Next up, we have another boss portrait! This one of course featuring the Solem boss you’ll face off against inside the ruins:

Since he has a gem for a face, we thought what better name for this swell guy, than Sol-Gem? Said and done:

As always, there’s a ton of minor things to add and adjust right before an update, so here’s a very mixed set of things, starting with two new expressions for one of the characters in town:

A slight edit of the first desert ruin room, where we’ve removed one of the scriptures for a small note on the wall, carved by some ancient apprentice:

In the second room of the ruins, we’ve moved down the altar for the gem so there’s enough room for the giant rock to appear behind it, as well as a more broken version of the arc that will replace the previous one once the rock has rolled into it:

The scriptures around the desert have gotten some upgrades too (or should I say downgrades), since we didn’t want the text to be readable we’ve decided to make them look torn and broken enough to justify the text not being legible:

In the math puzzle cave, I also went ahead and added those number wizard statues I mentioned before, and have since decided to upgrade the look and feel of the first cave slightly as well (more on that later):

Now we have this week’s portrait, which features a giant of a man who works in the desert mine. His name is Big Brutus, and I have a feeling he’s not someone you want to mess around with:

Now, for those math puzzles… First up, I’ve made the other two caves in this system, which was pretty straight forward after everything was completed in the first cave:

But then I thought the first one looks just too simple, especially when there’s so much sand in it, so I decided to mix things up and make a slightly more interesting background for this one. So here we have the process:

And the final version of the first room, yay:

Alright, so there was one thing remaining to do in the desert ruins, and as most of the things have been implemented by now, it’s time to get going with these puzzle blocks!

These blocks are special in the sense that you need to place them correctly according to a creation myth found within the temple, so instead of just regular blocks, they have a slightly more interesting look:

 

 

And here’s the final blocks by the end of the video:

Progress on the desert continues! We’ve now started implementing things in those desert ruins, where you’ll face another boss battle. When I mentioned there was gonna be an Indiana Jones-y scene in here, some of you wondered of what kind… I think this GIF should answer that question for you:

WIP of course, this is but the first step of the iteration!

Speaking of iterations, we’re also working on the boss! This Solem is a very dangerous guy who likes to use his laser in creative ways. Good thing he also slams his fists in the ground, causing giant rocks to fall from the ceiling that can block such beams for you:

(One everything is implemented, the rock will look to be part of the ruin, rather than a random Mt:Bloom-esque boulder!)

He has another fierce laser attack as well, featuring multiple beams that follow you for a little while:

Aside from these, he’ll act like a regular, but amped-up Solem, chasing you around trying to hit you. He’ll also have one attack where he slams his fists in the ground causing shockwaves to appear all around him, which you’ll have to dodge.

Fred’s continuing to work on his animations, too, of course so here’s a more finalized version of what he’ll look like as he blasts those laser beams at you:

There are more caves in the making, as well! Those math puzzle caves had to be designed, and to mix things up I decided to go for a slightly different color scheme compared to the rest of the caves in the desert:

It looks a little bare right now, so we’ll probably add some more details, maybe in the form of statues of numbers, or perhaps even of the number wizard who made these challenges in the first time! For now though, here’s the first iteration of the first math puzzle cave:

Can’t have new bosses without new boss portraits, so here’s an upgraded version of Marino’s boss portrait, featuring his lovely shadow clones!

As you might remember, his last subtitle was The Ultimate Rival, however, as the story progresses some things change… Why an “ultimate friend” would fight you? I guess you’ll just have to play through the story and see!

I’ve mentioned this before, but the relationships between the characters haven’t been super fleshed out, a fact we are well aware of and will likely remedy slightly by adding more scenes to the story (once the rest of the game is done). This way we also hope to give an incentive to those of you who have played along chapter-by-chapter with every new update to play through the whole thing once more time, the way it’s supposed to be experienced in the end. In the end, we plan for the finished product to feature slightly more story as well as new side quests for most (if not all) parts of the game.

As for this week’s portrait, it features a pirate hanging out in the saloon! In fact, he’ll be one of the card players (whom I actually made a portrait of before – but his sprite got changed afterwards, so that old portrait will probably become a different NPC at some point instead):

Finally, Marino’s second boss battle has been finished and fully implemented, so now it’s time to spice up the little are where you face him! Previously, we’d left it pretty open, as we weren’t sure exactly how big his battle arena would be (we like to prototype the fight first and base the area on how much space we feel is needed).

Below you can see the old area, with the battle taking place inside the darkened frame:

In order to spice this up, I made a quick sketch of what it could look like instead, adding a level difference to act as the limitation downwards. Adding this, we had to increase the size of the map slightly downward as well, to make room for everything:

And then, it’s time to make the actual graphic adjustments for these changes:

And here’s the final version, featuring a much smaller battle area, and a slightly more interesting looking map overall:

Okay! Who’s ready for more desert fixes?! Seeing as we’ve named the desert Dragonbone Dunes, we wanted to add more dragon stuff to the area. First step is to make some dragon head statue pillars:

We also wanted to decorate those walls with some dragon wing plates:

But not all fixes on this map are of the dragon-decorative kind! There’s also a puzzle, which, as it’s now been properly designed, needs a more permanent background:

As part of the puzzle, we decided to add a bonus chest as well, so made a slight extension of one of the rocks to make room for that:

Behold the progress so far, almost done:

…actually, scratch that! Since the cave in the middle is a mushroom cacti cave, I thought it’d be fitting to put a bunch of them outside as well:

In the animation department, Fred has been hard at work with some cool environmental things that will appear in the desert! First up, we have the frozen cacti that will unlock a shortcut further into the desert, once you reach a certain season orb:

Second, a rope ladder! Since there’s a place where we really want the player to be able to move up and down quickly (though only after getting there the first time), we decided to introduce a rope ladder that you’ll be able to ‘activate’ after making your way to it.

No desert is complete without tumbleweed, so Fred has been experimenting with getting those up and running as well! Here’s a bunch of his WIP ideas:

He’s also making more NPCs, and here we have the progress sheet of the old scientist looking for ghosts! We’ve decided to name her Dr. Spengler as tribute to a special character in this sort of field. Who do you think that is?

As for something completely different: as I believe we have mentioned, once you complete Tai Ming, flashback orbs will activate throughout all of Grindea. While we haven’t added any just yet, these flashback orbs are set to give you insights into events that happened before you were around; stories of your parents, Zhamla, and other important events that have occurred throughout the world.

As part of the desert update, at least before it gets released on stable, we’ll include a set of these with more to be added in later updates.

The ones we’ll include in this update features memories that give some insight into your mother’s friendship with the fae, how your parents met, and how Zhamla found his first card! While they might not be vital to the story as a whole, we feel that each of these orbs will give some depth to the world and the people within it.

The dialogue for these have already been written, but we’ll return to actually implement them once the rest of the desert is done; likely while you guys are all busy beta testing those new enemies and boss fights!

In the end, once the game is done, we want to add plenty of these orbs, to give you a glimpse of many different things of the past. Are there any events or characters in particular you’d like to see? Let us know and we’ll see what we can do!

As or the portraits this week, the first one features the hat salesman of Port Monnaie, which we actually have decided to give quite a story. Because Helmut is a real life name that’s simply too good to pass up on, we decided to name this guy just that. However, seeing as we have a helmet called Helmit, we didn’t want to confuse people too much by having two characters with very similar names…. So we decided that Helmut and Helmit will be friends!

As such, you old acquaintance from Tai Ming will make a comeback in the desert town, where he’ll be hanging out with this swell fellow:

Finished sprite:

And you can’t have a beach town without tourists, so the second portrait this week will feature a guy shopping for souvenirs at the market place in Port Monnaie: currently, he’s very interested in a t-shirt!

Warning! This blog contains spoilers for the upcoming parts of the game, if you wish to be surprised, stop reading here!

The ghost ship plans continue to unfold, and the next big things we’ve decided on is to take the player on a strange dream, caused by the ghostly presences on the ship. In this dream, you’ll find yourself back in Startington (?!), but it’s a quiet, somewhat “wrong” version of itself. Here you need to solve four different challenges in order to find your way back to the ghost ship and continue on your journey.

There will be things in this dream referencing events that have happened in the game this far, with each building in Startington holding its own challenge. In one, you’ll need to battle a ton of slimes searching for that one card, in another you’ll be pressured to show your skill with the shield. A third urges you to remember you friends, and a forth the dreams you had for the future.

Needless to say, this will be a slightly very surreal world, and we’ll be hard pressed to make sure things have just the right amount of eeriness. We’ve had a ton of crazy, creepy ideas for this part, but our intention isn’t to turn into a psychological horror game – we just want approximately 5% of that feeling!

Right now we’re still undecided exactly how this place will look graphically – we’ve got ideas ranging from having it be just regular Startington (without the people – and probably without the song, making it a too quiet, too still version of itself) all the way to going full sepia-toned, dark, with shadows and mists lurking around the edges of the screen. We’ll see where it all ends up, and here I think we’ll need a lot of help from you guys as you test it out in Frontline.

After the Tai Ming storyline, things have taken a turn for the darker already, but as I said, we don’t want it to go full horror. It’ll be very interesting to get this right, but I think and hope we will!

Now, more places implemented means more places that need fixes! Here’s a bunch of changes we’ve decided to make since the desert started getting into place.

First up, closing off one of the caves. Previously we wanted it to look open, but since there will be a map change between them, we felt it’s more consistent to use the regular cave doors:

Second, we realized if you manage to get out of the cave exit to the right on this map, you’d be stuck on this plateau forever (there’s a jump-down inside the cave, so you’re unable to go back that way… oops):

Some detail changes to the wall here, making it more consistent with how it looks inside the city. Keep in mind most of the wall will be offscreen:

Same thing here, I’ve changed the texture of the wall and made it more consistent with the size inside town. Also edited the path to align better after you change screen:

We’ve also added a slight bit of decoration outside the number cave, which will have magical flames as well once Fred has used some of his animation magic:

Finally, as we were looking around the NPC folders while implementing the desert NPCs, we realized we made a collector’s outfit for Sally a long, long time ago, but forgot to add it. We’ll remedy this in time, and in preparation for that I made a recolored version of her sprite, featuring her Collector uniform:

And now it’s time to start the second room of those Desert Ruins! There’s been a lot of talk about the Ghost Ship so it’s easy to forget we’re still not done with the desert, haha. This place is where you’ll battle the Solem Boss, and have an Indiana Jones-y cutscene! Let’s take a look:

 

 

It’s all pretty bare so far, but the video got long enough already. In the next part, we’ll continue working on the upper part of this map, where a treasure lies waiting!

As Teddy has started implementing NPCs, both me and Fred were in for a surprise. Not only were there NPC sprites made by Fred that I forgot to make portraits for, there were portraits of NPCs that Fred forgot to make sprites for as well… Silly things happen when you work on multiple parts of the game at once!

In other words, it’s time to start mashing out a couple more portraits, so for a while there will be two presented every week once more.

This guy here is someone selling souvenirs in the Desert Town, though by the looks of his outfit, I wouldn’t be surprised if his real job was to be a Collector:

And finally, we have the ghost scientist I think I mentioned before – this person will appear in the lab in Evergrind City in the beginning of the game, where she’s investigating the spirit world. Later on, she’ll play a part in your ghost ship journey:

Aaaand we return, slightly more well rested and ready to get back into the action!

Now that the desert and desert town is in place, it’s time to update the world map into a somewhat final version (there’s still the ghost ship remaining, but I’ll easily be able to add that later, as it’s in the midst of the water anyways)!!

Let’s take a look:

 

 

 

So basically, this is what the world map will look like after you’ve visited all of the areas (except the ghost ship):

So exciting! Only one more little ship to add, and then it’s all done. I’ve reworked the shadows that covers each area before you’ve explored it slightly as well, so you’ll notice things will look a bit different once this has been implemented. There will be 12 pieces to uncover in total, once the ghost ship has been added (13 if you count Tai Ming – but the Tai Ming piece of the map isn’t visible at all until you’ve actually been there). Right now I think there are a couple more than that since we wanted to make sure we had space for the areas we hadn’t designed yet, and their shapes look a little random. The water will be visible from the start, giving the map some more color from the beginning, as well.

Exciting times! This actually feels like such a huge milestone, even if the ghost ship is missing. I mean, even if the ship is missing – it looks complete on a whole different level compared to before. It’s been a long journey, but you can finally start to see it all coming together!

Speaking of the ghost ship, we’ve been making a ton of prototypes for various challenges and mechanics we’d like to include. First we have a challenge where you need to go between various platforms, and the only way of doing so is entering the spirit world. Only problem is, there’s an angry ghost attacking you if you enter his domain – so you can’t stay too long or you’ll take guaranteed damage.

We’re currently considering whether you’ll fall down if you leave the spirit world in the midst of a bridge. The other idea would be that you simply can’t leave until you’re on solid ground.

Next, a variation on the same theme. Here we have a prototype where you battle enemies in the ‘real’ world, in which you do less damage than you normally would on a similar enemy. Entering the spirit world, you do full damage, but you also get chased by the angry ghost from before! Decisions, decisions…

Finally, and old classic we’d like to include somehow: the good old phase shift puzzle – ghost version. Here, you need to swap between the spirit world and normal world on the fly (ha!), in order to make your way across.

As for the overall design of the place, we’ve decided on dividing the ship in three parts. The first part will be where you first meet the ghost captain, and where you’ll get the skill that allows you to enter the spirit world. This part of the ship will be mostly storage, so there will be rooms with lots of crates, barrels, buckets and other kinds of storage. The ship will have had lots of cool cargo, so hopefully we’ll be able to make this part look interesting.

The second part (and second floor) will house the living quarters for the sailors that ran the ship. Here we’ll have their sleeping quarters (great halls with many beds), a kitchen, dining hall, and such. There might also be one or two optional friendly ghosts here, who might give you a quest or two.

On the third floor will be a more luxe area: here they’ll have a grand entertainment hall with a bar and ghastly piano playing by itself, there will be huts for high paying passengers, and finally, the path to the captains own room…

We’ve also talked about adding another type of “enemy” (sketched above), which you actually won’t be able to kill! These things are in fact armors that were part of a shipment, which have now been possessed. So long as you’re in the regular world, they’ll just lie on the floor blocking your way – but once you enter the spirit world, the armors will come to life and float in to the air towards you. If they get too close, they’ll attack, but you won’t be able to damage them back. Instead, your only option is to leave the spirit world and have them fall back unto the ground – a mechanic that might also be helpful in certain puzzles…

On a similar note, during these talks we’ve decided that the long you are in the spirit world, the more ghostly it becomes. As such, spending a long time in the spirit world will cause shadowlike arms or spikes appear out of walls or even the floor, damaging and slow you as you go. If you’ve spent a long time in the spirit world, you might even begin to see hints of these things in the regular world as well…

Now, over to something else, such as this week’s portrait! This time it features the pianist, a guy who, as you may have guessed, plays the piano (in the saloon, the be specific). Since he’s in the saloon I went with the theme and made him sort of buff looking. Otherwise not much else to say about this guy for now!

WIP:

Finished sprite:

In the animation department, Fred continues with the desert stuff and has made a really cool death animation for the Solem, which kind of gets frozen in place before it disintegrates:

There’s also a lovely little salamander in progress, which we want running around the place here and there, as a purely decorative detail. Here’s a bunch of suggestions he made, with the one we ended up choosing the the red circle:

And of course, it needs a few animations as well, so here’s one where it’s sticking its tongue out, one where it runs off, and one where it escapes by digging its way into the sand – how cute!

Teddy has been hard at work implementing all of Fred’s NPCs, too, and for the fun of it he decided to put most of them in one screen, just to see what it’d look like. Have a peek:

And with that, back to work! See you next time~

This week we’ve finally started planning the next dungeon in more detail! As mentioned previously, the final dungeon will be a ghost ship, with a skill that allows you to enter the spirit world, where you can see (and interact with) things you don’t normally see…

As most of you are probably aware by now, this blog is full of spoilers, but I thought I’d make another spoiler warning for the remainder of this post, as I’ll be going into more detail than usual.

So, what we’ve talked about recently is the main design on the dungeon, how things will start out once you enter the ship, and some of the mechanics we’re looking into using here.

To begin with, we’ll be adding another character that will make its first appearance earlier in the story than we are currently. While we’re not super excited to go back in time and add characters, hints and other things in areas most of you have likely played through already, I’m afraid it’s unavoidable when working on a game like this, chapter by chapter. We’d have to be geniuses or have thought out the game in much more specific detail before beginning any area to avoid this completely – and often you don’t realize what’s missing until you’ve had enough feedback from beta testers (or when it comes to story elements I guess you guys are more like beta readers). We already know we’ll add a bunch of extra scenes in the beginning to flesh out the story and relationships slightly, before the game is done. This will just be one more thing like that. Hopefully, this will give you all an incentive to play through the game once more at release, when all these additions and small changes are in place, to experience the story as we intend it to be experienced – in one go with all the proper story elements there from the beginning!

Anyway!! The character we’ll be adding is another scientist hanging out with Dad and the other scientists in the HQ lab. This character, however, will be focused on researching the spirit world, whether it truly exists, and how one would interact with it. Sometime into the story, he will have heard rumors of a ghost ship and will take off to investigate…

So, as you enter said ghost ship, you’ll meet with a flying weapon and someone hurling curses at you that you can’t see. Well, that’s a bit of a problem! Ignoring this threat, you continue onwards, battle some of our new enemies (more on those later), see a locked door, and eventually run into the scientist who will give you his spirit world machine that allows you to enter and interact with the spirits haunting the ship.

The gimmick of the ship will be to enter and exit the spirit world in order to solve puzzles and defeat enemies. Some enemies you’ll only be able to damage in the spirit world, but entering the spirit world will allow them to attack you with more attacks and deal more damage, as well. There will be enemies harassing you in the regular world, too, of course – so nowhere’s truly safe, but each world will have their own challenges. We’ll have our work cut out for us in making sure there is balance between the two and none you just stick to the entire dungeon. One of our ideas for this is having a meter limiting how long you can spend in the spirit world, since that’s the place you’ll be able to get rid of most of the enemies – and it’s a mechanic that helps increase the stakes in certain puzzles, when you can’t spend unlimited time solving them.

There’s a lot more discussion to be had, but for now I feel we have a good grasp on the early stages of the dungeon! For now, onwards with the desert and that final part of the desert ruins! This time we get into the details, adding those small things that tie everything together:

As you might have guessed, there will be a puzzle of some sort in the middle. While we know approximately what this will look like, we haven’t ironed out the specifics yet so for now it will remain empty.

Aside from that, here’s what it looks like in its completed state:

Since I’m finally running low on portraits to make, this week there will be just one! This guy is another oldtimer, made by Fred quite a while ago. He’s a gangster – or at least a gangster looking kind of guy (actually, you know, maybe he just likes to wear a suit.. who am I to judge?) – who hangs out in the saloon, playing cards:

Finished portrait:

You’d think we’d be finished with the desert graphics soon, but oh no, now that things are finally started to get implemented, there are a ton of edits that needs to be made – some things you just don’t realize need fixing before they have been properly added to the engine…

First up, we have the exterior of the desert ruin. Now that the ruins will be slightly bigger than we first though, we felt it needed to look just a little bigger on the outside too:

Then we have this area, which never got finished in the first place:

Earlier we actually thought we’d have some sort of desert storm challenge there, where you’d have to navigate your way through a desert storm, barely able to see anything. Since we didn’t have the details or layout for that ironed out yet, I just left that part of the desert empty. Since then, we changed things around and put the map with the saloon to the left instead, so now it was simply time to complete the map.

We’ve also decided to add a cave right before the season orb below, to give you a bit more of a challenge other than simply walking around to hit it (it will come as no surprise that you need to hit it to get across to the other side):

In this cave we’ll have a new type of puzzle, one we’re actually quite excited about! This one will be all about math, having you step on plates to make up a number shown inside the cave. Basic sketch below:

We plan on having three puzzles like this inside the cave, of varying difficulty (one will likely have 9 plates, another 20). One will also feature plates with enemies on them, which means you’ll essentially build your own encounter once you step out of the plates. Fun times!

Meanwhile, Fred has been working on the desert enemies. Here’s a zoomed in version of those birds that will attack you after hatching out of eggs, cause it’s simply too cute to pass up on showing:

We’ve also been working on the Solem laser! It’s now a lot brighter and more intense, clearly showing the difference between simply aiming and actually attacking you:

Fred has also been working on the puzzle plates we’ll use in those math puzzles mentioned. Here you can see the enemy plates as well, so cute:

In the end, it’s likely we’ll adjust the colors of this – but for now this is the basic idea of what they’ll look like!

The enemy prototyping continues! This week a lot has happened. First, we change our mind about the bird mechanic I mentioned previously, with different eggs causing different mishaps if you let them hatch. We agreed it got a little bit too crazy and reminded everyone a bit too much of the Mimic battle you just completed, so instead we’ve been playing around with each egg hatching a swarm of smaller birds to harass the player!

In this first version (above) we used the bat swarm as placeholder graphics for the swarm to test it out. At this point it was also possible to end a swarm by hitting it, however, since you can’t remove bat swarms by hitting them, and this mechanic will work and look in a similar way, we decided that you won’t be able to in the final version.

Below you can see the version with the proper bird graphics, made by Fred:

As you can see in the image above, we’ve also started working on the final enemy in the lineup – the Solem! He can now dash towards you, slam his fists into the ground, and he also has a laser that will start firing at you after aiming for a short while:

In the above GIF there isn’t much difference between the aim and the actual laser – the graphics are the same, only when he shoots the laser there’s an effect on the ground as well. This was the first thing we wanted to improve, as can be seen below:

Now the laser is slightly bigger, but before we’re fully satisfied we’ll probably work on that a bit more – as well as adding a proper charge animation for the Solem (which currently is static, as you can see). Other than that we’re actually starting to feel pretty good about this lineup! Just a few more tweaks and we’ll be happy I think :)

Next up, there are more portraits (but we’re slowly reaching the end!! Just a few more)… This one’s the Lady Mayor, either the actual Mayor or the wife of the Mayor (not decided yet) of the Desert Town.

In the game, you’ll find her on the top floor of the Mayor’s house, where she’s quite fed up with her husband’s ways (I think)! At least, that’s how I imagine it for now, we’ll see what happens once it’s time to write the dialogue and start working out those quests in detail :D

The second portrait this week belongs to one of the older NPCs of this area – in terms of when Fred made the sprite, anyway! I wanted to make this portrait a while ago, but there was a lot of other characters made that somehow leap ahead in the to-do list. Now, however, it’s finally time for mr sunscreen (he applies sunscreen in his animation) to get his portrait!

Alright, now it’s time to start working on another interior!! This here is the “legendary” desert ruin, where you’ll face a new boss/mini-boss kind of deal and continue the main story!

In this first part I’m focusing on getting the basics done – this involves some color tweaking of the graphics I made before, plus some new stuff. The video got quite long so I’ve decided to split this in several parts – I think there will be three in total!

…and here we have the second part of those desert ruins! This time we focus on adding wall decorations mainly – there’s a bunch of them needed, from the door, to the script tablets where you can read some juicy(?) backstory, to the decorative cacti!

What remains to be done now is all the detail work, adding those small things that tie a map together and give it some personality. We’ll save that for next week, though! Stay tuned :)

Now that we’re done with the Arcadia rework for now, things are happening fast in terms of the desert enemies! Teddy has been making a ton of prototyping and it’s now possible for us to play around with the basic enemy compositions.

First, here’s a very early look of the Cacute enemy, jumping around, minding its own business:

As mentioned before, our plan for these guys is that they won’t focus on the player in particular, but will be dangerous just by existing – as you can see, they launch a bunch of needles with each jump!

The new slime and bird enemies have been added as well, the slime becoming a saw Giga-Slime style as it attacks, while the bird is pretty much an egg-laying bee!

In order to mix this up a bit, we’re playing around with having the bird lay eggs closer to the ground, so you can actually hit it while it lays them. Our original idea was to have each egg spawn another bird unless you break it in time, but we’re also playing around with having it lay different kinds of eggs, each with a hazard of its own. However, it might end up too similar to the mimic which you just fought, so we might play around with some other ideas as well.

We’ll need to play around with it a bit more before we know exactly how these will work in the end. Also, the Solem has not been made yet, and it might mix things up a lot once it joins these compositions!

The first portrait this week is that of one of the ice cream sellers shown last week! She owns the shop with her fiancé, and we have some plans to include these in a quest featuring another duo interested in sweets… Actually making that quest will probably wait ’til the rest of the desert and the quests we planned earlier are finished, though :)

The second ice cream seller is the fiancé of the previous one! I’m sure he’s happy to be able to own such a sweet (ha) business with the love of his life – who wouldn’t be?!

Right now we haven’t decided on any actual use for the ice creams, though it would certainly be fun to be able to buy some. Feel free to share any ideas you might have on potential uses for them! Is there a consumable type you feel is missing? Want more pet food? Let’s hear your ideas!

Finished portrait:

Next, I’ve been working on the fundamentals of a new kind of interior, the one you’ll find in the desert ruins! I wanted to make something special for it, since it was a while since I made something a bit more ‘out there’ – the town interiors generally follow the same basics, so I wanted to make something different this time.

What I’ve done here is I’ve played around with walls and floor textures, and made some basic decorative things. I’m not 100% sure about the colors yet, I might tint them a bit yellow to make sure they fit the overall desert aesthetics, but once that’s done I’m ready to use these things as a base for the remaining interiors I need to make.

The desert ruins aren’t huge – only 2 (rather big) rooms are planned, but I wanted to make sure they feel special, hence the extra effort spent on getting a feel for it.

Video showing the progress here:

In Freds department, the NPCs and their animations continue to be made! First, we have the author:

When we’re done with the rest of story mode, we actually have plans to add her to the library in Evergrind City early in the game, when she’s there temporarily for a signing. We’d like to tie together the whole world of Grindea, and having her (and maybe one or two other desert characters) appear in Evergrind early in the game is a step to make the player feel recognition when you run into them later in the game.

Next up, an animation for the forgotten farmer, living in the depths of the caves beneath the desert (more to come):

Finally, the most exciting news…. The very first sketches of the Captain, who will be the boss in the next dungeon: the ghost ship. We have a really cool idea for this dungeon, and this guy plays a key part in it… Stay tuned for more!!

This week it’s on to more desert town interiors! When this one is done there’s just one more to make, oh my! Time sure flies when you have lots of fun things to do… :)

So this building belongs to the mayor of the desert town, and the story I’ve come up with for the bottom floor is that he has it open to visitors that want to come in and look at his small but very expensive collection of antiques. Maybe you’ll recognize some of the items from your travels back in time… ;)

Unfortunately tragedy has befallen the collection and a statue has broken. If only you knew someone who could fix it…..

Finished floor, for now:

Next, the second floor! Upstairs we have a bedroom, with a staircase that leads to the rooftops. Here you might meet the Mayor’s wife, who is yet to be designed :)

Finished room, for now (I’m not super happy about the bed so I might remake it at some point!):

The first portrait this week features a lady hanging out in the beach area of the desert town, enjoying the wonderful weather. We’ve had epic weather here the last couple of weeks too, so it actually fits really well!

Finished sprite:

The second portrait features the person throwing coins into the well in the desert area, shown a while back! This girl is a visitor from Merchant Isle’s. What do you think she’s wishing for?

As for for Fred’s work this week, we have a little sneak peek of one of the next bosses you’ll run into! Ohhh yeahhh, he’s back:

Marino returns and has learned a new skill! To be precise, he’ll be using one of the player skills in his second fight against the main character. We felt that there are already so many humans relying solely on weapons that we wanted to mix it up and add some more skills in this battle. Can you guess which one he’ll be using?

There are also some new faces in the desert town (yeah, they keep coming!), this time in the shape of the couple (literally) who own the ice cream parlor! I’ll be adding these to my to-do portrait list as well, so stay tuned for more of them in the near future :)

This week we’ve taken a slight break from the desert to add some final touches to Arcade Mode in preparation for launching the Arcadia Rework on stable (which has now been done)! Aside from the sound effects, we wanted to add a couple of new quests and mechanics, one which is brand new and will probably also make an appearance in some form in Story Mode: Photography!

Above you can see the first WIP of the photography mode, basically it’s a camera you equip which allows you to take a photograph of whatever is happening right now. You’ll be given quests by a photographer who wants you to take photos of certain things, and once you give her a picture of what she asked for, she will give you a reward.

Upgrades graphics seen below, along with an indicator for whether it’s the right motif of not (not only will Trunk tell you it’s wrong, there will be an ‘x’ showing it as well):

The rewards in question will be a painting version of whatever you were asked to take a photo of. Of course, that means I had to make a few paintings featuring that:

I accidentally forgot to record making the background for the Giga Slime hammer painting, so it kind of looks like it magically manifests at once, haha! Oops… Anyway, here are the three painting that will be available so far, more to come:

Next up, a return to the Temple of Seasons! No, don’t worry, we haven’t gone crazy! This isn’t exactly a Temple of Seasons room as much as it is an extra Arcade Mode room :)

This, too, will feature in a newly added quest, and is based off of a room from story mode, though for the sake of Arcade Mode we’re mixing it up a little, making it a mixed seasons room rather than a simple autumn room:

Do you have any ideas of whom you might meet here? Finished thing:

Some new, quick sprites have been made as well, this time a bunch of rewards for the various quests (fae wings for your head! wohoo!), as well as the camera used for the photography quests and a sack of bird feed for another quest featuring another well-known face from Story Mode, who wishes to see some birds in Arcadia!

I’ve been particularly bad at hitting that ‘record’ button so once more I forgot to record a whole section, namely the bird feed bag… Oh well :D

Now, back to those portraits! This guy is a card player found in the Saloon near the desert town. After this there are 10 portraits left, though Fred keeps adding new NPCs so we’ll see where it all ends! :D Did you know that so far, not counting the portraits I haven’t made yet, there’s 40 NPCs unique to the desert area!? In other words there will likely be over 50 before we’re done! Oh my…

Finished version:

We’ll end this week with one more portrait, this time the quirky sword smith from the market area in the desert town:

Nothing much to say about this one! Just another silly face :) More next week~