Last week we uploaded the main quest of Mount Bloom to the Frontline beta, but as you know, we still have a way to go before the mountain is complete! So, this week we’ve mainly been focusing on the side quests and secrets that will appear in the caves.

We’re planning on adding four side quests/secrets to the mountain. Two of those will be regular quests, and two of them will be challenges or puzzles you’ll have to find on your own, so to speak. Once the rest of the game is complete, we’ll probably return to Mount Bloom (as well as all the other areas) and add more side stuff, but for now I think we all want to move along as quickly as possible and get more main story completed, right? Therefore, we’ll settle for four things for now, which should be enough to make the mountain feel alive for people running through the stable beta.

So, Teddy has been on prototyping duty. Spoiler spoiler, but there will be more Phase Shift puzzles as part of one of the secrets – and they’re gonna be a lot harder than the main story ones! These puzzles need to be thought out, prototyped using the game engine and then tried by us and our closest friends before we decide which ones we actually want to use – and which ones need to be edited, scrapped or made harder…

Vilya, meanwhile, has been working on some additional backgrounds which will lead you to the hidden puzzle(s):

We also figured that the Power Flower boss needed a boss portrait – it just seemed a little bit lame the way it appeared without any sort of introduction. So we went ahead and added one of those too:

Fred has also been working on some NPC animations for the side quests, but because they would more or less spoil the outcome of our quests, we decided against showing them. Instead, here’s a few more boss animations he’s been doing as well:

As you may or may not see, these animations aren’t done yet: when we make enemy sprites we always make “sketch”-animations for them to begin with, where some pixels may be missing or certain lines aren’t properly cleaned up. This way, if we end up scrapping an attack or want to change the way it looks when we prototype the actual fight, we won’t have wasted as much time. Only after it’s possible to play the entire boss with all animation sketches added and everything feels good, we let Fred continue on to polish & clean up the sketches.

Speaking of sketches, Fred also started working on one of the enemies you’ll meet in the time travel temple…. A monkey! Here’s a bunch of sketches he made while trying to come up with what the monkey should look like, as well as the final versions we decided upon:

The colors may yet change once they’re added to the game and we see what they look like against the background. But, that’s for another post! For now, it’s time for us to head back to side quest making.

See you soon!

This week we’ve continued our work with finishing up Mount Bloom and its challenges! Vilya has started working on the various challenge backgrounds needed for the Phase- and Poison Puzzles:

She also made a bunch of new puzzle blocks to go with it (a bit more advanced than the ones from last week):

As well as two additional portraits for the miner NPCs found in the mine:

We also had to expand on one of the Mount Bloom maps, to make room for the entrance to one of the challenges:

Meanwhile, Fred has focused on decorating the cave, adding tiny waterfalls, destructible mushrooms, and a ton of animated edges around every pool of water, among other things:

Next week will be pretty much the same, with Vilya focusing on more challenge backgrounds and Teddy implementing it all, all while Fred decorates the hell out of the area so it’ll look as awesome as possible! Stay tuned~ :)

Another week has  gone by, and it’s time to show you some more stuff from the upcoming Mt. Bloom challenges!

As we’ve mentioned before, the final challenge will be a series of Phase Puzzle- and poison gas challenges. Well, the Phase Puzzle challenge parts will take place in a complex of the same origin as Flying Fortress, hidden in the mountain! And as such, we needed a lobby to set the mood for the upcoming challenges.

Here’s a BG for this, that Vilya has been working on (details such as greenery pushing through from the mountain, and other smaller decoration will be added later):

Now, as for the Phase Puzzles themselves – we’ve begun prototyping them and here’s our VERY CRUDE starting point (ALL graphics are placeholder and will absolutely not be in the final version, lol):

Basically, you’ll phase shift from one point to the other, but have to avoid platforms floating back and fourth while doing so! In this image, the platforms are represented by boulders, but in the final version they will be actual Flying Fortress-esque platforms driven by the same kind of magic that keeps Flying Fortress afloat!

To spice things up a bit, we’re also adding mirror blocks, that like the mentioned platforms, float back and forth as well, so you have to mind your timing when shooting at them:

Here’s a little GIF showing it all in motion, with a third special obstacle, a moving platform which sucks you into itself, and keeps you in there until you press the Phasing button again:

We’re currently working on applying the correct graphics for each of the puzzle blocks, so hopefully they will look more awesome in the next update! In the meanwhile, here are some other things Vilya has been working on for the Time Travel Temple, which will be your next destination once you get through the Phase Puzzles!

First up, another portrait:

Then, some more detail work on that first map that we started improving last week. First up, some more flowers:

Also, something bamboo-inspired and some other types of greenery – cause, why not?

We also played around with recoloring the barrels and crates around the map, to see if we could have them fit the theme better:

Finally, Vilya improved on the entrance decoration, editing the colors and adding a bit more detail to it:

And here’s what it all looks like right now! I think it’s starting to come together, and it’s time to move on to the next part of the map :) What do you think?

Hello guys! It’s me, Vilya (actually, I’m the one writing almost all Weekly Recaps, but you wouldn’t know that I guess)!

Today, Fred left town to go home and spend Christmas with his family, and Teddy got the flu and is out of business right now (hopefully he’ll get better in time for the actual holidays). SO I’m sitting here alone tonight, writing this rather late recap, which will also be the last one this year! We’re taking a break until New Years, so we’ll return with the Weekly Recaps on January 11 when we’ve had a week of work back at the office :)

Now, what have we been up to this last week of work? Well, pretty much a bit of everything, as always!

This is a background I’ve made which you’ll pass through after completing the Flower Challenge that we’ve been showing prototypes of lately. Basically you just go in, grab whatever’s in the chest, and leave, so it’s pretty straight forward:

A little bonus GIF of the steps:

Next up, a short map connecting two of the cave areas with each other. Again, just a short breather room:

There’s also this odd portrait of a rather strange mushroom-man! What the-?!

No further comments on that… yet :)

Fred, meanwhile, has been working on a set of miners that will appear throughout the cave, minding their own business or hindering yours:

I know a lot of you want to know more about what Teddy does on the programming side as well, so I’ll tell you this: lately he has been focusing on adding multiplayer support for the challenges we made so far, as well as actually starting to prototype the third one properly! Yay!

He has also been working on ways to make the lag less annoying to those of you who have friends living further away, and he actually even prepared a bunch of graphics to show you how he’s doing it. However, since he’s sick right now, I think we’ll have to save that for next year since he can probably explain that stuff a lot better than I can :)

Speaking of next year: I wish you all an awesome holiday, filled with happiness (and perhaps some fun gaming?!)! You guys are such an amazing community and we’re all so thankful for you support! We’ll keep working on making Secrets of Grindea even better, with much more content next year, and I hope you’ll join us for the ride!

See you in a couple of weeks! :D

We’re entering the final stages of finishing the first two challenges! We’ve also done some more prototyping for the third, but we’re still not 100% satisfied with that one yet, so it needs some more work.

Anyway! Since we’ve more or less finished the flower challenge, it’s time for it to get a proper background! So here it is, along with a step-by-step gif showing how Vilya created it:

Since it’s almost time to start battling stuff in Mt Bloom, there were a couple of more hats that needed to be made as well (what are quest rewards or item drops without one or two hats, right?). Here are three Mt Bloom themed hats, plus a duck beak for good measure:

Oh, and of course there needs to be a couple of NPCs to guide (or hinder) your progress through the cave system. Here’s one such NPC, a miner, whose portrait Vilya made last week:

Fred has been busy making sprites of said NPCs! Here’s a few sprites for the Cavelings Vilya put together last week:

This week we’ve worked on refining the challenges, especially the Flower Challenge we showed you some prototype GIFs of last week. It’s coming along nicely, with more and more proper graphics added (still needs a new background, though):

We still have a bit of tweaking to do, but we’re getting there!

Meanwhile, Vilya made a proper background for the Spinsect challenge, which will be further improved by Fred later on, who will add animated Spinsects looking out through the holes in the wall:

She also went over the map with the statue, adding a bit more details (more moss & crystals in the stone circles):

There’s also another character being made, who will appear a bit earlier than Mt Bloom! :o

Finally, here’s a couple of animation reels made by Fred, featuring some of the thing he has been working on this week:

This week a lot of our focus has gone into prototyping more of the challenges you’ll be facing in Mt Bloom! Here are a few gifs from our prototype of the poisonous flower challenge (keep in mind that a lot of the art is still WIP):

Basically, the small flowers will increase in size over time, releasing their poison once they reach their final form. If you hit the flowers, they’ll shrink, until they die and disappear from the map.

The big one works a bit differently. Instead of releasing poison in its final form, it heals the other flowers and shields them, meaning you can’t damage them until you’ve dealt with the bigger one. Also, while hitting it causes it to shrink, there’s a limit to how small it can get, at least until you’ve worked through its HP bar!

After a little while, it’ll launch a special attack which clears any enemies on the map. Instead, a new type of flower will spawn, while the big one launches a beam spinning around the room. You now have to dodge a bunch of projectiles shooting out from the exploding smaller flowers (again, artwork will differ in it’s final form):

We also started doing some tests for the gas effect in the third and final challenge, where you’ll run through a room filled with poison gas:

More on that next week, hopefully!

Other than this mayhem of prototyping & testing, we’ve been doing some more work on Mt Bloom in general. Here’s a background that Vilya has been working on, which happens to be the entrance to the next temple:

Close-up of the statue:

GIF of the statue WIP:

She also made a bunch of variations of the Caveling portrait from last week:

Phew!

Finally, look at how cool our office door looks now, thanks to some signs printed and given to us by one of Fred’s friends:

Pretty neat, huh? Gonna help motivate us as we step into the office every morning! :D

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

GIFs! GIFs everywhere! In this post, we  go berserk with the GIFs, and we start off with Vilya who has tried something new: step-by-step GIFs!

Typically Vilya also records videos of her progress with sprites and portraits (which can be seen on her blog), but this time she also tried her hands on making GIFs of the steps. Here’s the result, featuring a portrait and a rework of the Slime card:

Most of our time has been spent dealing with the upcoming Black Ferrets battle, though!

First up, the new boss portrait:

Then, a few GIFs with the battle itself, from our early test runs:

And finally, some of the sprite work Fred has been working on for this battle:

Excited for the battle? We are too, and hopefully the patch where you’ll be able to try it out won’t be too far away! Stay tuned for more next week :)

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: