Going back to story mode for a bit, we’ve talked about the second quest for the Mansion and come up with a rather simple quest for the player to deal with the first time they’re allowed into the Mansion (which will be by the time you defeat Marino after Flying Fortress). Basically one of the maids want some help solving a small infestation of slime in the basement. Oh but what an infestation it is – not quite what you’d expect I think… :)

We’re also finally starting to fiddle around with the things you’ll access when you get the plant fertilizers and will access the areas currently unavailable (remember the small squiggly plants?). So far we know of three places these plants will be: the one in pillar mountains which will lead to a small reward, a little cave system leading back to the cave where you find the sandals (I believe) further down in pillar mountains, and upwards to an old an abandoned Grindea shrine which may or may not play a part in the later stages of the game…

Here are some sketches I made as we were talking about this place during the meeting, more to come later:

The one in Flying Fortress will simply lead you to a treasure, while the third will lead you to the mysterious tree stump house in Seasonne, where it seems you will get a reward and find a housing shop! We haven’t made any sketches for this yet, but I’ll likely start working on that once we finish up the mansion :)

First though, some more Pin stuff for Arcade Mode! There will be a part of the menu where you can see what Pins you currently have equipped, and so I made a little modified version of the Pin equip UI where you can see such things:

One suggestion on where to put this menu was to replace the crafting tab with it, seeing as crafting doesn’t serve a purpose in Arcade Mode, the other was to keep it under equipment. The latter suggestion was mainly because we wanted it to be in the same spot in both modes in a world where we were to include them in Story Mode in some form. For now though, that seems unlikely – so the Crafting tab will be replaced for now :)

Next step on the same topic is that we want there to be a place where you can see all of the pins that are available, as well as those you haven’t seen yet. This will be viewed through the Pin Collector who will hang out in town after you’ve unlocked him!

Here’s the progress:

Obviously each of the icons will be replaced with the corresponding Pin. The questionmark icons will signify a pin you haven’t seen yet but that you could find any run, while the lock means it’s a Pin you’ve yet to unlock. We haven’t yet decided if we will have pins you will unlock, but we’ve talked about having a new batch of pins unlock as a reward for certain quests or certain progression milestones; how do you guys feel about that?

Next up, another portrait for the mansion! This is the goblet, Marino’s dads trusted artefact! Finally some more sentient artefact for you guys to hang out with ;)

In Fred’s department we’re working on some cubes and other types of indicators for all of those pins that allows you to trigger an effect after x hits!

The cubes will grow in size the closer you are to unleashing the effect:

But he hasn’t forgotten about Story Mode! Here’s the shield to match the weapons seen last week:

So, we’ve been focusing quite a bit on Pins and Arcade these couple weeks, and you might wonder what our next step is from here. Our idea is that Teddy will finish up and add a ton of pins and get them polished and ready for a Frontline Patch along with the floor shortening and all of that sometime in the beginning of June – that’s about how long it’ll take for us to iron out all potential bugs and make it all work in multiplayer as well.

The remaining work is pretty heavily focused on the programming bits, so me and Fred will star working on something else, or rather, get back to where we left off before these Pins caught our attention: the Mansion! Once the mansion has been completed we’ll also add one or two quests involving its characters, and possibly some other bits and pieces for Story Mode before that turns into a Frontline Patch as well. In the near future, we’ll likely do an Arcade update here and a Story Mode update there as we work our way through these things we have left on our long list of things we want to add before the game is completed.

First up though, an expected Frontline Update around the first week on June, featuring the shortening of Arcade and around 100 pins for you to explore throughout your journeys in Arcade Mode! Hopefully you’ll like the variation they give as much as we have trying them out so far :)

The thing me and Fred will focus on next is the Mansion. I’ve already shown some sketches of the interior as well as some characters that will live inside its walls, but what’s the actual point of the building? Why, to house quests of course! Over the last couple days our daily meetings have mainly revolved around the quest(s) that will happen around the building, and have gone through a ton of suggestions. In the end though, we’ve settled for a specific questline, featuring Marino’s dad’s business idea.

As some of you may know, while you’re off in Mount Bloom and Tai Ming, Marino and his dad has been in the Merchant Isles for some kind of business trip. Now that they’re back, we’re deciding to bring in that business trip as part of a quest, where you’re tasked with doing marketing for a new set of gear they’ve imported and want to start selling.

The gear looks real fancy, but unfortunately its stats are horrible – it’s basically fashion items only. But to market the set, Marino’s dad wants you to do a publicity stunt in the arena – fighting a bunch of enemies using only the fashionable set from the Merchant Isle! Why you? Well, because the one who was actually going to do the fashion stunt, a famous and popular Collector, has unfortunately taken ill…

The idea here is that around the time you finish Tai Ming, there will be posters and such in Evergrind City featuring the famous collector (whom we’ll add as a side character that you can interact with and who will have been mentioned previously in the game), announcing the event in the arena. Shortly after the quest will become available in the mansion, where Marino’s dad will explain that the famed collector can’t do it but that you have enough popularity to do it instead. After this additional posters will be added to Evergrind, taped over the original ones, this time featuring your face!

The event itself will basically be an arena challenge where it’s your job to defeat a bunch of enemies using only the fashionable set (which will be force equipped and you won’t be able to change during the challenge). Succeed and you’ll get the reward, mess up and well… die… Oops :)

There will also be an additional quest earlier on in the game, which will be available around the time you first gain access to the mansion. We’re not entirely sure what that quest will be yet though, but probably something a bit more simple. Our idea with this bigger quest is to involve not only the mansion, but to give Evergrind City some additional sense of life, kind of like what we did surrounding the festival. We don’t want Evergrind to feel too static, but like a place where things happen and change :)

Now, time to dive back into that Mansion hallway!

Here’s part two, featuring a Solem statue and a little area to sit and have tea in the lobby, while waiting to meet whoever you’re here to see. Also, new and upgraded fountains (although we’ve talked about changing these around again and saving these particular ones for a different place – we’ll see):

Next up it’s time to make the portrait for the famous James Fawke, the popular collector guy that so far hasn’t existed but whom will appear here and there throughout the game (though not as part of the main story)!

Meanwhile, Fred has been working on those fashionable items that look good but are of low quality and don’t do too much damage! Here’s the preview of two of them:

I will be working on making the rest of the set, adding some headgear and face gear as well :)

Fred has also been working on the possibly cutest thing in the game yet, a baby cloud that will be an effect of one of the Pins you can find in Arcade Mode:

Who else wants to go find that pin right now?!

More pin work this week! Here we have the progress of two more pins, as well as two more icons and a bunch of colour variations:

For some of you these aren’t exactly new; the last couple of days we’ve uploaded what we have done with the pins right now as a hidden command for our most devoted testers to try out. So far, we’re pretty happy with the feedback, and the feeling we have right now is that pins is definitely a positive thing for Arcade Mode! So far so good; though obviously we have a lot more to come up with and add before we are satisfied – we want some epic variation, after all :)

Speaking of variation in Arcade Mode, another thing we’ve been discussing a lot lately is the addition of more types of rooms, to make each run feel even more unique. Some of these ideas include:

Cursed Item Shop
A shop that sells items that are really good but you can’t unequip them or swap them out (this room type would mainly appear on the early floors, so in later floors the equipment might fall off and not be as good anymore). Possibly other curses as well.

Zombie J
A ghastly version of the bow salesman who sells a cursed quiver that is smaller (so you’ll have fewer arrows in total), but you can fire extra arrows at the expense of your own health. Could appear alongside the Cursed Item Shop, to mirror the regular shop.

Archie
The guy who appears here and there around the world to open up shortcuts or sell you items you’ve missed and can’t reach again, only in arcade he’ll offer you access to a bonus room he’s found. Pay up the money and he’ll let you through to a path he’s cut up leading to either a random guaranteed ‘good’ room (a shop, healing, etc), OR…

…A Lood Fountain
A room with a bunch of Loods floating around a fountain! We haven’t decided if this is only gonna be the reward for paying Archie or if it’ll be a room of its own. In the end we might end up having this be Archies only reward instead of random rooms as well. We’ll see!

A Mischievous Sprite
Think we might have mentioned this before ages ago, but it was brought up again. A sprite that appears in multiplayer only, secretly offering one of the players an advantage of some sort at the expense of his friends (like them getting less atk, def, aspd or something like that). Just something a bit silly to mess with your friends!

It’s not a certainty we’ll add all of these, but they are some suggestions at the very least. Which one is your favourite? And what sort of additional rooms would you like to see?

Now, some more stuff for the pins! Starting with a trash can icon for when you’re about to throw away one of your pins:

And two more pin types, using a special colour scheme:

These pins are what we call “sticky” pins, meaning they’ll permanently take up a slot and there’s no way to get rid of them. Better think twice before you equip these!

There’s also another shape for pins, as well as a specific icon for potion related pins:

And finally, one more palette to mix things up a bit:

After a few discussions as well as checking in with the community about the subject, we’ve decided that rather than have pins appear from the get-go, it will be another thing that will be introduced after you’ve played arcade mode for a little bit, complete with its own NPC who will tell you how it all works. As such, I was tasked with making his portrait:

Do you recognize from where we have gotten the inspiration for this guy? :)

Meanwhile in Freds department he’s been working on some effects that will spawn around the player for some specific pins where you collect charges as you battle, as well as doing some work on the Pin collector himself:

Now, back to Arcade Mode for a bit. As you know there are a bunch of changes we’ve been wanting to make to Arcade Mode, among them a rebalancing and removal of the dual floors per area. We’ve decided to take some time to focus on Arcade things for now, and so today as part of our meeting we spend a couple hours playtesting the changes that have been made so far.

To start off with, there’s now just one floor per area instead of the usual two. Some floors are slightly longer to make up for it (such as the first, where you battle Pillar Mountains enemies). The earlier floors have had their difficulty slightly adjusted as well, since we want it to be possible for players to get further – at least in terms of areas, compared to before.

Some gauntlet style rooms have been added, meaning new enemies will spawn as you defeat the ones already in the room when you enter. We’ve tried it out both with an indicator for such rooms (meaning you will know before hand that the room you enter will spawn more enemies), and without. Which one we will go for in the end depends on how common and normalized we want these rooms to be: either they will be rare, special occurrences, meaning an indicator might be fitting, or they will be so common that it makes no sense to indicate them as anything special.

For now, to make it easier to see what is happening, we have a special spawn indicator for which enemy will spawn right before it does, to avoid any unpleasant surprises for the player. Whether this will still be the case or whether the new enemy will simply appear in a puff or smoke is still something we will need to test further.

Right now it feels somewhat odd to have cut down the floors this much, but we do feel like the overall length of a run will be a lot better compared to having to battle through twice the amount of floors to get to the end. We don’t want the player to have to fight his or her way through floor after floor for hours to finish a run! More testing will need to be done, though.

Another thing we’ve been playing around with is ideas for how to make each run a bit more unique compared to your previous runs, challenging you to change your play style or at least experience things more differently. We feel that right now each run is very similar to the last one, and a player is rarely encouraged to try new skills. Last week we talked about a feature we wanted to add to help out with that (Badges – which we have now renamed to Pins) and this week we have tried out some of those as well.

As a reminder, a Pin is something that will affect your run in some way, giving you certain bonuses while sometimes coming with a negative on the side (though mostly you will just get something nice). For now, we’ve divided the pins into seven categories depending on what they affect, such as: Arrows, Skills, Basic Attacks, Room changes, Passives, Potions and Shield.

Some examples we’ve been testing this week include:

* Casting a spell fires an arrow.
* Hitting an enemy with an arrow casts a meteor
* Three arrows drop after each regular battle room
* The first spell in each room is a guaranteed crit
* Every 5th spell deal triple damage
* A fae follows the player and casts a fire ball every few seconds
* Each basic attack increases the damage of your next skill
* One enemy in each room receives an automatic death mark when you enter the room
* Perfect Guarding an enemy causes them to be death marked

So far, we’ve quite pleased with how these serve to make each run a bit more different compared to the last, especially ones that encourage you to use other skills or abilities than what you’d normally use. We also have a ton of ideas for more pins we want to test and play around with; the current pool isn’t too big so repeats tend to happen quite often during our test runs. We also feel the lack of a proper interface; right now there’s simply a message in the chat letting you know what badge you’ve gotten and what it does.

In order to properly test this and how it feels, we’ll therefore start working on a basic interface for distributing your pins, as well as some basic proper graphics for them to see how it all feels with some more visual cues.

Right now you will receive a pin for defeating a boss, but we’ve also played around with awarding them in chests or for challenges. The exact amount and what you’ll receive pins for are yet to be decided, but for now we feel like it feels the most rewarding to get it post boss fight. As of now, you’ll be able to have four pins, and if you receive any more past that you will need to replace one of the ones you currently have.

Part of our daily tasks right now is coming up with more pins to add, so there will be enough that each run feels new and fresh. Do you have any pins you’d like to see? Let us know and we might end up adding it :)

So in order to get a true feel for the whole Pin system I’ve been tasked with making an interface for it where you select whether to equip, replace of throw away a new bag that you get.

We started of with this super basic sketch:

And translated it into something slightly more visually pleasing:

And here’s the interface the way it looks currently:

“Attack DMG” in white represents the name of each pin. Green “DMG” above the first info box is supposed to say “New”, while the blue “Attack” above the second info box is supposed to say “Current”. The numbers represent the descriptions. However, these designs might change slightly as certain translations need a bigger font size than the rest of the game, and we try to design everything so that it will work out in any translation. In other words: we’ll see!

Next up, making some actual pins to try this whole thing out with:

Pins will come in many shapes and colours, but for now I’m starting off with this color, making it in a variety of different shapes with icons to match. They all use the same palette so colour swapping will then hopefully be easy enough!

In Fred’s department, he’s been working on giving the pins proper representation as sprites! Like most other things, this involves a lot of iterating and trying out different ideas and designs:

With the final result looking something like this:

As you know by now, we’ve been starting to have daily meetings discussing the upcoming final pieces of the game, and today I thought I’d give you a rundown of some of the Arcade things we’ve been talking about!

We’ve mentioned before that it is our goal to shorten to length of Arcade Mode now that all of the floors are being added, as two floors per area is a lot and takes a very long time to play through. Our current idea is that there will be one floor per area, and that we’ll rebalance it slightly so you’ll have come a bit further in the areas before it gets terrifyingly difficult; right now most people die way before even getting halfway through, which is a bit too soon for our liking.

Since we’ll effectively only use half of the floors we have, it means there will be a lot of spare bosses floating around. In order to make each run balanced in difficult, you’ll always meet a set number or the more difficult bosses, while the remaining bosses will be one of those we deem slightly easier. We’ve also discussed the option to have optional bosses out of the remaining pool spawn in their own (clearly marked out) rooms, but we’ve yet to decide exactly how about to go this or if it’s something we wanna do at all.

We’ll also add some gauntlet style rooms, so there will be some rooms where enemies respawn in a couple waves or so, just to mix things up a bit more and make each room feel a bit more unique.

Another Bishop bet we’ll add is one where you have to perfect guard certain enemies before you can deal damage to them, and we’ll make a new interface to indicate when you’re in a bishop bet room; more details on this as I start making it.

There will also be a proper Arcade Mode version of the map, which will give you some indication of how far you’ve come and how far you’ve got left to go. Again, more on this once I start actually designing it.

Finally, we’ve discussed the addition of a special item we currently call a ‘badge’ which is something you can get as a reward or possibly purchase in the shop. A badge will change or your character in some way, such as increasing card drop rate, give new effects for a perfect guard, increase the damage of your next spell based on how many normal attacks you’ve hit, and so on. We might also add ‘mixed’ bags which will give you a stronger bonus in exchange for limiting something else. Such as your spells doing a lot more damage but you’re unable to use the same spell twice in a row.

Our goal with these badges are to make each Arcade run a bit more unique, giving you various options for how you play rather than it always being the exact same playstyle. If it works, we’ll see! We’re gonna play around with it for now and see how it feels :)

As work continues all across the game there are a bunch of smaller things added here and there. One such thing is the ability to now “turn off” the fireplace in your house, which used to be burning all the time! As such, a version of it without the fire needed to be made:

And as mentioned a little while ago, we’re introducing a new interface indicating when you’re in bet room. Here’s the initial sketch:

And the progress/final thing:

We don’t want this to be too much in your face, but a low key reminder of what’s happening. If you fail the challenge, Bishop will teleport away from the interface into the map and perform his punishment as usual :)

And here we have the second maid portrait for the mansion! A dark haired young lady dusting the extensive collections :)

Next, the portrait of Marino’s mom! She’s the lovely lady of the mansion, making lists of all the charities they’re gonna contribute to:

And finally, a look at what’s happening in Fred’s department! With us deciding to finish up a bunch of random things, it’s time for start looking at some of the many loose ends and one of the most asked such things is when you’ll be able to grow those pesky little plants into something you can climb to reach certain places. Well, the answer is soon! And here’s the first step on that way, namely Fred making some graphics for it:

There are also more mansion inhabitant to make, among them a chef to make a fancy dinner for Marino’s family:

We’re back from our little Easter holiday (spent at home)! Did you guys have a nice holiday? We hope you did try to find some peace even in the midst of this crisis the world is facing!

We’ve recharged our batteries and were very excited to get back to working properly. We started off the week with a long meeting discussing the mails we’ve received from a lot of the people who are to design items for the game! As I mentioned before we went on holiday, we would start sending out requests for the designs, and have since received quite a few replies which we’ve discussed and answered accordingly.

If you bought one of the tiers which allow you to design an item, please check your mail and get back to us whenever you can! :)

In order to make it easier for us to read and remember what needs to be made for each item and where to put it in the game, I was then tasked with sorting out a document that includes all of the most recent and relevant information given for each design. As this involves around 30 unique designs made by 30 different people, it’ll be a lot of info to make easily accessible!

We also managed to discuss some more end game things that have been on our mind for a bit; mainly regarding the Bishop’s role in the later parts of the game. I believe we will end up having several more conversations around this topic, and I think the specifics will be better saved for later on… But stay tuned!

Finally, we talked about the fact that a lot of people seem to misunderstand how best to farm in the game, with people often thinking you need to reset an area to farm most efficiently. The way it actually works is that the more you clear out an area, the quicker the respawn gets, so after clearing an area completely and killing the newly spawned enemies for a bit, the respawn rate will accelerate and get quicker and quicker (up to a point). To make this easier to know we’ll add a loading screen tip hinting at it, as well as some info about it in the school (that once it’s properly up and running will feature a lot of random mechanical information about the game).

And now, onwards to continue work on that mansion! :)

Taking the mansion on its first step to completion, starting with the hallway:

We’ll still improve on some things. To start off with, I’ll be making new decorations for the fountains, making them look a bit more luxurious and unique to the mansion. We’re also gonna replace the bottom pools and put some sort of statues and plants around them, and maybe add some paintings on the wall. But that’s for next time!

First, a portrait of one of the inhabitants of the mansion, namely one of the maids! There will be more of these later on, but here’s a start:

And here’s Fred’s work on the maids so far!

In order to get a finalized and proper view of everything left to do for the game and to check in with each other a bit more frequently, we’ve recently decided we’re gonna have (more or less) daily meetings over voice!

During these meetings we’re going to discuss at least one of the things we’ve yet to properly establish until we know exactly all that is left to do and what we need to do to finish it up. This time, our main subject was that of books, how to present them, what books we’d like to add to the game, and so on.

In a previous post I made a new interface for books which is in the shape of an actual book, complete with the ability to turn pages. However, due to space limitations, Teddy is worried that there might not be a way to make such a book while still allowing a good amount of space for the text that needs to be in it. After today’s meeting we’ve decided we’ll at least give it a go, since we feel like an interface like that would look so much better than just a box (even if our fallback plan would be to at least make it look like a piece of paper, rather than the regular brown box). I’ll keep you updated with how our testing around works out.

In terms of books to include, we want to keep a decent balance between informative things that might make the player understand the world and how it works better with more flavourful things like tales of collectors from days gone past.

We want there to be a “quest” (not yet sure if it’ll be an official quest with it’s own quest tracker and everything) where you can find books around the world and hand it in it to the library to read it. And of course, once you’ve found all of the hidden books, you’d get an additional reward as well.

We’d also like there to be a series of book by Grindea’s top author Penn Wryte, so that you can find Part 1 early on in the game, and then continue to find parts throughout your journey, until you have the complete story.

Outside of all this book talk, we’ve also started to send out mails to all of you that supported us in the early days and bought one of the tiers where you get to design items or quests for the game! We expect it will take some time to settle some of the designs, and it’ll be easier to find spots for these additional items to be found before everything else has been finished up; hence it’s about time to get going :)

Now, a look at some of those new faces from the cutscenes, including a few that were only included once the Stable patch went life (if you haven’t played table in a while, now might be a good time to check it out!):

Now, for a much longed for update from Fred’s department! Because of the spoilery nature of nearly every animation he’s made for a long time there hasn’t been many updates from him, but you can view all of his progress in the update which should also be on stable in one of the coming days if it isn’t up already!

Now, however, as we move on to less spoiler-y things, such as the mansion in Evergrind South, we can start showing more stuff again! Here we have a few of the inhabitants of the mansion, starting with the butler (as well as a few options for how he’s gonna look in the end):

Our current favorite is the second one from the left! Which one do you prefer?

There’s also the long awaited(?) appearance of Marino’s father, sitting in his solitude on the throne upstairs:

On to the portraits! Marino’s dad is a character we’ve definitely all longed to meet (no? just me?), and for reasons unknown we’ve decided to be inspired by a famous video game character when designing him, with hints being both in the portrait and the sprite itself. Can you guess who?

And a look at the second portrait, that of the Butler:

With Easter now being upon us next week, and the Stable update released and ready, it’s time for us to take a week off to rest and gather energy for the next stretch of work: finishing up all the loose threads in Story Mode and adding some more quests! Final stretch soon, can’t believe it :)

As usual, the blog will be on pause during our holiday, but it’ll be back up and running on Monday the 20th! Happy Easter everyone, and stay safe out there!

Hello everyone! We hope you all keep safe out there! To brighten your Monday, I can now announce that the final cutscene of the patch has finally been added to Frontline! It’s taken a bunch of work down to the last minute, but everything should be up and running fine now. Please enjoy these new twists and turns and let us know what you think! :D

Normally this is where I’d post a bunch of stuff from the update itself, but because there’s a heavy amount of spoilers I think we’ll try to stick with the non-spoilery stuff:

First up, we remade the sword portrait a bit, making it look a bit less ‘silly’:

We’re also adding the tower to the world map:

And making sure it can be correctly placed in the map where it’s found:

We did play around with some more options for Ivy’s face:

…however, in the end we decided to not have it revealed after all!

As we mentioned some time ago, we wanted to add an archaeologist who investigates the Ancient Ruins even before the tower appears. Because we feel like it might add to the coolness of it all, we’d like a bunch of people to have gathered around the tower after it appears, so what better time to create her character than ahead of this patch?

Without further ado:

Marino also got a new set of portraits that will be shown as he gets your report on what exactly went down over at the Ghost ship:

Also breaking up the rocks around where the tower will appear, making smaller pieces that can be thrown about as the tower bursts forth:

Which will look something like this in the end:

And of course, a zone title befitting the old thing:

And now, with my part of the final cutscene done it’s time to start looking ahead at the future! There are a ton of things we want to add before the final version of the game (and as such, before we start work on the elusive tower!)

One such thing is Marino’s mansion, which you so far haven’t been able to enter, and one of the things I’ve been working on today has been making a sketch for the interior of it. Because it’s really the only mansion in the game, we want it to feel big and expensive, and as such I’ll be making a ton of rooms for it!

On the first floor, you’ll be greeted by a grand hallway leading to an expensive looking study on the left, and a library on the right. Above the library you’ll find the kitchen, which in turn leads back out into another part of the hallway featuring a grand staircase. On the opposite end will be a grand dining room.

On the second floor we’ll have a massive corridor with the family’s bedrooms on either side, and a nice little throne for the head of the family on top. Cause why wouldn’t he have a throne if he can get one? ;)

In the coming days, I’ll start work on the actual backgrounds and props for this place, while also discussing what else will be made before we start working on the tower – I know we have a lot of points left to discuss properly, such as the improved pet system and so on!

Let’s start off this week with some more maps! These ones belong to the desert, and again, there’s two of each kind:

“East of the broken pillar, amidst the desert dunes”

“Well, well, well! It’s been a long (and hot!) day, but good luck ever figuring out where I hid this treasure!”

Next up is the portrait of a character you might have seen a bunch of times throughout the game, but who has never had an opportunity to speak… until now! Excited? Let me present to you yet another talking artefact:

Some more fixes for the stable release! An improvement of the sword portrait, some new battle indicators and a broken window in Ivy’s office! Oh my…

Now it’s time to add some additional expressions to some by now well known faces! Dad, Quinton and Ivy are some that are getting a whole new range of emotion for the final cutscene of this stable patch! What do you think is gonna happen? :)

I know it’s been a long time now since you got any updates from the animation side of things, and let’s just say it’s because this final cutscene, animation heavy as it is, is also quite spoilery. Things will be revealed, and some things might never be the same again. So we’re keeping away as much of it as possible for now. We’ve made quite a bit of progress though, so at least it’s progressing as it should.

Here’s a little sneak peek of some of the non spoiler-y animations:

What do you think is gonna happen? :)

So as a lot of you may have noticed, our world is currently facing a new kind of illness that is spreading rapidly as we speak. This illness, Covid-19, is now found in every part of Sweden, including the island where we live. The government is keeping us updated daily with the changes they’re making and how they rally the fight against it, with big changes is happening fast.

In order to help slow down and limit the spread, a lot of companies are suggesting their employees work from home if they’re able. This isn’t a recommendation from our government as of yet, though it’s been implemented in other countries and a lot of companies make their own recommendations. Now we’re making that same move ourselves.

We’re only a small studio with three people, but because our office is part of an office hotel where a lot of other companies work as well, we’ve decided to move our work stations home for the time being. While we love our office and the opportunities it gives us to see other people (or just the exercise of walking or cycling to it), we’ve decided that if through working from home for a bit we can help slow down the spread, it’s what we’ll do. For the company, this means little change except out discussions will be held over voice or video chats instead of in person. Technically, it’s possible for us to work from anywhere with little hassle.

In other words, hopefully we’ll be able to continue on as normal. We hope that all of you are staying safe and remember to wash your hands! Let’s not panic but do what we can to protect those around us who are in risk of being seriously affected by this virus :)

Now, we’re starting off this week with a random surprise addition to the stable update, the ability to view Trick & Treat (the strange twins in Pumpkin Woods) true form if you talk to them in the spirit world! We do still have plans for these twins, but now it’s likely they will have to wait until post release. However, this little secret will do no harm in the game in the meanwhile :)

As part of the final cutscene before stable ends, Ivy will be briefly unveiled, so a new portrait had to be made! There will be a bunch of expressions going on here as well, but we’ll get to that once the cutscene is closer to completion.

Without further ado:

Next, when I was looking to add more maps to the desert, I quickly realized there’s a big lack of treasure maps featured in Mount Bloom and Tai Ming as well! In order to solve this, I went straight ahead and made a bunch, starting with Mount Bloom:

“[…] that cave long forgotten, beneath the dragon’s jaw.”

—

I buried my treasure
So none be aware
And took great measure
That none could compare
To guard these great riches
I asked Mother fair
And that little one
Whose teeth you beware
Between them my precious
Now has its lair

And another batch, for Tai Ming this time:

“Buried with these pink daisies
I leave with you my [item]”

—-

“By the entrance to our holy shrine
Beneath the bell forever silenced
Cracked with time and dust
I lie my hope and dreams to rest”

Can you guess where they all are?