MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!

We’re just dropping in to wish you all a merry christmas and let you know that a new patch is out on frontline as of last week! The patch notes can be accessed here, but in short it allows you to play all three endings: one for Arcade Mode and two for Story Mode.

With this patch out of the way, we’re going to go home to visit some family and try to relax for a bit before we get back to preparing for the actual release of this game. We’ll be back in the office on the 8th of January, which means the next blog post will be available on the 15th. In the meanwhile, please enjoy the latest patch and let us hear all of your feedback :)

Again, we wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new patch year!

-“Hey everyone!! Vilya caught a cold this weekend, so to cover for her the side-kick-team has assembled to present this week’s blog post!”

-“We’re very grateful to Pixel Ferrets for trusting us with this great and noble responsibility!”

– “…”

-“Anyway, let’s dive straight into it! First, let’s have a look at this amazing picture of… of…”

-“Oh my GODDESS!! It’s gonna be spring in Santa Fae?!!”

-“…how can you not know these things?”

-“Wow, it looks truly beautiful! Great news, indeed! I wonder if that poor, frozen fellow has thawed yet?”

-“Only one way to find out.”

-“I can’t believe Santa Fae got a makeover… and in my season, too! I’m so happy!”

-“Alright. Moving on:”

-“Wow. Amazing. Moving clouds.”

-“I must say that they really add some nice depth to the scene!”

-“…ah, it’s gonna be spring in my little cozy fairytale town…”

-“Er… well, let’s have a look at a whole new place now:”

-“The Collector HQ cafeteria has finally opened! I wonder who we’ll find in there?”

-“Spoiler alert: no-one new.”

-“There are other exciting things than new faces, you know! Having a few close friends can be better than having many shallow relationships.”

-“Yeah! And speaking of good friends, take a look at this power-couple!”

-“…are these guys even Collectors at this point? All I ever see them do is clean up.”

-“Taking care of our surroundings is a noble task!”

-“…is no-one going to compliment me on my great segway about friends?”

-“No. And it’s called a segue.”

-“…wait, really?!”

-“…really?!”

-“Really. And finally, here are some more stuff Fred has scribbled together:”

-“Okay, that’s enough for today. Let’s round off this madness by mentioning that tomorrow (Tuesday), or the day after, apparently the Ferrets are hoping to release the latest version on the Frontline beta branch. Will they make a deadline for once? Stay tuned to find out!”

-“Of course they will! Stop being a negative nancy!”

-“I agree with Naniva on this one! From what I can tell, it is looking remarkably likely to play out as they plan!”

-“Well folks, Team Wholesome has weighed in on the matter, and with that we bid you all farewell and wish you a decent week.”

-“No, we wish them an amazing week!”

-“A fantastically splendid week, in fact!”

-“A sparkling, magical miracle of a week!”

-“A week of such unimaginable fortune and bliss that conveying it in text is nigh impossible!”

-“…”

Hello everyone! Before jumping into this week’s update, I’m happy to say that Teddy is doing fine and is back at work as of this week! :)

Now, it’s time to summarize another week and show more progress as we near the release of Secrets of Grindea. Let’s begin with a little menu revamp – remember the ‘character cards’ that greet you as you decide which of your characters you wanna play as? Here’s a reminder for those of you that haven’t been in-game for a while:

With the game nearing release we’re trying to clean up as many places as possible that cause issues for game translations. In several languages the font size needs to be quite a lot bigger than what the graphics were initially designed for, which has already lead to quite a few redesigns throughout the game. The character cards is yet another example of something that’s been incompatible with translations, and so we felt it’s high time we correct that.

Without further ado, here’s the new version:

Not only is this new version compatible with the translation suite, it’s also – in our opinion – more visually pleasing, with more graphics and less text. The background indicates where your character has its current savepoint, rather than it being stated in text, and along with your completion percentage you get a little progression bar.

As some spawn points were missing background images, Vilya made a bunch for the missing ones as well:

Can you tell which one belongs to which area or part of the game?

Meanwhile, Fred’s been cleaning up a bunch of effect animations and made some sweet water animations (which are tile-able!):

Finally, remember those starry card pieces from last week’s update? Have a look at what those look in their proper setting:

Another week with lots of stuff happening, some good and some bad. To get the bad news out of the way, Teddy started feeling bad early last week and was rushed to the hospital after a fainting episode. There it was was confirmed that he’s got a pretty bad case of covid19, so he’s been on bed rest since then. At present we’re not sure when he will be fit enough to get back to work, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed and press on in the meantime.

So this week Vilya has been checking off a bunch of smaller things we felt needed fixing. Among these were adding missing expressions for some of the characters, editing the colouring for the math puzzle in the same area, and adding the graphics for a hat you’ll be able to get after finishing the game:

She also made some smaller adjustments to a bunch of portraits that were broken in various ways (such as messed up colours or them being too big for the dialogue box), and added some additional decorations to a couple of places. Below you can see what the small desert cottage will look like after completing a certain hidden quest, and some greenery added to the area to the right of the farm in Evergrind West, where we first thought we’d have some sort of farming minigame which we ended up scrapping – meaning it looked a bit too empty for something that isn’t going to be used in any way:

Meanwhile, Fred’s been working on animating the starry cards sky that will feature in one of the very last cutscenes of the game:

…For what is endgame in any epic jRPG-inspired game without a trip to the stars? :)