Back at it again with more Zhamla shenanigans! Last week I mentioned we were tinkering with adding one more sword-based attack to his arsenal and this is the result:

We based this attack on the elite version of Echo of Madness from Tai Ming. On one hand, because it felt like just the type of intimate and Perfect Guard-focused attack we were looking for gameplay-wise and on the other hand, it’s also a nice little visual connection between Zhamla and the Echo’s.

The graphics are still in the very early stages of polish, there’s still some clarity and size issues with all of Zhamla’s shadows bunched together, but nothing that a few coats of animation won’t fix!

Another focus this week has been to give the players more visual feedback for when Zhamla is open to be attacked. Since he is so hectic and agile in his playstyle, we feel it’s more important than usual to make sure players know when they can inflict damage and not get taken by surprise by Zhamla.

Fred whipped up this animation (the above one) as a test for when Zhamla leaves himself vulnerable after one of his normal attacks:

While still rough around the edges, it’s still more than enough to give the intended effect during testing. After some time spent in Teddy’s workshop, here it is in the game:

And another iteration with some more visual feedback added into the mix:

The added effects bring a bit more oomph to it, which I personally like. The flames were put there as a placeholder, but I dunno. It kinda works! We will keep experimenting and pushing it further, but just this simple test feels very promising so far :)

This past week Teddy and Fred have kept tinkering with new attacks and patterns for Zhamla. We are trying to find that sweet spot where Zhamla lives up to his name as King of Collecting, the most powerful collector of all time, while at the same time not trying to overwhelm the player with an endless moveset. It’s a fine line to walk and it’s always tempting to push it even further when you’re working on the final FINAL boss of the game, but we’ll try to not go too overboard. No promises tho 8)

So, one of the new attacks we’ve been working on is screen wide wind inferno-thingy! It’s main intention is to break up the pace a bit and give the player a small amount of breathing room before jumping back into the high intensity of dealing with Zhamla face-to-face.

First up is a video of an early iteration of the attack, trying out to concept and game feel:

And a later iteration with more polished graphics to get a better feel of the cinematic qualities of the attack:

There’s still a lot of tinkering and polish left, but so far, I think it looks pretty sweet!

The second attack we focused in on this week is a Blink Strike. At the moment we’re taking some extra time and care to make sure Zhamla feels fluid and varied when his utilizing his sword. The Blink Strike was an attempt to make him more agile and able to reposition without the need for too many fancy animations.

A video of it’s first iteration:

Aaand a second one with a bit more polish to the graphics:

So far during testing, it’s been doing just what we intended (which is not always the case, yay game design!) and while there are still adjustments to be made, so far so good! We’re still deliberating on and trying out at least one more sword-based attack for Zhamla to have access to. Hopefully, you guys will enjoy what we cook up!

In the last post I mentioned recording a bunch of videos showcasing some of the stuff we’ve done so far with the final battle. Without further ado:


First above, the sequence where Zhamla breaks the room to reveal the sky outside! In this prototype, we still use the red sky, but in the final version we might change it around so a night sky with stars will be revealed instead.

Next up, a little updated sequence with Zhamla’s summons! Here you can see the swap between the red sky and the night sky, as it happens when Frosty Fiend appears:


We’ve also made an updated heal for the sequence where you need to damage Braazlet. We’re still missing the proper HP-bar graphics (which I made last week) in the prototype below, but it should be added soon:


Finally, an assortment of new attacks and patterns:

   
Keep in mind that all of these are still in the prototyping phase and will get polished quite a bit more :)

One of the very final scenes in the game will take place above the blue skies, in space, where Grindea herself has one of her dwellings. We thought a lot about how to do the transition between blue sky and starlit night, and after having tried out a bunch of gradient options, we decided to simply go for an easier (and prettier) solution: clouds!

Once you get high enough, there will be a thick blanket of clouds, and as you emerge above them, there will be different colour clouds and a starlit sky behind them.

Here’s an early sketch, the the corresponding new clouds needed:

And now it’s time to render the background:

After painting a ton of floating stones, it’s now done! Well, at least my part of the work – time for Fred to animate some cards/stars :)

Hey guys! Sorry for this extremely late post, I’ve been in the midst of moving and with things still being pretty chaotic around here, I simply forgot to schedule the draft – oops!

Right now our full focus is on the very final boss battle, against Zhamla. While the prototype for the battle is nearing completion, we still feel like something is lacking. Nothing big, just a lil something extra. Our current focus is playing around with tweaking and/or adding bunch of new attacks, patterns and phases to see what feels good and what doesn’t. Overall though, I think it looks absolutely amazing, and can’t wait to show you guys!

We’ll try to record a bunch of videos over the weekend so you can see some of the juicy stuff in action, but for now, here’s a bunch of Fred’s animations:

As for me, I’ve made a new kind of HP-bar as part of the boss battle against Zhamla! This bar is for Braazlet, who you’ll have to defeat before you’re able to do any real damage to Zhamla himself. In the videos we’ve shown before, we’re using placeholder graphics, so it was definitely time for me to add some proper graphics!

First up this week, let’s take a look at the healing phase of Zhamla’s boss battle!

Here, you need to defeat the bracelet first, so it can’t keep on healing Zhamla indefinitely. Bag and Braazlet will also have some lines mid-battle in speech bubble form, and in order to make this look its best I made some new graphics to go with the bubbles. I also took the opportunity to update the speech bubbles used by other artefacts earlier in the game (= Shiidu and Trunk).

Here’s the result, with a sample bubble and a prototype video showcasing them:

The summoning of Zhamla’s version of Frosty Friend (Frosty.. Foe? Fiend?) is also coming together more and more. Here’s a prototype of the summoning of this summon:



Fred has also been working on various sketches of another of Zhamla’s summons, a bigger and scarier version of Summon Plant! Let’s take a look at that:


Which one is your favourite? Ours is in the green circle with the checkbox!

This week Teddy and Fred made a plan about doing a May crunch, in which they aim to make the Zhamla battle fully playable except for some final polish.

Teddy has since prototyped the transition from Dad’s battle Arena to Zhamla’s (exploded!) battle arena, inserted a healing sequence where the player needs to defeat the bracelet before doing damage to Zhamla himself, and also developed prototypes for the summon phase start and summon phase end.

We’ve also received some of the very last songs that will be added to the game, which definitely feels bittersweet.

Here’s a little sneak peek on some more Zhamla boss animations courtesy of Fred this week:

This week I’ve been working on some new art for Secrets of Grindea once more!

First up, two new expressions for Zhamla:

I also edited to floor, removing the golden bars to make the battle area look more clean – before and after below:

There’s also an extended background for the final scene in the true ending, where the camera will be able to scroll up past the Collector’s HQ and into the skies above for the credits.

Despite only part of the roof showing in the game, I (thankfully) had been smart enough to make the entire thing when I first made the HQ building, meaning a lot less work compared to having to puzzle together the rooftop as well.

Although this scene is much larger than what will actually be shown in the game engine (the camera is almost half the size of the background above), I still wanted to make a version that show the entire thing, flowers and all. Perhaps we’ll at least be able to use it in the production book?

For the actual game engine, we’ll use this smaller version:

So nice to be able to make some backgrounds again! Definitely looking forward to the next project, where I’ll be able to make a ton more 🙂

I’ve also made some new items: some paw prints for the housing system, an accessory and a new hat!

All of these were made in collaboration with our backers – thank you so much for supporting the game! ❤️

There’s still a few small things to add before I’ve made my final contribution to the game, but either way, it feels so cool to have gotten this far. Soon 1.0! 🙂

This week our main focus has been the final cutscenes for the true ending! It’s pretty incredible to finally see the first iterations of the very very very last scenes of the game. There’s still a bunch of polish and animations needed for them to be complete, but the base is all there.

Here’s an early sketch of one of the final scene designs I’ll be making a proper background for as well:

Pretty exciting, huh? Stay tuned! :)

A while back we had supporter tiers where you got to design an item or a quest for Secrets of Grindea as a reward. Now, with the game nearing release, I’ve been going through our lists of these purchases, and the emails our backers sent with instructions to make sure we’ve gotten everything right.

For the most part the items we’ve received designs for have already been put into the game, but there’s a couple we’ve yet to finish. Unfortunately, quite a few haven’t gotten back to us at all yet, meaning there’s a whole bunch of items yet to be designed! While it’s always possible to add items after the game is released, I’d very much like to include as many as possible when the gate reaches 1.0.

To that end, we’ve just sent out another reminder that it’s time to get back to us with your requests. If you know you’ve backed one of the tiers where item design was a reward – please check your mail!

Honestly, I have to say that overall it’s been great collaborating with our supporters to make their ideas a reality. I don’t think it’s too common for game developers to have the opportunity to work so “hands on” with their audience, and we’ve certainly enjoyed the chance to involve you guys in the creative process. We hope that the designs created by our supporters will add to the richness of the game and it’s definitely gonna be interesting to see if anyone can guess which items are collaborations with backers and which ones are not!

As for the actual production of the game, this week’s focus has mainly been the cutscene where the final boss dies. We’ve gone through a bunch of iterations in terms of dialogue and timings, and we’re getting close to being satisfied with the whole thing.

We’ve also added some new effects and NPC animations for the final cutscenes:

This week it’s back to focusing on finishing up that final boss fight. As you all know by now, the true final boss is none other than Zhamla, so of course he needs a few more animations to wrap things up!

We’ve also spent this week fixing bugs, working on the “battle won” cutscene for after the fight and doing the foundation work for a small post-credit scene for those that manage to beat the game and get the true ending…. :)

I’ve also completed most of the pages for the production book! I’m going to wait until we have finished the game properly before I write the rest, in order to add some comments on how things went post-release.

In the meantime, I’ll be focusing my time on the visual novel and sketching ideas for possible upcoming projects once this release is all done. Pretty surreal to start to think about what comes next after all this time!