Hey guys! How’s your week been? Ours has been filled with art creation, bug testing, release discussions and animation making. And a bunch of programming, of course!

To start off the showcase of this week, we have a ruined version of the final battle area, which you’ll see if you climb all the way back to the top after completing the game and starting it again:

We’ve also made a bunch of details for Grindea’s island, which will feature in one of the endings – we changed some colours around and created some constellations in the sky:

Fred has been doing some work on Grindea as well, giving her some new animations:

And of course, a bunch of new animations for the final boss, which is definitely turning out the be the most graphic heavy boss of the entire game:

He’s also started recording a bunch of videos for the release trailer, which is something he’ll have to start working on for real pretty soon. It also gives him the opportunity to play through the game and try to catch any of the bugs of fixes Vilya might have missed during her playthrough.

Finally, just like the last couple of weeks there’s a ton of stuff being made that we can’t show just yet. As always, while we’re pretty liberal with spoilers on this blog there’s just some things in the ending cutscenes and post-end game state we’d rather you experience for yourself. Hopefully you’ll be able to soon!

Vilya is unavailable, which means it’s time for one final(?) Fred guest appearance! Lesss go!

It’s become increasingly harder and harder for me to show content here on the blog since everything I’m working on now either falls in the camp of “Oh, this is way too spoiler-y” or “this is waaay too boring and uninteresting”. This is kind of sad since it makes for pretty bare-boned posts here, but overall it’s great because it means; the game is soon finished!

Anyway, been scraping the barrel and here’s some stuff from last week:

I can also report, after spending almost one week in our new office, that it kicks absolutley ass so far! It’s been slightly overwhelming getting used to being around other people again (fellow introverts rise up!), but I’m already starting to feel settled in, my production levels have been through the roof AND there’s unlimited free fruit! What’s not to love?

Tiny tour of my little spot:

And yeah, I dunno, I think Imma head back to the animation dungeon! Love you guys, Fred OUT!

Another week and lots of stuff happenings behind the scenes!

For starters, we’ve moved into a new office space, this time an open office style we share with a bunch of other developers and programmers of various kinds. It’s really nice to once more be around other creatives, something we missed since we went back to working from home during the pandemic. Here’s a little sneak peek of where we work now, note the Secrets of Grindea sign in the window:

In terms of work, there’s been a lot happening as well. The Zhamla battle is almost polished enough for some proper testing, so here’s another video showcasing that epic summon phase we hope will keep you on your toes:

Fred’s also been focusing on making a new laugh for the GUN-D4M version you meet in the final dungeon – before first and after below:

Meanwhile, Vilya has been playing through the game, adding 30+ more bugs and fixes to our “Ultimate Fix List”, as well as making new portraits for Sizou and six different iterations of a puzzle backround (we’ve finally settled for the one below):

So close now! Let’s keep going :D

Time for another weekly update on the grind on the final boss battle and the related cutscenes.

This week Fred has been making transitions between different Zhamla animations! Since we want the battle to feel quick and keep you on your toes, it’s important that Zhamla is able to change what he’s doing mid-animation as a response to what the player does. Normally, for any other mob, that just means we cut off the current animation and starting the next, but since Zhamla is one of the biggest sprites in the game that just ends up looking choppy in this case, unfortunately – and with this being the final battle, we definitely don’t want it to look choppy or weird in any way.

Here’s an example of what one such transition looked like before Fred added the bonus-animation:

And here’s what it looks like with his in-between animation added:

Another thing we’ve been working on is editing some of the attack effects to make sure it looks as good as possible. One such example is the spin, which originally looked like this:

Unfortunately we kind of realized it wasn’t nowhere as cool as any of the other spin-animations in the game, so we decided to remake it, using Luke’s spin as an inspiration:

We’ve also received one of the batches with sound effects needed for this final battle, but there’s still a bunch of things we need sounds for so we’re sending those requests over to our awesome sound effect master faRk as we speak.

Finally, we’re continuing to play through the game, adding those final bugs and wonky things to our list of things to fix before 1.0. While we’re finding a ton of stuff, most of them we’re OK with keeping in the game since they aren’t really all that bad, and the rest should be small and easy enough to fix. Onwards!

Another week gone and more boss work finished! This week we’ve been focusing on finishing up the summoning phase during Zhamla’s boss battle, which should (fingers crossed) be done now!

Fun fact, originally we didn’t plan on including Zhamla’s summons at all, but as usual we decided to spice things up by adding some extras to the battle. Also as usual, we’re really happy we did because it’s turned out pretty awesome and, in our opinion, made the battle a lot better.

For now, have a look at some of the recent animations for this phase:

Other than that, we’ve continued playing through the game, catching bugs and discussing what aspects we still want to improve upon. After all, once we hit 1.0 we want it to be the absolute best it can possibly be, a stance we’ve had since we began working on this game some ages past. We’re trying not to polish too much, though – don’t worry! But if there are quick and easy fixes that up the quality of the game significantly we’d be stupid not to consider them.

Okay, time to get back to that final playthrough! See you again soon :D

Eyooo! Fred here, once again standing in for the blogging duties! This time I feel even more unprepared than usual and since I’m not a natural writer in any shape or form, I’m just going to do sort of an animation dump of some random stuff I’ve been tinker with the last few weeks. Some are rendered versions of sketch animations that’ve been posted before, some are freshly made animations straight from the oven. Enjoy!

Frosty with some acrobatic moves! 

Frosty being sent into the shadow realm!

Cloudy doing cloud stuff!

A little lineup of Planty’s attack from first iteration to last!

Finally, some tasty, tasty rock particles!

This week, Vilya is back in action and has continued working on some new backgrounds as well as playing through the game to catch things we’ve forgotten to add. So far she’s written a list of over 50 things, and she’s still only just finished the Temple of Seasons! Not to worry though – most of these things are super small things that will only take a couple of minutes to fix, or optional things we may or may not add. Some may even be added post-release! And some we probably won’t fix at all due to them not being as important as we first thought.

As for the backgrounds, here’s another iteration of one of the puzzle backgrounds:

I think we’re getting to a point where we’re all pretty satisfied with the way it looks now. What do you guys think?

As for Fred, he’s continued working on the summons! Remember the Frosty Fiend smash animation from last week? It’s now officially in the game and looks like this:

Teddy’s been sick for a while yet, but he’s finally getting better and ready to get back into action this week. Stay tuned for more updates next week!

Vilya is still out of commission, Teddy switched out his food poisoning to being sick so I’m once again in charge. In true Fred fashion, I totally forgot to post yesterday as well, keeping up with traditions. Anyway, lesss go!

I think I’m going to do a bit of a deep dive into one of the animations I’ve been working on this weekend; the smash animation for Zhamla’s Frosty Friend. First of all, here is the very first iteration I did of it a few months ago when we began working on all of Zhamla’s summons:

The animation is a bit stiff and lacks impact, but in terms of trying out gameplay this gets the job done and then some. Even if this is intended as a “quick and dirty”-animation, I still spend a decent amount of time at this point to get the keyframes as correct and rendered as possible. I do this because it actually speeds up the rest of the process, I can use does finished frames as a base that I can animate around instead of going fully blind into it. Just diving into it CAN also be useful, it depends on what you’re animating really. For characters doing big movements like this, I almost always end up doing the keyframes first. If it is more of a subtle movement, like an idle, or a more abstract effect or something, I tend to like animating in the order the frames appear instead of jumping to the keyframes.

Oh, keyframes are the frames that contain the most exaggerated poses. So in this case, the keyframes (or poses) would be these three:

So, after this it’s pretty much just, slapping on more frames where I see fit to give it the level of smoothness and bouncyness I prefer. Here you can see I’ve added a bunch of extra frames and smears when his up in the air, preparing to smash!

This looks much better already, but the lack of impact when he lands again is very noticeable and the next thing I’ll fix!

Look at that jiggly little boiiii~ This might even be on the verge of over-animation, but I’m a jiggle addict, what can I do? None the less I really like what this added to the animation. Still feel like there’s some impact missing from the smash, and his “return to idle”-animation is almost none existent. Let’s get that fixed as well!

Ta-daa! Some smoke for that juicy impact and a smooth transition back to idle. In the game, he will recieve some added effects to make him even juicer, but even without them I really like how this turned out. Hopefully, it will feel good in the game as well!

Finishing up with a little side by side comparison of the first and last iteration:

Aaaand, yeah, I think I’m gonna wrap up here. Time to head back to the dungeon to finish up the final animations for the chilly boi! Baaaiiiiii, love you all~

So, Vilya is down with the flu. Teddy was supposed to step in and take care of the blogging duties this time, but in a sick twist of fate, HE ended up getting food poisoned and is out of commisson as well. Which means… Fred’s baaaaack b*tches!

Since I’m super unprepared for this I’m just gonna go with the flow and see what this turns into. SO! Last post we showed a bunch of animations I made for Zhamlas Echo of Madness-attack so this week I figured it would be fitting to show how they look in the game:

I think it looks and plays well, the only thing that needs a bit more polish is the “disappear after attacking”-part. I’ve done a very basic flash that we’re going to try to combine with the current effect, along with some color adjustments:
I think it’s going to look pretty sweet!

Other stuff I’ve been tinkering with, Zhamlas little Cloud buddy has gotten a few new animations to give his bigger attack a bit more build-up and visual feedback. Here’s a video Teddy put together showcasing it all in action:

Fun fact that I’m not sure has been mentioned on the blog: The cloud Zhamla is using is actually the original Gold Charge-version of the player’s cloud. We ended up discarding it because it was way too big and got in the way all the time. It also looks hella menacing, which we decided we didn’t like since the other two versions of the cloud looks so happy and dumb. It fits Zhamla perfectly tho so we figured, why not use it? Ending this random trivia note with a little family photo of the two:

Soo, yeah, I think I’m gonna wrap it up here. Missed talking to you guys, but hopefully, Vilya will be back in full force next week. Let’s all send a bunch of love to both Vilya and Teddy and hope for a speedy recovery. STAY AWAY FROM THE SHRAMP TEDDY!

Another week, another recap! This week, Teddy has finished up the final cutscene of Arcade Mode, adding the new background Vilya made a couple weeks back. He’s also made a bunch of adjustments in the way final boss Zhamla’s plant launches its attacks, and started working on GOG support. Some years ago we decided we’ll be available on GOG as well, and with the release drawing ever closer with every week, it’s time to get that support up and running. Of course, that whole process involves some extra bits of programming such as porting the leaderboards and making sure multiplayer connections work properly.

Vilya has been busy playing through the game and making reports on bugs and other smaller things we need to fix, as well as making some further improvements to two of the puzzle backgrounds in the final dungeon:

We’re still not entirely happy with the second one, so another iteration is sure to follow soon.

As for Fred, he’s finished up the animations for Zhamla’s plant and cloud, and put in a lot of work on a special attack Zhamla makes, that’s a bit similar to how the echoes of madness work in Tai Ming. Here’s a little sneak peek of that:

Now, onwards to another week! :D