’ve seen some of you have already started playing around with these backgrounds and I gotta say it’s really fun to see! :) If any of you are working on translations, this feature should be up and running right now. If you decide to use it, please feel free to share your work on any of our communities (such as our Discord server) so we can see! :D

Now, time to get back to those interface upgrades! Next up, we have the card album, which we’ll streamline a bit and upgrade the graphics of as well:

Like the new maps, we’re also playing around with having the cards displayed as a popup rather than on a page of their own too:

One thing we’ve talked about a lot recently is whether or not to remove more of the menu text and replace it with icons. As you know, and can see again below, we’ve already started work on replacing the menu text with icons in regards to the inventory categories:

In many ways we do prefer this, as it’s a bit more visually pleasing and makes things easier when it comes to translating the game. But for some categories, it can be a bit tricky to come up with a satisfying layout and icons that represent their category well: with text you always know what category you’re on, while it might a bit less clear with icons. We still haven’t really decided what we’re gonna do, but I’m gonna play around with some alternatives for the remaining parts of the menu in the coming days.

What do you guys prefer generally? Icons or text?

Either case, it’s time to start experimenting! I’ll begin with playing around with the Skill & Talents part of the menu, and here we have two different alternatives for the layout, as well as the progress:

No icons yet, as you can see, but we’ll get there! To start with I just wanted to get a better grasp of how the icon categories could look. What do you guys think?

Over on the very small super early betas, the next update is already up and running now, featuring the new books! One thing we decided to add is proper book fronts, which look something like this:

Sample of the actual text in the game:

And here we have some of the text with some of the color variations:

We’ll be adding more book covers as well! By the time the game is finished, I would like to have more variations, but for now the main difference will be the color:

Next, we’ll be upgrading the look of the map interface, seeing as we’ve been adding a bunch of new maps recently! Let’s take a look:

This is a bit more streamlined, and allows you to see more maps on each page!

We’re also adding a different way of showing the maps, namely a pop out function which shows you the map on a piece of paper! This is what it’ll look like:

Give it more of a map-y feel, doesn’t it? :)

Now it’s time to upgrade another interface! Let’s take a look at the good old quest part of the journal and see how we can improve it:

With this new setup, active and completed quests only need one menu, and whether a quest is active or finished will depend on whether they’re gold or silver colored, just like in the Trophy section! I also upgraded each of the quest indicator images while I was at it. What do you guys think? :)

In Fred’s (and Teddy’s) department, we’re playing around with some light effects for that Grindea sprite! Below you can see some tests, as well as a palette swap – it won’t be used the way it looks there, but it shows how we pretty easily can swap her colours around if we need to during the fight, for effect purposes :)

First up this week, editing that enemy info page a bit, allowing for larger numbers in each of the categories:

Another seed is on the way, through which you can grow a very strange plant indeed… Let’s take a look:

After some consideration of the previous version, we decided to swap it around:

And now, for the seed:

And all of the usual interface bits needed for you to grow this thing:

And now, something that’s been a long time coming: new haircuts! Remember the locked ones? Well they won’t be locked much longer, as we intend to fill up the remaining haircut slots – or at least add a bunch more of them. Here’s the first batch:

Remember how started improving the inventory menu a while back, preparing for the categories to be icons rather than text? Well, it’s finally time to start making those icons!

In this first test, I went for a monochrome look, but we’re not sure whether it’s the best way to go – perhaps it’s better to bring in a bit more colour to the menu, giving each icon a colour of its own. What do you guys think?

And here we have another option, the icons in colour! Which one do you prefer?

I personally feel a bit torn, since the monochrome one looks a bit less messy and more stylish, but it’s also nice to bring in more colour to the menu! It’s possible we’ll keep on iterating these options, or go for a mix of some sort, perhaps having the category you’re currently on show in colour. We’ll see!

Meanwhile, Fred has been doing some more work on Grindea! Here’s some of his WIP sketches:

…And Teddy’s been adding my personal favourite feature in a long time! Lizards in your house!! How cute isn’t this?

Moving on with the codex work, we’ve actually started second guessing that fancy new design, as it limits us in some ways. True, you could show more enemies on one page, but on the other hand there was no easy or obvious way to browse which items each enemy drops. As such, I’m making another iteration, this one based on the original, only with fancier graphics and cleaning it up a bit:

Work on a very different part on the game is progressing as well, namely that story written by Penn Wrythe!

The idea is that you’ll find parts of this story across the game, each one progressing the story slightly, until you meet Penn Wrythe herself and help her come up with the ending to her novel. The idea is that that Penn Wrythe will ask you what you value the most; power, love or fame (or some such), and depending on your answer the final part of the story will turn out in different ways.

There will be 5-8 parts of this story scattered across the game, so it’s quite the long tale.

With the various books being added to the game, I thought it’s high time to make a better background than the typical classic brown one for such works. As you might remember, we designed a book interface ages ago, but due to limits in sizing and making it easier for us overall, we decided to scrap that some time back (for the time being, anyway). However, a more simple paper would still be feasible to add, so I threw something together:

Next up, a quick redesign of the enemy info pages! Just some slight graphic updates and the removal of some unnecessary text in favour of icons!

And here’s a quick little reminder of what it currently looks like in the game, which will be replaced with the above version:

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, work on Grindea is in full swing! Take a look at these sketches:

As you may have noticed in previous images of the seed system, the Jumpkin was missing from most of it! Therefore, let’s start off this week by making all of the Jumpkin stuff, including a new drop for the Jumpkin, replacing the pumpkin seeds it dropped previously (it’ll now drop a singular seed, which looks a bit different, which will let you plant it, but it’ll also drop a jumpkin stem)!

There’s also a menu button for the seed system store, which can be seen below as well:

Time for the final veteran portrait, this one featuring the lady with the giant hammer! Let’s have a look:

Now it’s time to make a little redesign of the enemy codex! As mentioned, we’re going to redesign most of the menu, but the enemy codex is the one we’re aiming to actually get into this patch as opposed to a future one, as it will show information on which enemies drop seeds!

Here’s what it used to look like:

And here’s the process of the redesign:

As you can see, we can now fit twice as many enemies on every single page, giving a better overview of each enemy and what it drops:

We’re not 100% this is the iteration that will make it into the game yet, but at the very least, it’s a start! What do you guys think? Better or no?

Continuing with a couple more iterations of the codex, these ones have fewer details for more readability, and some bigger spacing:

Which one is your favourite this far?

Meanwhile, Fred’s been working on some fun stuff, including a little cloud that will water those growing plats for you, and Grindeas idle animation! How cool is that?