Another week and lots of stuff happenings behind the scenes!

For starters, we’ve moved into a new office space, this time an open office style we share with a bunch of other developers and programmers of various kinds. It’s really nice to once more be around other creatives, something we missed since we went back to working from home during the pandemic. Here’s a little sneak peek of where we work now, note the Secrets of Grindea sign in the window:

In terms of work, there’s been a lot happening as well. The Zhamla battle is almost polished enough for some proper testing, so here’s another video showcasing that epic summon phase we hope will keep you on your toes:

Fred’s also been focusing on making a new laugh for the GUN-D4M version you meet in the final dungeon – before first and after below:

Meanwhile, Vilya has been playing through the game, adding 30+ more bugs and fixes to our “Ultimate Fix List”, as well as making new portraits for Sizou and six different iterations of a puzzle backround (we’ve finally settled for the one below):

So close now! Let’s keep going :D

Time for another weekly update on the grind on the final boss battle and the related cutscenes.

This week Fred has been making transitions between different Zhamla animations! Since we want the battle to feel quick and keep you on your toes, it’s important that Zhamla is able to change what he’s doing mid-animation as a response to what the player does. Normally, for any other mob, that just means we cut off the current animation and starting the next, but since Zhamla is one of the biggest sprites in the game that just ends up looking choppy in this case, unfortunately – and with this being the final battle, we definitely don’t want it to look choppy or weird in any way.

Here’s an example of what one such transition looked like before Fred added the bonus-animation:

And here’s what it looks like with his in-between animation added:

Another thing we’ve been working on is editing some of the attack effects to make sure it looks as good as possible. One such example is the spin, which originally looked like this:

Unfortunately we kind of realized it wasn’t nowhere as cool as any of the other spin-animations in the game, so we decided to remake it, using Luke’s spin as an inspiration:

We’ve also received one of the batches with sound effects needed for this final battle, but there’s still a bunch of things we need sounds for so we’re sending those requests over to our awesome sound effect master faRk as we speak.

Finally, we’re continuing to play through the game, adding those final bugs and wonky things to our list of things to fix before 1.0. While we’re finding a ton of stuff, most of them we’re OK with keeping in the game since they aren’t really all that bad, and the rest should be small and easy enough to fix. Onwards!

Another week gone and more boss work finished! This week we’ve been focusing on finishing up the summoning phase during Zhamla’s boss battle, which should (fingers crossed) be done now!

Fun fact, originally we didn’t plan on including Zhamla’s summons at all, but as usual we decided to spice things up by adding some extras to the battle. Also as usual, we’re really happy we did because it’s turned out pretty awesome and, in our opinion, made the battle a lot better.

For now, have a look at some of the recent animations for this phase:

Other than that, we’ve continued playing through the game, catching bugs and discussing what aspects we still want to improve upon. After all, once we hit 1.0 we want it to be the absolute best it can possibly be, a stance we’ve had since we began working on this game some ages past. We’re trying not to polish too much, though – don’t worry! But if there are quick and easy fixes that up the quality of the game significantly we’d be stupid not to consider them.

Okay, time to get back to that final playthrough! See you again soon :D

Hello everyone! It’s me, Vilya, back after taking a few days off to move houses – finally got the keys to a nice old apartment near my hometown. It’s gonna take some time to get it in shape but for now I have a table and a computer and that’s gonna be enough to get back to work :)

While I’ve been away Teddy and Fred have spent their time on two major things: iterating Zhamla’s boss battle and adding a little easter egg for those who explore the game a little bit after beating the final boss and achieving the true ending. Unfortunately this easter egg involves a massive spoiler, so we won’t be able to show any of it here – but I will say it involves a pretty sweet cutscene I think everyone will be excited to see… :)

As for the boss iteration, we have a bunch of videos to showcase what this phase of the Zhamla battle looks like right now:

We’ve basically added of changed a bunch of animations and timings, improved on effects and particles. I personally think this is starting to look pretty amazing! What do you guys think? :D

Eyooo! Fred here, once again standing in for the blogging duties! This time I feel even more unprepared than usual and since I’m not a natural writer in any shape or form, I’m just going to do sort of an animation dump of some random stuff I’ve been tinker with the last few weeks. Some are rendered versions of sketch animations that’ve been posted before, some are freshly made animations straight from the oven. Enjoy!

Frosty with some acrobatic moves! 

Frosty being sent into the shadow realm!

Cloudy doing cloud stuff!

A little lineup of Planty’s attack from first iteration to last!

Finally, some tasty, tasty rock particles!