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!

If you checked our Forums or the Steam updates, you probably know this already, but if not: the main story part of Mount Bloom is now available on the Frontline beta!

This is an early update, so some vital things are still missing! For instance, most things in this area lack the proper sound effects (and a lot of ’em are completely silent as a result). We also haven’t added any side quests or secrets to the mountain – that’s what we’ll be working on the next 1-2 weeks or so. But it’s now possible to run through the part of the main story that will lead you up to the door of the next temple. Once we’ve thrown in a couple of side quests, added the proper sound effects and patched it all into stable, we’ll continue working on the actual temple!

For now though, it’d be awesome if you guys could run through the mountain and let us know of any silly bugs you come across!

Anyway, as you can guess, last week was all about getting this patch up and running. While Teddy furiously put everything together Vilya made the last few backgrounds. So here they are:

And now, we’ll go back to adding side quests and picking out sound effects! See you next week :D

Another week in which we continue to finishing up the Mt Bloom! Vilya continues to create backgrounds for the challenges:

(WIP here)

(WIP #1!)
(WIP #2!)

Plus a few more portraits! These should be the last vital portraits before the frontline update which will contain the main quest and challenges of the mountain. Once that’s all in place we’ll move on to adding a few side quests / activities, which means there might be one or two more later on (after the frontline update):

Meanwhile, Fred has been working on a bunch of effects & decorations, PLUS an upcoming boss…! It won’t be part of the coming update, but since Fred has finished his tasks for it he has started working on what’s coming next…

Our aim is to have the frontline patch ready by this weekend, unless something unforeseen (such as big scary bugs) happens, so let’s cross our fingers everything goes smoothly throughout the week!

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~ :)

This week we’ve kept focusing on the phase puzzles, and we’ve finally decided on a set of prototypes! There will be no less than 5 phase puzzles as part of this challenge, although the first ones will be kind of easy and serve as an introduction! :)

Here are some GIFs showing parts of the upcoming puzzles you’ll see (all with placeholder graphics that will be replaced ASAP):

As you can see, we’ve upgraded the block graphics now, so the arrow blocks/barrels that suck you in are actually more or less in their final state. The green ones always point in the same direction, while the pink ones change the direction in which it will launch you when you next press the phase button. We’ve also added proper mirror blocks and squares to this prototype, but we’re gonna do some additional work on them.

Basically, since this place has been abandoned for hundreds of years, we figured they shouldn’t look as clean as they currently are. So, we put Vilya to work, adding cracks, moss & greenery to them in order to make them look more worn. We’ll be continuing this work and show even more variations next week, so stay tuned for that!

Now, back to the Phase Puzzle lobby from last week! We already created the basic room, but left out details, as these blocks weren’t made yet and we definitely wanted to incorporate parts of them as decorations in the room. Time to dive back in:

And speaking of diving back in… In between this Vilya has also been making more improvements on the Time Travel Zone, this time improving upon a garden, as well as adding another portrait, of a priest’s apprentice:

Next week we’ll continue transforming our crude prototypes into real areas with real art. Teddy has already started putting everything together, so hopefully you’ll be able to venture through these challenges from start to finish in the not too far away future! And after that it’s finally onto the next temple… :3

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?

As the title says, we’re back, and we’ve survived our first week back at the office after the holidays! Both Vilya and Teddy suffered from the flu over the christmas break, but now they’re excited to be back and work on the game :)

So, this week Fred has been working on a bunch of NPCs for Mount Bloom! I’m sure you’ll all be very excited to meet these guys:

Meanwhile, Vilya has focused on reworking & adding details to the first time travel map, as we’re drawing ever closer to actually start implementing it! Here’s some video coverage of that as well:

Here’s the lower part of the map, the way it looks right now (more work incoming):

She also threw in a portrait of one of the miners Fred made (shown in the last blog post):

And what about Teddy? Well, he’s been working on a new type of puzzle (kind of), that you’ll be facing up against in Mount Bloom, before you reach the time travel area! Next week we’ll show you some prototypes of that, so stay tuned :)

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: