The work on the Gold Charges continues! There are now prototypes available for all skills, but a lot of them still need to have their animations polished so we’ll save showing those off for later. The Whirlslash gold charge has been more or less finished up though, and here you can see a gif of what that looks like in action:

Click to view full size!

You guessed it! Once you unlock the Gold charge, you can now move while using it! Pretty epic, no? The damage might be sliiightly unbalanced in this GIF tho.. ;)

Vilya has returned to working on the next Temple area, which in reality is more of a village. That means the future will hold lots of houses! Here’s the interior of two, with progress videos to go with them:

Click to view full size!

Click to view full size!

Now, no village is complete without people that live there, right? Here’s a couple of portraits of people that you will be able to meet, one an adventurer exploring the depths of Mt:Bloom, the other an inhabitant of the village itself:

Also, as Teddy’s properly adding the skills into the game engine, it’s not very uncommon for the animations to go through some iterations. The gold charge for the Ice Spike ended up needing some extra pazazz, as the old animation looked a bit to funky on it’s own. Below is a (hopefully) more intimidating ice spike, couple with some stray left over animations for the Frosty Friend!

As we’ve been developing this game, all of us have improved a lot. Today, both the graphical assets and the way we handle things programming wise are much different than they were when we first started out. Because of that, we thought it would be a good idea to have Vilya rework some of the early graphics so they’d fit in better with the later stuff! After all, we want any newcomers who purchase the game after it goes live on Steam Early Access to get the best first impression possible.

So, here are some things she’s been working on this week, in regards to that (most of these updates are actually already live and running in the Frontline beta, so go ahead and check them out):

First up – all houses in Startington have been updated as can be seen above! We’re gonna color correct them a bit in the next patch, making them slightly darker so they won’t pop as much against the background.

Almost all fences in the game have been or will be updated as well. These new ones are, like the houses, basically cleaned up versions with slightly different colors than their old counterparts.

Same goes for the wood! The old versions were kind of green and messy-looking, which has been corrected as of the latest patch.

The well also got a small correction: the wood is a bit cleaner and has been color corrected, and the bucket has been redesigned.

The suspension bridges have been updated as well: cleaner lines, fewer colors, less sickly green hues.

The bridge where the fisherman is had to be updated as well – it simply wasn’t safe for him to stand on such a moldy, worn down old thing with stray pixels everywhere! Now he can feel safe while awaiting his next catch.

As of the latest patch, there’s also a bunch of new items and two new character portraits to be found:

Meanwhile, Fred has been working on finishing up those last Gold Charge Spells! Here’s another one, the earth spike now turned into a giant hand:

The Seasonne patch hit the Frontline beta on Steam on Saturday, and received a patch of hotfixes today! As we’ve talked about in previous blog posts, the patch adds a bunch of content to the Winterland, making it feel more alive. If you haven’t played it yet, you should check it out and tell us what you think!

If you’ve forgotten how to change to the Frontline version, check out this thread.

Santa needs halp!

All the new content gave Vilya a ton of portrait work, so that’s where a good chunk of her efforts have been directed the past week! Here are some of the massive amount of portraits she made:

Meanwhile, Fred has jumped back into creating the animations we’re going to need for all the gold skill charges! Below are all the different casting effects of the Berserker Mode!

 

Soon, the day will come when Teddy shall put all these new skill charges into the game… (but first, he must add Steam achievements and Arcade Mode online leaderboards!)

This week we’ve focused most of our attention on breathing some life into Seasonné, also known as the Winterland. Besides progressing the main quest, there hasn’t been much to do besides bashing Frostlings and Yetis. We’ve tried to change this by adding 4 new side quests, as well as opening up all cave areas for you guys to explore.

We’re aiming to update the Frontline beta during the weekend with the new quests, paired together with some balancing changes to Arcade mode. As always, we would love your feedback on everything and anything so keep your eyes open later during the week!

Beyond Seasonné, Vilya has worked diligently to finish up the last missing portraits for the final cut scenes of the Temple of Seasons. This should (which often means it’s not) be the last of them from this area. Hurray!

She’s also kept up with the Achievement icons from last week:

Fred has had a break from the skills this week and been mainly busy with animations for the new side quests. Below are a few of said animations, including one were Santa brutally dies from eating a Christmas cookie laced with nitroglycerin (or does he??).

And wait… Who are these tiny guys?!

There’s only one way to find out… Finish the quest next weekend! :D

This week we’ve got some news!

First of all, we’ll very soon (first thing when we wake up tomorrow, actually) update the game with the new floors for Arcade Mode, for you guys to test! With this update we’re also adding a slight change to how Arcade Mode works, where you’ll receive a health potion instead of a health orb should you reach a new floor with full health! The health orbs will also remain after leaving the first room, so you can go back and collect it later :)

Secondly, a lot of you have been asking when the game will be available on Steam Early Access, and the answer to that is (hopefully) soon-ish! We have decided that it’s time we start getting that ball rolling, so we’re gonna focus on polishing the current content for an update of the Stable beta and create some fancy art for the various banners that appear on Steam. As soon as we’re done with that, the game should finally(!) be ready for early access over on Steam as well!

Now, for the actual ‘recap’ part of this blog, here’s some skill animations that Fred has been working on:

Vilya has kept working on the Time Travel Town in Mount Bloom, and this time around there’s a bunch of portraits of people you’ll meet there:

Videos of her working on these, as well as other parts of the area, can be viewed over on her personal Secrets of Grindea-themed YouTube account!

Now, back to work! See you next week :)

The past couple of weeks, Teddy have been working on bringing the new areas into Arcade Mode, and is finally closing in on finishing up (our hopes are to patch in the four new floors before the end of the week)!

We’re doing our best to find that sweet spot of being infuriatingly difficult, yet fair, and also creating interesting traps and compositions for the different areas. Beta testing these new floors is a bit of a challenge, seeing as only a handful of our glorious beta testers have reached the end of the current content, but eventually we’ll nail it down!

Meanwhile, Fred has been hard at work in the skill factory, creating new charges for all the spells! Below are new animations for the Summon Plant and Blade Flurry spells.

Vilya’s off doing her own thing, creating the environments for the next “temple”, a village with a twist on time! For those interested in her work (who isn’t?!), you should check out her blog, where she’s begun posting some sweet time lapses of her workflow!

Here’s her latest one for example, where she’s pimping out one of the early village maps:

A feature that has been missing since we first introduced charge levels to the skills have been the Gold Charge. Since most players wouldn’t reach high enough levels to unlock those we’ve been prioritizing pretty much everything else over them up until now.

However, we are reaching a point in the game where the Gold Charges are becoming relevant during the average playthrough. Introducing a new charge level will bring with it a lot of balancing and tweaking, so we decided the timing felt just right to start the rather massive task of finally implementing them properly into the game.

Because of the fast paced nature of the combat in Secrets of Grindea, we can’t go full “Knights of the Round” in terms of extravagant effects (even though we want to, deep down). We want to amp up the graphics of course, but still keep the fluidity of casting the skills. It will be an interesting balancing act going forward, but we’re confident we’ll be able to combine the best of both worlds!

Below are some “soon to appear in the game, coupled with some dope particle effects and other stuff to make them feel even cooler”-animations made by Fred during the past week. Namely for the Ice Spike, Heroic Slam and Insect Swarm.

BTW, if you’ve always had this cool idea of what your favorite spell’s Gold Charge would look like, or how it’d work, feel free to leave any suggestions in this thread on the forums, and we’ll check it out! :)

Meanwhile, Vilya has started sketching what will eventually become the next temple – which isn’t much of a temple at all, but rather a hidden village! Here are some of her early sketches, featuring a set of houses:

The village will be hidden inside a mountain and will be somewhat inspired by ancient Asia visually. More artwork from this village will be available next week! :)

For quite a while we’ve been going full steam ahead on the main story, focusing all of our effort on the Temple of Seasons. With the temple being more or less completed, we are taking a short vacation from Story Mode to focus on its beloved sibling: Arcade Mode!

Vilya has been busy puzzling together an array of graphical assets for Teddy to use for the upcoming Temple of Season-floors. The Season Change orbs will make the perfect Arcade Mode hazards, setting the stage for some beautiful chaos! 

While Vilya have had her hands full with the temple-floors, Teddy have been making sure that the Winterland-floors are up to par with the previous ones. Below are a somewhat graphical WIP of a Toy Factor puzzle turned Arcade Mode challenge!

While it’s not exclusively Arcade Mode, Fred (who’s finally back after his trip to Berlin, wooho!) have been in the animation workshop, crafting a bunch of new weapons for you Collectors to farm your hearts out with!

 

I know a lot of you will be disappointed that the spear isn’t being handled like an actual spear. Since introducing a whole new weapons class would be too much work at this point in time, swinging spears like an uneducated fool will have to do for now.

We’ve tried to compensate this by creating the first Twohanded Staff (2H-weapons that boost MATK), something that have been requested for a while!

We kicked off last week by doing a sneaky little update of the Frontline beta, containing the final boss fight of the Temple of Seasons. While it isn’t 100% ready in terms of graphics and cut scenes, we really wanted some insight in how people felt the fight played. We are reaching a point in the game where the difficulty is starting to really kick off, which makes the beta testers more important than ever. Making a boss or area hard is easy — making it fair and fun is the tricky part!

Anyway! With some much appreciated help from our loyal beta testers, old and new alike, we got a good dose of feedback and critique. The general vibe was positive, so with some more tinkering we’re hoping we’ll end up with a boss you’ll enjoy getting your asses kicked by!

Vilya took the time to clean up the room of the boss battle, pulling her (presumably) last straw to the second dungeon-stack!

While not there just yet, Fred is nearing the finish line on his end as well. With all of the actual battle stuff for the boss out of the way, the cut scene animations took center stage!

So while Fred and Teddy have been working on the final touches of the temple, Vilya have kept speeding ahead and started working on the next big area of the game. Still nameless, we’ve settle upon a Desert (with some twists!) that will be the connecting area to the fourth dungeon. Below are some prop and color testing:

Now we know, desert areas in RPG don’t generally tend to be anyone’s favorite. Heck, even 2/3 of Pixel Ferrets hate deserts in RPGs with a deep and devoted passion. Therefore, we’re more determined then ever to infuse it with as much care and love as humanly possible to make it stand out! With some added Pixel Ferrets magic, we might end up with the first ever enjoyable RPG desert. Fingers crossed!

This week has been all about cleaning up and finishing some of the different areas and encounters we’ve been working on these last few weeks.

The hydra battle is more or less only missing some final polish and a good dose of balancing and tweaking (something Vilya talks a bit more in depth about here) before we can call it done. We’ve learned over the course of the production though that the saying “The last 10% takes 90% of the time” rings true a lot of the time so we might not be at the finish line just yet, but we’re certainly getting there!

The past week have also been host for the Alumni Days! The Alumni days is a week of lectures and workshops by former students at the University of Gotland, our old school, all of which are working in the game industry in some way.

Teddy was invited to do a lecture and a panel, and all three of us were all invited to a fancy three course dinner as well as a party with both former and present students! We don’t tend to go out that much so we had a blast just talking games and design with other like minded people.

Besides all that, it’s been business as usual. Fred has kept working on animations for the temple while Vilya still is locked up tight in the portrait factory!