As the title says, we’re back, and we’ve survived our first week back at the office after the holidays! Both Vilya and Teddy suffered from the flu over the christmas break, but now they’re excited to be back and work on the game :)

So, this week Fred has been working on a bunch of NPCs for Mount Bloom! I’m sure you’ll all be very excited to meet these guys:

Meanwhile, Vilya has focused on reworking & adding details to the first time travel map, as we’re drawing ever closer to actually start implementing it! Here’s some video coverage of that as well:

Here’s the lower part of the map, the way it looks right now (more work incoming):

She also threw in a portrait of one of the miners Fred made (shown in the last blog post):

And what about Teddy? Well, he’s been working on a new type of puzzle (kind of), that you’ll be facing up against in Mount Bloom, before you reach the time travel area! Next week we’ll show you some prototypes of that, so stay tuned :)

Wow! I can’t believe we’re on our 200th weekly recap already! Time flies so fast…

Last week we launched a tiny frontline patch with some use experience upgrades. Among other things, we added a temporary aid to those who have experienced one of the bugs where either their character or their world progress gets deleted as the result of a crash. We’re still not sure what exactly causes these bugs (and we’re doing our best to figure it out!), but we’ve now implemented a system that notices if your savefile has been corrupted and automatically reverts to your last backup (which are added by the games every now and then):

As you can see, it also lets you know how much progress you’ve lost, and tells you where to find the corrupted file, which gets saved in a different location. Sending it to us could help us find out what causes these corruption bugs, so please do if you see this message pop up!

Another thing we’ve been working on is to improve certain on-death bag tips for the game over screen. Currently most of them are random insults that do little to help your efforts, but sometimes (and after this patch, more often) Bag actually gives some useful advice on how to beat the challenge you’re facing:

Unfortunately, it’s quite easy to miss which ones are actual tips, so we’re also adding a bit of clarity to that. Basically, a bold “Listen up!!” (as seen below) will appear, accompanied by some shaking to catch the players attention. Hopefully that makes it stand out a bit more than regular bag commentary!

Meanwhile, Vilya has been working on a bunch of different things. For one, she’s been adding some details to the first map of Mt Bloom, in the shape of a ruined bridge with some statues that will set the theme of what’s to come later on. Here’s the GIF of her progress:

And here’s the final piece of the GIF wip, as well as some additional details added afterwards:

She’s also been playing around with adding stone tablets next to the doorways, in order to make it more clear that they lead somewhere:

We’re still thinking about other ways to add more clarity to which parts of the walls contain a door, such as light effects and the like, but we’ll see where that all ends!

To end this post, there’s also some drops, the portrait of a cave dweller related to the Frostlings of Seasonne, and a couple of animations:

See you next week! :D

As you may already know, the festival patch is finally live, and if you haven’t checked it out already, you definitely should go do so in the Frontline Beta! :D

We also released the Original Soundtrack a few days ago, since a lot of you were asking for it! It currently contains 31 songs from Story Mode + 6 Arcade Mode Remixes, and will be updated as new songs get added to the game :)

Here’s the link to the OST on Steam!

Since a new patch often means new bugs, Teddy has been on bug hunting duty while Fred & Vilya moved on to do other things!

For Vilya, that meant doing a whole lot of different tasks, including creating a new portrait and a bunch of new hats:

Fred, meanwhile, has started animating some of the new enemies you’ll be facing in the next area: Mt.Bloom! As they’re still WIP at this stage, though, here’s a mix of some of the cleaned up animations from the flashback cutscene:

Right now, Teddy is busy prototyping the next boss fight, which we’ll hopefully be able to show some stuff from in next week’s recap! For now, here’s another sneak peek of who you’ll be facing:

Okay, so it’s finally time to wrap up all this festival business! The patch should be live within the next couple of day (make sure to change your beta to frontline if you’re interested in helping us beta test this – more info on that can be found here), so we’re finally starting to move on doing other stuff. First up though, some last minute additions:

A fourth cutout has been added, so those 4 people parties can each try on a new look!

We’ve also added a photographer who takes a screenshot of everyone behind the cutouts, 5 seconds after you ask her to! Here’s her sprite (made by Fred), and portrait (made by Vilya):

The fishing mini-game has been added, and it’s hosted by none other than Haddock the fish salesman:

The mini-boss encounter has been rebalanced and improved, including the Queen Bee having her own epic summoning animation, for when she summons a couple of bee friends (scared of all the bees you’ll be fighting yet?)…!

And finally, some new facial expressions as well as a brand new portrait has been added:

And with that, the festival is officially wrapped up! *phew*

Now, on to the “moving on” part of this blog, in which Vilya adds another collector portrait to the time travel crowd and has been playing around with adding more greenery and flowers to Mt. Bloom:

….I guess that’s not really that much of having moved on, is it..? Oh well. NEXT WEEK, THOUGH! Next week, we’ll have moved on for sure! No more festival stuff, I, uh, promise! ……Right guys? Right?!

You heard it, there’s one more festival post, but this could be the last one. What remains now is mainly for Teddy to put everything together, so hopefully we’ll have a prototype of the festival up and running sometime next week for our frontline users! :)

So what have we been up to this week? Well, first of all, Vilya finished the treasure cave you saw a preview of last week:

She also made a bunch of new expressions for characters appearing at the festival:

As well as creating a little space for candy, where she’ll sell candies to festival visitors:

She and Teddy also started working on getting the mini-games in place, meaning some simple interfaces:

As you might guess, this particular mini-game involves hitting a button at the right time (when the arrow is near ‘max’), in order to hit the machine as hard as possible!

We also added Oak to the festival, along with some pets to entertain the kids of Evergrind City:

And we’re also working on preparing the city for the festival, meaning once you get back to town after beating the Temple of Seasons, there will be some hints that something is about to happen:

We’re also planning on adding some additional NPCs working on getting this in order, which Fred is currently working on in fact!

Speaking of Fred, he has of course been busy doing flavor animations for festival goers as well! Here’s a few:

See you again next week, with a post that hopefully will have some non-festival stuff! :)

Yes, it’s another week of festival stuff! And most likely there will be at least one more before we’re completely done :)

Vilya has started working on the treasure cave, where the flashback cutscene involving your mother Charlotte and the dragon will take place:

The cave will be filled with gold and treasures of various kinds, and this here is only the WIP of the left part of it – in the end it’ll be twice as big!

We also decided (thanks to Owns suggestion on the forums), to add cutouts to the festival, which you can stand behind:

In the end our idea is that you’ll be able to ask Luke & Marino (whom you’re at the festival with) to stand behind them as well, and we’re currently looking into the possibility of having a cameraman who will create a screenshot for you after you press a button. Not 100% sure if that will work yet though, but we think it’d be pretty fun!

Other than that, a lot of new expressions have been made in order for the characters to express the right feeling(s), both in the flashback cutscene (young dad!) as well as in and around the festival:

More to come next week!

Finally, Fred has started working on another mini-boss battle that will take place near the festival in time, and I’m sure you’ve been missing these guys:

Excited yet? Hang in there for a bit longer, the festival is just around the corner! :3

Hello everyone! Time for another weekly recap! :D This week we’ve mostly focused on the upcoming festival. Teddy has made a prototype for the bee mini-boss, which is coming along nicely (we’re inhouse testing it today, actually)!

The cutscenes that will start the whole thing off have been more or less completed, all we need now is a new background and to implement some minor animations. So that’s what’s Fred been up to – flavor animations for the cutscenes & festival:

Vilya has been making some additional festival decorations: a balloon- and popcorn stand! Here’s a video capture of her work on it:

The balloon stand will be further improved by Fred, who will make a special cluster of balloons surrounding it.

Other than festival stuff, Vilya has also been making more hats (among other things):

And there’s a new portrait of an ancient collector for the next temple, as well:

This week we’ll continue our struggle to get everything ready for the festival & everything that surrounds it. Stay tuned! :D

Finally, after such a long wait, the Translation Suite is officially live! This means that it’s now possible to download and use fan translations within the game, as pictured below:

All you need to do to access these is to go into “Options” in the Main Menu, and select “Browse Translations”. If you’re interested in making a translation of your own, there are instructions on how to do that in this post on the forums! :)

This patch also brought an addition to Arcade Mode in the form of the Mold Essence feature:

While the proper art isn’t implemented yet (there will be some color changes and the text will be centered properly), it definitely works and will allow you to spend those hard earned essences on new bragging rights style items!

Meanwhile, Vilya has been preparing facial expressions for the legendary cutscene, a mockup of Evergrind City by night (& festival!):

She’s also been updating the Shop titles, giving them a bit more personality and unique looks:

As for Fred, he’s moved on to creating animations for the festival and it’s mini games! Below is one odd-looking machine that you’ll be able to use once we get this darn cutscene out of the way ;)

Next week, Teddy will be working on the cutscene, Fred will make more animations for the Festival, and Vilya will all sorts of random things! Stay tuned ;3

This week Teddy spent finishing up the translation tool (finally!), which should go live in a few days! He’s now looking into starting up that cutscene business for real, just as Fred has finished his part of that job, giving him a ton of sketched out animations to work with.

Now, instead of cutscene things, Fred is working on a new mini-boss that you’ll have to face soon after the cutscene ends:

Yes, it’s a Queen Bee!! :D Do you feel the horror?!

Vilya, meanwhile, has been all over the place, starting off by creating an interface for Mold Essence in Arcade Mode, which allows you to turn essence into visual upgrades & housing items (among other things):

She then moved back to the time travel area, creating hats, masks, drops and portraits to fill the area with life & loot:

And that’s all for this week! Next up will be prototyping the cutscene, bug fixing the translation tool, and preparing Evergrind City for the next installment of the main story :)

We pushed out another update for the Frontline beta earlier during the week. It mostly contains minor changes and bugfixes, but also the long awaited Weapon & Shield style slots! You can read up about the changes more thoroughly over here.

While Teddy has put most of his efforts into the update, Vilya and Fred have been busy working on assets for the cutscene we talked about last week. We mentioned that the players mother Charlotte would make her first appearance in it, which means she needed a proper face!

Something that sets Charlotte apart from other NPC’s is that she’ll take on the same color palette as your own character. Vilya put together a ton of different hair and skin colors so we can mix and match it as we please!

Fred managed to finish up the spriting stage and dove head first into the animations for the scene.