As you know, we’re drawing ever closer to the completion of this game, and since I’m usually a bit ahead of making the background art and such, we’re nearing a point where I’ll run out of stuff to do! So how to keep me busy?

Well, we’ve had a budding idea of having me prepare the graphic assets and likely, most of the writing, for a little side project, or a companion piece if you’d like: basically, a visual novel where you’re a Collector, interacting with other collectors and sentient artifacts!

This game will be a very short game to go along with the Grindea universe, so we’re not talking any big investments of time here, even for me – but it’ll give me something to do while Teddy and Fred finish the last bits of animations and code for the main game. And it may also serve to give you guys a bit more insight in the world of Grindea!

Because of the planning needed, you’re likely going to start seeing some sketches and rough ideas for this project come up on this blog soon. So how do you guys feel about visual novels? Any particular ones you like, or dislike? Features you’d like to see in a project like this?

Again, keep in mind our goal here is just to make a little companion piece, so it’s not gonna be very long or super complex – just a little side project in the same world :)

Next up with actual Secrets of Grindea stuff though, for the Grindea boss fight we’re looking at having a total of three different HP-bars! Time to take a look at those:

Now with the Grindea boss fight drawing ever closer to completion, it’s time we start working on a proper victory UI for Arcade Mode instead of the standard Game Over one!

Here’s the regular version, as a reminder:

And here’s the post-Grindea one, which will be more blue. It has a star instead of the floor number, and will most likely show up against a black backdrop as seen in the second picture below, as it’ll appear after the credits:

Of course, in the above examples there’s still the usual Game Over text, but in the actual interface it’ll say “Victory!” one you’ve defeated Grindea. We’ve made three versions of the next now, though, with “Victory?” showing up when you finish the game without battling either Bishop och Grindea, and “Victory” showing up when you defeat Bishop!

Next up, for Grindea’s big battle, we want to add a starry space-like background for one of her attacks, and as such, I was tasked with making a simple space background! Let’s have a look:

As we draw ever closer to you being able to finish your Arcade Mode journey, it’s time to add a proper way of getting up to that island where your fate will be decided. Using a standard portal? Nah, let’s do something a bit cooler: flying up yourself! Have a look:

One thing that’s been missing from the stylist for a while now is a way to rotate your character preview so you’re able to see what you’d look like from more than one direction! Since we’re working on adding the final haircuts now, we decided it’s also time to add that missing feature, and as such, we’ve spent some time trying out various interfaces showing you how to rotate the preview:

Right now our current favourite is the last one. Which one do you prefer?

Next up, we have a bunch of haircut fixes! To start off with, this one seemed to lack a bit of the ‘swirly’ part of the bangs showing from behind, so I added that:

Since this haircut is super wide we needed a version of it which can be used when you wear a full coverage hat as well, made here below:

As for this one, we felt we wanted to show the bangs on the side a bit from behind as well:

Next up, it’s time to decide in what order to display the haircuts! For now we’ve decided to go from shortest to longest (well, kind of – we haven’t measured them all exactly, so some variations may occur), divided over two pages with 16 on each.

Page 1:

…and Page 2:

Finally on the haircut side, we realized the new haircuts looked a bit off when added to the game, due to some palette swapping mishaps. As such, I had to remake them slightly! Here’s a couple of them, with the original version first, the recolored version second, and the improved remake third:

In Teddy & Fred’s department, we’re mainly still focusing on the Grindea fight, but some other animations and cutscenes are made here and there. Here, let’s the a look at one of those, the activation of the portal that will take you to Grindea’s realm:

Now it’s time to start looking at the Mount Bloom / Festival floor of the final dungeon for real! Let’s start off with an introduction room, the first you’ll find yourself in within this floor of the dungeon:

Next up, the exit and northern cave room, featuring the strength challenge:

Next, there’s the fishing challenge, set in a cave setting:

And finally, the running challenge:

And here we have the complete thing, all rooms together:

Meanwhile, Fred continues work on Grindea and her attacks, including a mysterious space rift:

Exciting times! :3

This week I continue working on those final dungeon floors, continuing on with the Flying Fortress floor to start off with. Aside from just having a platform for battling the bosses, you also need an entry point and an exit, which is what we’re taking a look at today:

Next, a quick sketch to give you a basic overview of what the Mount Bloom floor will look like! I do this a bit ahead of time so we’re all on the same page of the layout before I start making the actual rooms.

As you can see from the sketch below, you start of in an introductory room. In the middle, in the very dark spot, will be a very simple phase shift course which will take you either to the room on the left, the room on the right or the room above depending on how you move through it. You need to reach and complete the challenge in each room to be able to continue on to the next floor through the north exit :)

But before heading to Mt Bloom, there’s the Seasonne floor to take care of! Without further ado:

In this next part of the floor, we add some more detail and stuff around the walls so that the colliders are all pretty much even, so you won’t get stuck against the trees if you find yourself pushed against the wall at some point during the battle:

Meanwhile, Fred continues his work on Grindea! Let’s take a look at this epic dash:

Hi guys!

Unfortunately there will be no weekly recap this week as I’ve been sick all week with a bad cold! However, I’m all better now so work has resumed and the next weekly recap will be available next week on Monday as usual :)

Thanks for understanding!
– Vilya

Alright then, we had one final floor to properly design for the final dungeon, and it’s the Dragonbone Dunes floor! As such, we had a little meeting, discussing where we want to take it, seeing as there’s a ton of stuff going on in the desert that we could use.

In the end, we came up with a plan that’s pretty much as follows:

You’ll start off by following a little pathway to the side from where you entered, after which you’ll reach a door that seems to lead to the next floor. However, once you’re about to exit, that massive boulder from your encounter with the Solgem boss appears, forcing you to run down for quite a bit. Now super far away from the exit, you need to find your way back by entering a series of caves where you’ll come across several different challenges:

* One battle challenge where a ruby similar to the one that cursed the Solgem, only it curses each of the other enemy types found in the desert in turn

* One story puzzle where you have to push around statues featuring Bishop, Grindea, Cards and Adventurers… Whatever could it mean?

* One or several math puzzles (not too difficult, since you need to solve them in order to complete Story Mode…)

* A digging challenge where you need to dig up something to allow you to pass through the next door

Not sure we’ll include all of these, but we’re fairly certain on the first two, and we’ll probably want to add at least one of the other two as well! As you can tell, this floor will be a bit longer than the others probably, but seeing as it’s towards the end of the dungeon and each of these challenges won’t take too long, we think that’s alright!

 

In other news, here are the game’s final four haircut! These will be the last ones needed to finally fill out each slot available! Phew! Let’s have a look at the new styles you can choose from:

Now, let’s continue working on that second floor of the final dungeon. In the main lobby room, we need a bunch of statues with candles that will light up once you defeat each boss. Let’s start off with making those:

We also want a portal that will start working only after you’ve defeated all of the bosses! So time to make that as well:

The idea here is that you’ll pass through the portal without anything happening (you just continue on through/beneath it) until it’s fully activated, after which a staircase leading upwards will appear within.

Now, for the next couple of floors, we need a bit of sketching going on here as well. To start off, for the flying fortress floor, we wanted the player first to battle two phasemen, and then GUN-D4M. However, as you may remember, the sizes for these battles are very different. Below you can see a comparison, showing the Phaseman battle area beneath the Gun-D4M battle area which appears in a darker colour:

To solve this, and make what we believe will be a pretty cool transition between two differently sized battle areas, once you’ve finished your battle against the two phasemen GUN-D4M will appear and literally smash the original phasemen-area with his fists, making it crumble and leaving you with only a GUN-D4M battle sized area remaining:

In Seasonne, you’ll battle Marino while a bunch of trains try to run you down, much like in your battle against the Toy Machine in toy factory.

When sketching this battle arena, I used the Toy Machine background as base and though about ways to include more of Seasonne in it – after all, Seasonne is a lot more than just the Toy Factory. So I thought about adding some snow and trees breaking the walls here and there to let the outside of Seasonne into the factory:

Meanwhile, it’s busy days with Grindea prototyping! Let’s have a look at these new moves (and as always, keep in mind there’s a lot of placeholder art involved here):

As well as a transition between Grindea’s giant form to her medium sized version:

Trunk seems a little bit stressed out! Looking forward to see how you guys fare against this boss :)

And this week, it’s time to start taking care of the second floor of that final dungeon! Let’s start with the first room, which will throw you into the cursed floor:

Next up, a couple of the horizontal floors:

And some vertical ones:

And finally, the lobby room that will lead you to each of those rooms:

This room will also have a bunch of statues and a portal, but we’ll take care of that in next week’s post!

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, it’s still all about Grindea! Check this out:

New week, new tasks! This time it’s all about making that first floor of the final dungeon. Let’s start with the left pillar, where you’ll do a fishing and puzzle challenge:

Next, the bridge connecting the two pillars. You’ll fight a bazillion Teddys and Freds on this bridge, and since we don’t know exactly how long it needs to be, I had to make it able to repeat itself indefinitely. In order for the player to be further reminded of their first encounter with Teddy and Fred, we decided to use the very bridge you pass over in Pillar Mountains / Evergrind Fields as a base:

Next, the right pillar, where you’ll do battle against Vilya (and possibly Giga Slime)! Here I used the Arena as a base, since this whole dungeon is all about reminding you of the old places you’ve visited throughout the game:

And finally, adding a bunch of details and props to make the area feel a bit more alive. Plus shredding the collector banners for “dramatic” effect, cause why not? :)

Time to start this week with another meeting! As you know, we’ve been going through each of our old floor designs for the final dungeon and deciding whether we want to keep them as is or improve them in any way. This week we talked about the Mount Bloom and Tai Ming focused floors!

On the Mount Bloom floor, you’ll find a Mount Bloom combined with the festival themed area where you’ll compete against Cavelings in each of the festival challenges, with a twist. We were still quite happy with this floor, but we had some notes on a cutscene towards the end that we fleshed out a bit, making it a lot better.

The Tai Ming floor, meanwhile, seemed incredibly long now that we decided to shorten a lot of the previous floors. Before, the idea was that you needed to help three different ghosts with a challenge each (either battles or puzzle related), before being able to collect the three Tai Ming emblems from them, which in turn would trigger an advanced version of the Priestess battle. Now we’ve decided to simply let the player talk to the ghosts and get the emblems that way, making the floor a lot shorter and more to the point. We now feel a lot happier with this floor as well!

Next week, we’ll take some time to discuss the final floor we need to decide: the Dragonbone Dunes floor. Yes, I know there’s still the Ghost Ship floor, but as it happens, we’ve always been sure of what’s gonna happen on that one, so no need to redesign that one. The desert floor however isn’t exactly the way we like it yet, so as “homework” for next week’s meeting we’ll each take some time to think about what different options we have for the floor :)

But for now, onwards with more art stuff! Starting with a quick return to Arcade Mode! There’s a couple transer screens needed for when your character runs towards the next area, showing your score as you go. First up, the transfer between Tai Ming and Dragonbone Dunes:

And next, the transfer between Dragonbone Dunes and the Ghost Ship:

In Teddy’s department, it’s all about the battle against Grindea, a battle we’re getting more and more excited about!

The idea is that she’ll have two forms: one “regular sized” form, where she’ll be pretty much player sized and have a bunch of different moves. Here’s a couple ideas we’ve thrown together – big warning that we’re using a LOT of placeholder graphics in these, just to get a feel for the mechanics:

 

And as a bonus, here’s our very first test, before any mechanics at all were added, just a very basic Grindea running around in a circle (square?). Pretty cool how iterations work, and how we’ll soon go from the placeholder graphic versions above to stuff with finalized art. This is probably one of my personal favourite parts of game design, seeing how things go from something basic and crude to more fleshed out and detailed designs!

 

The second form she’ll have is this giant, “proper” goddess form, where she’ll have a different set of attacks:

 

More to come! Super excited for this battle, which should be one of the most difficult and epic fights in the game :)