Guys! I’m back~~ I (Vilya) took a few days off last week to spend with my family and recharge my batteries. It’s been great, and now I’m so pumped to get back to work! So pumped in fact, I got back one day early just to be able to write this post ;)

Unfortunately I haven’t prepared anything to show on the blog this time aside from having updated the FAQ on the main site with a bunch of new reoccuring questions + the removal of some old ones.

But don’t worry! Fred is cooking up animations like always, and while waiting for some graphics Teddy has taken the opportunity to do a little more work on the Housing (yes, it’s a feature that lives still!!)

He actually wrote a pretty long guest post about it over at my work blog, but to keep things brief in the recap, here’s how it currently looks:

We plan to release the housing into the game sometime after Tai Ming has been finished up.

Now, on to Fred’s animations – one of the last sets from the big worm battle!

Are you excited for this battle yet?! I know I am! Just gotta finish the rest of the Tai Ming 2nd zone backgrounds first, so I guess that’s what I’ll dive right back into now! See you next week~ :D

This week we’ve continued working on the interior of Tai Ming’s second zone. Vilya started with the Inn, making a Past and Present version of its first floor:

This past version of the floor will in time be filled with NPCs relaxing after a long day’s work, enjoying food and/or a drink! The present version, meanwhile..

…will house a fight! Which is the reason why we’ve removed some of the furniture, and made the tables lie on the floor (it’s usually better having less stuff blocking your way when you’re busy fighting).

We’ve also added another character, a scientist assistant whom you’ll meet in the Monkey lab:

Plus, some fixes here and there across the map:

Last but not least, Teddy and Fred have continued working on the worm boss, which is nearing a completed state gameplay-wise! Most of the graphics are still WIP, but here’s a taste of what our current inhouse prototype of this boss looks like:

And to end this post, here’s a few complimentary animations of the above boss, made by Fred:

Are you ready for some super early Monkey previews? Good, cause here they are:

So, this is a very early prototype! One thing that definitely will be changed is the actual throw, which is a bit too high. The Monkeys also shouldn’t turn into brawler bots as they attack you… ;)

The monkey has two attacks: it can hit you or it can throw another enemy at you. Each enemy it throws will have have a different kind of impact as it lands: the statue sends shockwaves in 4 directions, the plant releases a ton of seeds, and the thorn-worms will simply do a ton of damage!

Oh yeah, right now the thorn worm don’t have the proper sprite for when they’re carried, so they kind of look like silly Digletts getting carried around, but in the future they will be rolled up!

You might wonder why we didn’t implement this enemy before releasing the first zone, but the answer is simple: it doesn’t appear until you’ve completed a (mandatory) quest in the second zone :)

Aside from the Monkey prototyping, we’ve also worked a lot on the backgrounds of Tai Ming’s second zone! One important mechanic there is that you’ll be able to raise and lower the water levels, and in doing so things will, of course, change on the map. First thing we need to add is two different states of the water levels: one where they are low, and one where they are high. When the levels are low, you should be able to see some of the ground through the water, and when they are high, you won’t be able to access the lower area of the map:

In the future, there will be decorative water effects animated along all the edges as well, making the water feel more alive!

We’ve also started turning the Past version of the outdoor map into its ruined, present state:

A lot of things are still subject to change here! Lots of small details missing like no cracks on the roof of the house in the first image, and too much darkness in the hollow house in the second. There’s also a chance we’ll edit things as more interiors get added – certain things on the inside might change the way the outside looks, etc :)

Finally, here’s some more Thorn-Worm boss animations from Fred:

We’re back for another recap! In case you missed it, we already added a tiny patch to the Frontline beta, featuring some bug fixes but also a solution to a problem a lot of people have been having with the first zone!

I’m of course talking about the fact that it takes a while before you realize you can push the statue out of the way in the past! To, hopefully, solve this, we’ve added a couple of things that hopefully nudges you in the right direction:

First up, we added the above NPC, pushing a statue back and forth in the top part of the map. He is based off the stonecutter in Evergrind City (an ancestor, perhaps?), and speaking to him will further explain that the statues are light and movable!

We also added the remnants of the statue trail to the ground in the present, hoping that it will make players think about possible ways to get around the rubble:

A lot of you have already made it past this puzzle, so it’s gonna be a bit difficult to tell whether these additions actually help or not. Hopefully, once the temple launches on the stable beta, we’ll get some idea based on how many people ask how to get past the statues :)

Some other things we’ve been working on includes a bunch of hats:

The statue hat is already in the game, while the rest will be Arcade Mode rewards or found in the next map, where the monkey enemy will be introduced!

And speaking of the second map, work on it is progressing smoothly so far. Here’s the present, ruined version of an interior we posted before:

Fred, meanwhile, has started working on the next boss battle, which will take place in the next map as well! This features a giant worm, and here’s a little sneak peek of what that will look like, surrounded by its spawn:

This week we’ve continued on work on the first Tai Ming zone!

Remember this old ruin? In our first iteration, we wanted this place to be blocked off and unable to enter. Well… We changed our minds. Instead, we want something ‘useful’ to the story to be in here, as we, well, found it to be the best place for it. So! Time to add another interior, although this one does not exactly come with a lot of decorations:

After implementing this version to the game build, we felt like it was a bit too empty compared to the pretty crowded past version…

SO we thought we’d try adding some of the furniture, but old and broken due to the long time that’s passed, of course:

On a similar note, we wanted to change some things around in this room as well:

Instead of having the four chests intact in the present, we thought it would be cooler if one of them had fallen apart, and another was opened. Just to mix things up a bit and create more of a disordered feeling:

Next up! The old collector’s guild will be very much up and running in Tai Ming, and as such, what better way of showing their prowess than having collectors do all kinds of quests in and around the town? Of course, there aren’t exactly many fun quests for a random collector to do here, so some just have to do the boring things. Like painting fences:

Of course, even these lower ranking collectors need portraits as well:

…and a bored expression for good measure:

Also, Teddy made another time warp effect:

While we liked the older one, it almost felt too ‘fluid’ and unepic. With this new one, you really get the sense of zoning between two different maps. We also like how the world kind of melts away, although it was pretty cool how the old one kind of merged the worlds together as well. For now, we’re gonna stick with this new one, but we’ll see what we end up with in the end!

Speaking of Teddy, he has also started implementing multiplayer for this zone, so that’s getting us one step closer to releasing the first map on Frontline (though we still have some work to do)!

Finally, have some yummy animations from Fred:

And that’s all for this week! See you next time :)

This week we’ve continued developing and implementing the enemy lineup! After some extensive testing where we played around with many different combinations of the enemies, we realized something was missing from our lineup: a big threat which you’d have to deal with asap, who could also tank enough damage to stay around for a while.

Basically, everytime we added a Yeti for fun, things got more interesting!

Pretty much all of the enemies here have either AOE attacks or movement/attack patterns that need you to mind your position, and they’re not exactly super easy to hit – the worms are untargetable when they’re burrowing, the statues can’t get hit when they’re mid-air, and the plant thingies deal damage from kind of far away. So, for fun (and science) we tried adding heavier enemy types that could soak up the damage, and found the encounters became a lot more fun – especially with a super tank like the Yeti involved!

Since we didn’t wanna add the Yeti for real, we thought we’d come up with another enemy to serve a similar role. This is what we came up with:

We call this guy Echo of Madness, and he serves as an echo of Tai Ming’s violent past, where some really hardcore stuff went down! So, not only does he make our enemy encounters way more fun, he also helps establish the theme and feel of the dungeon overall.

The above GIF shows a super early WIP of his attack pattern – right now he only has one attack, which is a kind of dash. Our goal is for him to do a ton of damage if he actually hits you, and that he’ll follow you around more than the other enemies so you’ll kind of have to deal with him.

Here are a couple of more encounters where we used him:

Look how he’s chasing me away from the other enemies, and distracting me so I get hit by the burrowing worm! These fights definitely work a lot better with this guy around :)

In other news, there’s a lot of small fixes going on across the board. We’re finishing up the first Tai Ming zone for a frontline release, so these coming weeks will be all about polishing the little things, adding portraits and expressions to the remaining NPCs, adjusting the writing and fixing small stuff. Here’s a mix of what we’ve been up to!

First up, a new character that will be selling swords:

The left version of this portrait will feature the character in his slightly younger days, and the right one is for when you’ve progressed the story a bit, meaning a bunch of years have gone by in the past:

This guy got a little nose job:

We also we wanted to make the chest a bit different in the past than they are in the present. And we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if the chests used to be painted, and they’re brown nowadays because the colors faded over time and now everyone believes chests should be brown cause that’s how they’re used seeing them? Kind of like the ancient statues of our time: today we’re used to seeing white ancient statues with cut-off limbs, when in fact they used to be intact and actually fully painted in the old days!

Anyways, I made a bunch of suggestions, with the corresponding Collector Emblem to go with them (the far left one is the original chest):

We’re probably gonna go for the purple one, since we liked that one the best! We really liked the black and red ones as well, but we think it’s best to stick with one :)

Next up, adding a gate to the garden area…:

…and giving the old lady a watering can for her flowers:

And that’s all for the recap this week!

If you wanna see more random detail work, you can always check out my personal workblog at http://vilyaroo.blogspot.se/ where I post new Grindea stuff every Sunday-Thursday (cause regular weeks are not as cool). See you next time! :)

It’s officially a new week and time for a new recap! This one, I (Vilya) will do a bunch of portraits – there were a few that still needed to be made for the first Tai Ming zone, including a boss portrait which I recently finished:

Moving on from that, I’m getting back into finishing Tai Ming’s second zone!

Since the past version of the outdoors has been finished now, I thought it’s be fun to move on to creating interiors for a while! This one is for an old lady’s house, who happens to like flowers – which might have to do with how you’ll progress through this map in some way… :)

Last week we also finally began testing things in Zone01 for real! To begin with, here’s our current time-swap effect:

We’re still not 100% happy with this, and will try a few other things out as well. But for now it gives you an idea of how the area will transform from past to present, and the other way around!

We’ve also started prototyping the enemies in proper fights! Below is a makeshift encounter featuring each of our enemies except the monkey:

Still early days, and a lot of polish needed, but it’s definitely a start! Hopefully we’ll be able to come up with some cool combinations of enemy in different encounters as we continue to try things out.. :)

This week we’ve started getting back into the groove after being away for so long.

After checking things out again after such a long while, we noticed a few things that needed changing or improvement, so as I (Vilya) went back to work I dove straight into that.

First up, one of the NPCs that will play a kind-of important role in the dungeon. We felt she looked too young in the first version, and needed another, even older version for a later map where some time have passed:

For the first rework I just grayed out her hair and added a hint of wrinkle at her mouth, while the second, older version has lighter gray hair and wrinkles both near her mouth and around her eyes.

Next up, we wanted the ape house to look a bit stranger than the rest of the houses, so as a first step I added a bunch of different-looking chimneys, indicating this house is a little more advanced than the rest. We also have plans for Fred to add some cool stuff to the house, such as a water wheel or something similar (plus he might animate the chimneys as well), so I think it’ll look pretty cool in the end:

I also made another prop to decorate Tai Ming’s second zone, a stack of barrels:

Since me and Teddy went to Stockholm unexpectedly and left Fred to his own devices for a bit more than a week, it was high time to get together at our favorite fast food place and make a new plan for some upcoming Tai Ming things, including the next upcoming BOSS fight!

This boss is based on the enemy seen above, a cave worm of sorts. Only it’ll be a loooot bigger!

The worm will have 3 main attacks, which are detailed in Swedish (and masterfully illustrated) in the image below:

Attack #1: The worm dives underground, leaving part of his body visible while he digs his way ahead. He’ll then surface and dive again, kind of like a dolphin, only every time he surfaces more of his body will be visible. You’ll take damage both from the worm diving onto you, but also from his spiked body if you touch it. However, you can still hit him while he does this, so if you’re careful you can get some nice damage in during this attack!

Attack #2: The worm surfaces head first, and spits a bunch of the regular enemy worms at you. These will damage you on impact, and will bounce once on the floor before they resume the regular enemy worm-pattern and become an additional obstacle on the playfield.

Attack #3: The worm uses his tail to whip you, dealing damage if you get hit!

Special: We’re not 100% sure about this yet, but hopefully it’ll be cool! So, after you’ve dealt enough damage, the worm will summon another worm to the playfield, making the challenge twice as hard! Double the boss, double the fun, right…? :)

Some people have suggested instead of adding another worm to the mix, we should split the current worm into two. I definitely like the idea myself, but we haven’t discussed the suggestion as a team yet. Would be cool to make it happen, though! :)

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Now, these recaps aren’t the same without ending with a bunch of Fred’s stuff, so here’s the guard(s) that will patrol Tai Ming, as well as an old man doing a fancy jump:

It’s Monday again guys! Did you have a nice week? We sure did! You see, last Wednesday was Fred’s birthday. You didn’t forget to say congrats to him did you? …did you?! ;)

Anyway! When not celebrating Fred’s birthday we spent our time continuing working on Tai Ming. Vilya has now moved on to the second Tai Ming map (wohoo, finally), and also made a few new trees to decorate the areas:

Also, as we promised last time, here’s a sneak peek of the boss prototype Teddy has been working on:

First up (above), a move where she pulls you close to herself, then starts pulling circles of fans closer to herself until you’re forced to take damage unless you find your way out of the circle. Touch the fans and you take damage, so you better watch where you move!

Next up is a variation of the above, but instead of pulling fans closer to her, she keeps a smaller circle surrounding the two of you and moves back and forth. Move with her in order to avoid taking damage!

In this third move, she sends a bunch of homing fans after you in a pattern! You better keep moving or you’re gonna get hurt.

Here’s another version of the move where she pulls you next to her, surrounding the both of you with fans. In this version you have to run around her to avoid the damage (kind of similar to the Power Flower move earlier)!

And of course, what better addition to any Grindea boss than some kind of bullet hell move, right?! We’re still playing around with different patterns, so if you have any other ideas, go ahead and let us know what you’d like to see!

Now, to end this post is another couple of NPCs made by Fred:

What in the world is going on?! Stay tuned to find out :)

Another week has gone by and we’re continuing work on the upcoming Time Travel temple! Teddy is back in town as well, so there should be a patch up and running before the end of the week, featuring the side quests of Mount Bloom!

Anyway, back in the office Vilya has continued working on the ruining the area around the Barracks, which have seen some neglect over the years as you time travel back and forth:

A while ago we also started working on the second Tai Ming Zone, which will be the actual village part of the area/temple-thingy! For this one, we really want the player to think a bit more. This place is more about exploration and figuring out how to solve the quests than going from point a to point b and doing something mechanically. Instead, the entire map becomes your puzzle, where you have to change certain things in the past to unlock a way forward in the present.

Of course, when in the present we’ve thrown in a bunch of encounters and places where you’ll have regular battles as well. After all, this is still supposed to be somewhat temple-y, and the enemies do drop cards..!

In the end, this is what our little layout ended up like! Below is the Past version, where everyone’s still in town, living their everyday life:

And here’s the present version, where things are in ruin, overgrown and forgotten (with roaming enemies!):

Now, this is just an early sketch so things may still change (such as distances, house sizes etc). And obviously the houses and stuff won’t look like they do here, they are all placeholder until the actual graphic for them has been made!

Oh, and speaking of enemies by the way, here’s a couple more animations for one of those you’ll encounter in this area, made by Fred this week:

And finally, a portrait (cause why not):