The beta update is up and running! Earlier during the week we sent away a big batch of beta keys to people signed up in our beta thread. If you’ve received a key you will be notified by mail.

We would also like to ask all newly dubbed beta testers to join the beta group and write your first impressions about the game! Your feedback helps us push the game further and keep improving it, so we truly value it. You have received information about how to join the group in the beta invitation mail.

With that said, we are going to focus on going through feedback and maintaining the beta while we take a bit of vacation time while the summer still lingers around here in Sweden. We’re going to recharge out batteries for a short while before we begin our climb towards the next big milestone!

A mega hamburger dinner is a good step one in the recharging process!

Keep having an awesome summer guys!

Hello guys! This week we’ve been busy finishing off the last remaining things in and around the dungeon. There are still some tweaks we’d like to add, but for now the dungeon is complete and ready to be tested!

This means that at long last, it’s time to update the beta! To celebrate this new patch we’re gonna invite a bunch of new people that get to try the game out – hopefully you’re among them! :)

The beta should be uploaded before the end of the week, and invites will be sent shortly after. If you haven’t signed up for beta access yet, be sure to post a message in this thread over at Desura to have a chance of being selected!

Now, we’re also moving on with more stuff for the winter fields which we’ve shown you previously! It won’t be included in this patch, but here’s another sneak peek of what you’ll find there:

Yeti death animation!

A special attack which will freeze you if you’re not careful!

A bunch of random drops

One of the secrets we’re most excited about adding to Grindea are the microbosses!

Microbosses are unique enemies that are usually related to the normal mobs in some way, but are way stronger. A tiny taste of this that’s currently in the beta is the white rabby. 

He might look cute and fluffy, but he’s the #2 cause of death in the game

Most players enjoy the addition of the white rabby, but he’s not quite as interesting as we want most microbosses to be, since he has no extra moves except some tweaked base properties (more mobility, more health, more damage, more stun resistance etc).

During the past week, one of Fred’s tasks has been to create a microboss we hope will be a better example of what we want to achieve: the Frostling Leader!

 

The Frostling Leader will have a moveset inspired by the two regular Frostling monsters, the melee Rogue and the ranged Scoundrel. Our hope is to have it nearly as interesting to fight as a full fledged miniboss, but with way less workload regarding the visual design. A win-win situation if we ever heard of one!

As the game has grown larger, the need for a quicktravel has become more and more apparent. We’ve always planned to include such a system, and since you need it to travel back and forth to the flying temple now was the time to actually implement it!

In order to get a neat looking and functional interface for the quick travel, we also needed another detail we’ve postponed for a long time: the World Map!

At the start of the game, you can only see Startington and Pillar Mountains, but as you visit new areas the fog disappears and you can view them on your World Map. During your travels, you’ll also run into so-called Teleport Plates.

By stepping on such a plate, you’ll activate it, adding a new quicktravel node to your map! Afterwards, you can visit the map to create a teleportation field to that location.

You can’t teleport at any time, though. For example, you can’t teleport when stuck in a challenge or fighting a boss!

One of our game’s big selling points have been a lively atmosphere made possible through tons of flavor animations. In that spirit, the snowlands have been coming to life with some new NPC animations over the past week!

Santa isn’t quite santa unless he’s laughing

Scotty is shoveling an impressive amount of snow outside of his cabin

You can make the world come alive with other things than just NPCs!
Squirrels, for example

Apart from this, Fred also recorded a short video explaining the role of Puzzle Skills in Secrets of Grindea!

This week, the Winterland enemies have spent some quality time in the animation workshop!

The Yeti, which still doesn’t have a proper name, have learned how to walk! We can’t wait to get this marshmallow bear walking around in the game, smashing players to left and right!

Besides our furry friend, a RPG favorite makes another appearance. The Blue Slime are a more dangerous version of their distant cousin, the Green Slime. The major things that sets them apart is the Blue Slimes ability to turn into a sharp, icicle-like shape whenever it attacks.

The Slime family tree is one of the more diverse in all of Grindea, so expect to run into one or two more relatives to these guys. They should not be taken lightly, despite their status as “n00b mobs” within most RPGs. Every breed of Slime has their own special attacks, so beware!

This week, we’re continuing our efforts to put new skills into the game! This time we’ve been focusing on the one-handed weapon skills, and put together two entirely new ones for you to try out!

The first one is a spell which summons shadow clones of yourself who will follow you around and deal damage to whatever you hit with your normal attacks.

Click for animated gif!

On level one you’ll get a single clone which deals 33% of your normal attack damage, and at level two you’ll gain another clone which deals 25% of your damage. The spell type works pretty much like the Cloud Strike spell for now: after you cast it once it reserves part of your mana pool and stays active until you cast it again.

The second spell is an area of effect spell in which your character channel his or her inner power and deal damage to all enemies within a target circle.

Clickety-click!

As you level this skill you’ll notice that the target circle becomes bigger and that you’ll be able to hit the enemies within it an additional number of times.

Next up we hope to finally finish the dungeon, so get ready for some epic boss battle(s)!

Another week has past by with some decent progress being made! Teddy has been away to act as yet another judge, this time for the Swedish Game Awards which we happened to win last year. Best of luck to all the participants!

Vilya has been busy adding more touch ups to Mount Bloom. Below is a picture of an area that will hold one of the many side quests Mount Bloom has to offer. Crystal mining is risky business, even for seasoned Collectors!

Fred has been working on animations for a couple of upcoming skills, mainly from the One Handed Weapons-tree. Below are some effects for one of the new skills, at the moment named “Shadow Clone“.

We’ll hopefully be able to talk more in depth about them next week when they’ve been properly implemented into the game.

As some of you noticed, last week there was no recap, due to us all being invited to serve as judges at Gotland Game Conference, an event held each year at our old university! We all had a blast, but we couldn’t work that much on the game and as such didn’t feel we had enough to show. A huge congratulations to the well-deserved winners of the “Pwnage Award”, the first year students who made CoBots!

Now we’re back in the groove and working again, so here’s a taste of what we’re doing!

First off, since we’ve made a bunch new magic spells, we felt we needed to expand on the weapon skills as well. First in line is a two handed weapon skill which has been temporarily (and creatively) dubbed throw!

As always, click the image for an animated gif!

The reason for adding the throw skill was to add the potential of using ranged attacks with weapons. Currently it doesn’t have quite as long range as some of the spells, but it’s enough to open up some strategical options. The further you throw the weapon, the greater the damage will be when it hits. We’re toying with different ways to use the fact that you actually throw away your weapon!

It’s a pretty powerful spell considering it slices through all enemies in its path, so we’re considering having a significant mana cost that can be partially refunded by picking up the weapon again, or maybe even disabling the weapon from being used again until some time has passed or the player collects the weapon!

This could create some interesting gameplay, but at the same time we have to be careful not to cause unnecessary confusion or frustration. Expect this skill to have evolved quite a bit before final release!

In the meantime, Vilya has revisited the Winterland area and added a bunch of new props and decorations! Here’s a shot of some tribal inspired environment made to match the Frostling enemy which Fred’s been animating over the past few weeks.

Time for another recap! This week we’ve been finishing off the boss, which is now playable in single player! Still no pics though, no spoilers here. What we can show, however, is this:

Some cute idle animations made for the enemy from last week, the Frostlings! As you can see they have already selected their weapons of choice, which tells a bit of how they work in the game. As you may have guessed, the fellow with the snowball is a ranged version, while the one with the stick will fight you up close.

We’ve also decided to make a change in the game as you know it right now: We’re removing the health potions!

Why? Because they simply didn’t contribute that much to begin with! In our game you respawn pretty much directly where you died, so dying isn’t a terrible thing. Having a bunch of health potions in the game means you’ll die less, but does that really matter when your death isn’t that much of a punishment? The only place where the health pots would make a difference is in boss fights and challenges where you’ll have to replay the entirety of the fight when you die.

Edit: To clarify, you don’t respawn on the spot when you die, you respawn at the start of the current map with everything reset. The thing that killed you, and everything before it, will be alive and at full health!

Lastly, the skill needed to use health potions isn’t proportional to the significance they have in battle. If using all of your health pots give you the equivalent of your Max HP, then using potions effectively doubles your survivability.

This also means that a player who forgets to use them (many do) will have a fight that’s twice as difficult! The balance issues this creates seems a bit unnecessary for something that isn’t exactly a part of the core gameplay.

Seeing it in this light also makes you realize how dull it truly is to go back and forth to town just to stack up on some more pots. What do you guys think?

Now, as you may notice, the blog looks a bit empty today! That’s because Vilya has been busy travelling to Sweden from her secret lair in the Netherlands and therefore hasn’t been able to polish anything enough to show in the blog. She’s still working on the cave system, which we’ll see more of in the near future, as well as some details in the winter area that are yet to be made.

The reason she’s coming to Sweden at this time is because the entire Pixel Ferrets crew has been invited to judge this year’s GGC competition where the students present their game projects. The conference is held in Visby, Gotland on June 4th-5th. We expect it to be a blast, and is also a nice opportunity for the three of us to hang out face to face for a couple of days.

Will we see any of you there?