At the end of last week we’ve finally established a little bit of order again. We spent that time implementing shops, so players can finally spend all those coins (or crafting ingredients) they keep finding!

This particular shop is Mr. Fab’s Fabulous Hats, where you can satisfy your vanity with some fancy headgear! Of course, the selection of all the shops will expand as the game progresses. If you’re having terrible luck with getting sweet drops, going to Evergrind and throwing some cash at the problem is a good backup plan!

Also, heads up for followers who might be in Stockholm this coming Wednesday! We’ll be showing the game off at the Central Station from around 8 – 16 (8AM – 4PM), together with lots of other sweet games that made it to the Swedish Game Awards finals!

GGC may be done and over with, but there’s still one big event to go! The SGA deadline is this Thursday, so there’s no rest in sight just yet. We’re currently spending most of our time hunting bugs in the multiplayer feature, but since that isn’t particularly exciting to look at we’ll show you some things we recently finished in time for GGC instead:

First of all, we decided to let one of our main characters, your irreplaceable friend the Bag, handle the gameplay hints:

Click it!

The hint box will appear when the Bag feels like there’s something you should know. For instance how a new item works, how to best defeat special enemies, when you’re heading in the wrong direction, and so on. You will be able to move freely while it’s there, so it won’t interrupt your battle or exploration like talking to a normal NPC would.

Another thing we added right before GGC was Signposts:

Click it!

As you can see, there’s no plain text going on here! We thought it would be more interesting and visually pleasing to use images instead. What do you think?

The signpost graphics will also appear automatically when you come close to a sign, and will disappear once you move away from it – so your hands are free here as well!

Speaking of visually pleasing, we also started working on a new portrait style with the feedback we received on the old ones in mind. Here’s a couple of the newcomers:

Hopefully you like these better, as we do. If not, let us know! We always appreciate the feedback, especially on such important matters as the portraits which will appear a lot in the game.

Last but not least, Evergrind is now almost fully populated! After you beat the Exam you may now explore the city and talk to its current inhabitants. At the moment we haven’t put in any shops, but they are well underway as well.

Click it!

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some bugs to hunt! ;3

This week, there’s been a ton of skill work done, and of course the thousand year battle of the GUI rages on. Menus aren’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world to show, and they aren’t even fully implemented yet, so this week we’ll treat you with two animated screencap gifs of the new skills!

Click it!

This here spell is our first summon spell! It will summon a lightning cloud which hovers around, doubling as damage dealer and moral support (dat smile)! This is the first level of the skill. Later levels include features like targeting flying enemies, more damage, faster attack speed and less glee.

While it’s not set in stone, we’re toying with the thought of having summons be permanent (until you dismiss them). Instead of costing mana as you cast them, they would “block out” a part of your mana bar. That is, if you summon something which costs 30 % of your mana, for as long as you have that summon in play, those 30 % will not regenerate!

Click this too!

The gif above showcases one of our one handed weapon skills: Blade Flurry*!

It’s basically a series of very fast hitting strikes right in front of the character. It’s superb for exploiting openings in duels, like versus this lone Halloweed. It also has a very quick charge speed to offset its limited area of effect. The speed and duration of the move changes as you charge it, and later levels will have a fierce finishing strike to add even more damage!

For those of you yearning for another video… stay tuned! Some day, when the planets are aligned, it’ll appear!

*Working name :D

While much of last week was spent working on the project report for school, we’ve still managed to squeeze out some more stuff for the game! The inside of Evergrind City is continuing to take shape. Here’s a couple of the buildings Vilya furnished last week:

Above is the Hat Store! Here, you’ll be able to purchase and craft some sweet, sweet headgear! Headgear which you can show off to people online in order to impress friends, seduce the man or woman of your dreams, or to nail that job interview!

The slightly messy abode of a slightly messed up Alchemist! He might be crazy, but he’s a good guy. Not to mention he’ll be your go-to guy for stuff like potions!

Fred on the other hand have had a hard time leaving the Halloween Forest without a proper goodbye, so he stuck around for another week. Besides finishing up the last reaming bits of the Halloweed, he also did a cute little death animation for the Jumpkin!

Next Week: Reworking how the skills work and look, some more buildings, and… GUI :(

This week, we’re taking shelter from the spooky forest inside some buildings! Vilya has been busy creating the cozy, candy filled house of the witch, as well as a substantially less picturesque abandoned house…

Click on the screens for enlarged versions!

Fred has mainly been busy with cleaning up all of the basic attack animations for all of the enemies. Here’s a sample of this week’s workload in form of everyone’s favorite flying pumpkin wizard, the Jack O’ Lantern:

We’ve also been working on getting some lighting going to boost the atmosphere in the forest, and after some sweet feedback from Reddit, this is what it looks like at the moment (click it!):

If you have any feedback, don’t hesitate to make a noise in the comments! :)

Next Week: Hurr durr ‘loween

Another week rushes by!

This week we (especially Fred) spent a lot of time spicing up the combat by adding new and improved effects to just about everything! To show you what it looks like, we prepared a video with commentary from our animator himself, Fred:

In the meanwhile, Vilya has spent her days reworking the dirt tiles from last week, fiddling around with the background layers of our mountain area – people requested blur, and we’ll try it out!

She has also been improving on the portraits a bit more, and yet another sneak peek is available here (click to view full size):

Who is that rude fellow?! He will be one of the frequently recurring characters of Grindea, but you’ll have to play the game to find out more than that! ;)

-Surprise Limerick*–

If when playing you play with ambition
there will most likely be repetition,
and while I don’t mind
some old fashioned grind,
I love to have fun on my mission!

[*Pixel Ferrets does not guarantee that it is, in fact, a limerick. While the visuals are sweet in general, the combat was missing some sort of flair! To rectify this horrible injustice, Teddy joined Fred in a glorious, effect filled crusade!]

Next week: We start working on a new zone and bringing the game’s first act together!

This week we have continued to refine and change small parts of the city. There’s always things to change for the better, so it’s quite easy to keep busy that way..

One of the many touch ups Vilya has been working with this week is giving the old dirt roads a face lift! Shout out to the guys over at the TIGsource forums for their great feedback and keeping us motivated!

Anyway, we continue on, this time showing you another screen (an animated one on top of that!) of another part of Evergrind City:

(Click the image to watch it in full size and animated!)

Fred keeps filling the city with NPCs and animations, to help Evergrind come to life! Some of the stuff he did this week can be seen in the screenshot above.

There’s still a ton of NPCs and other animations to go before Evergrind is even close to finished, so stay for more of the same the coming weeks!

Also, as promised, below is the song that’s playing in Evergrind City! It’s written by Andrew Riley of Luckylionstudios.com, who’s composing the entire soundtrack for us!

[audio:https://www.secretsofgrindea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Andrew-Riley-Secrets-of-Grindea-OST-Evergrind-City.mp3|titles=Andrew Riley – Secrets of Grindea OST – Evergrind City]

Author’s comment: “I wanted to write an upbeat, fun song, with a certain sentimentality that would come with spending time in the city with your friends. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for listening!“

-Weekly Programming Haiku-

“Formed by pixly gods
Brought to life through wizard’s writ
Art of crafting games”

[Teddy has mostly been busy with his favourite part of the job: implementing the tidal wave of stuff created by the artists!]

Next week: We venture indoors in Evergrind and we take a shot at spicing up the combat!

We’re back! The holidays were great and we all got some time together with our friends and family, but we also managed to squeeze in some work. Here’s what we’ve been doing lately:

Vilya has been putting together the major city of the game: Evergrind City. The outside areas are almost completely done and the only thing missing is creating what will be inside the houses. Quite some work, of course, but we’re well under way! Here’s a screen from the city, more to come next week:

Fred has had his hands busy with three things: skills, NPCs, and being sick once again.

Here’s the Ice Nova skill in action. Close ranged AoE at its best! The added chance to freeze your enemies is a pretty sweet bonus.

And here we have one of the many NPCs living in Evergrind. The Blacksmith! Besides having one of the finest beards in all of Grindea, this fellow will help the players along their quest by forging some of the sweetest gear you can get your hands on!

-Weekly Programming Haiku-

“Skills to pay the bills
Sharpened blades and crippling cold
Winter is coming”

[In the programming department, most time has been spent on getting Fred’s skill animations into the game and working, as well as making them look as good as possible!]

Next week: More Evergrind goodness, plus a special treat for your ears!