The main focus this week continous to be endgame stuff, boss polish and cutscenes, but since the progress on those is a bit more abstract to show, let’s take a look at another one of the puzzle backgrounds instead:

This puzzle room features a whole lot of phase shifting mixed with twilight! You saw a prototype of this puzzle a few weeks ago, but now it finally has a proper background as well :)

Fred has also spent some time on the puzzles, creating a “mirror core” you need to crush in each of the puzzle rooms in order to progress further! Here’s the progress of that project, from early sketches to finished version:

Next week it’s time to reveal the background for the third and final puzzle! Stay tuned! :)

Another week and more ending related progress! This time, let’s have a look at one of the puzzle backgrounds, inspired by the early arena:

In this room you’ll deal with three classical block puzzles, one of which is the older, more difficult version of the one that appears in the arena! Those of you who have played the game way back may remember it – it was later replaced by an easier version that better fit those early parts of the game.

The main focus for Teddy and Fred is the cutscenes, so let’s have a little preview of one of the last cutscenes of Arcade Mode! First, an early prototype:

Then, adding some more details:

We weren’t entirely happy with how the hand looked, and felt the whole composition looked a little lame, so we played around with another setup:

Leading, finally, to this version:

This week we’ll continue working on the final backgrounds, the production booklet and the remaining cutscenes! Almost there :)

Another week and more stuff to do and talk about! This week I went back to some art stuff in between writing on the book, finishing up one of the final battle rooms! This here is where you get to battle Dad, and we’ll transform the room a bit for your fight against Zhamla – but that’s for later! :)

We’ve also started something that really makes it feel like we’re at the home strech – one final playthrought. For one hour every day we’re currently doing a multiplayer playthrough of the entire game together, from start to finish. This is to see if we’ve missed any inconsistencies or bugs before release – don’t worry, we’re not adding long lists of polish to add, this is solely for storyline consistency and bug purposes, and to iron out anything that feels off. In other words, the finishing touches, if you will. When we’re not doing the playthrough we’re focusing on the final parts of the game. For me and Teddy, that’s Story Mode – for Fred, it’s finishing up some last remaining graphics for the Arcade Mode ending. Here’s a little sneak peek:

Two different versions – one longer, one shorter. Which one do you prefer? :)

This week I’ve been going through all the blog posts we made throughout 2013 and 2014 to refresh my memory and save some of the stuff posted there. The word count for the production book is now 22,548 with 9 more years to account for! Quite the tome already – but as I said last week, we’ll make a lot of cuts before we have the finished product.

I must say it’s quite the journey to read about all the stuff we did, all of our early plans for the game and small tidbits about we were doing with our lives. Though a lot has changed throughout the years, our work on Secrets of Grindea has been the one thing that’s always been there. Looking back at certain graphics I made I can pinpoint exactly where I was in my life when I made it and how it felt sitting there right in that moment. And though I’m looking at things that are more than 10 years old it somehow feels just like yesterday.

Looking at the crazy amount of ideas we had for the game back then also makes me very inspired for the future. A lot of great ideas didn’t make it into Secrets of Grindea, but perhaps they can be used for the next project? Of course, we haven’t decided on what that next game might be yet, but we have a lot of suggestions and reading up on our old ideas really make me excited.

A bit unexpectedly, there’s a whole bunch of things we made that still haven’t made it into the game as well! Anyone remember these little guys?

They were supposed to appear in Seasonne as decorations and first appeared on the blog way back in 2013, right about the time when we also somehow forgot about them forever. Going through the old archives sure is full of unexpected treasures!

Teddy is mainly focused on prototyping the final puzzles, so here’s a sneak peek of part of one such puzzle (featuring some twilight shift action), as well as some graphic details for what happens when you’ve solved a puzzle and return to the elevator room:

Fred meanwhile continues to make animations for the battle against Dad! Here’s one of his attack animations:

Hey guys! Thank you all for your kind messages – I’m happy to say that the exercises I was given by the doctor worked wonders and I feel a lot better now! Good enough, in fact, that I’ve spent a lot of time writing that production booklet. In the end, it’s threatening to become more than a mere booklet – at this pace it’s gonna be a full lenght book by the end of it. We’ll probably try to narrow it down towards the end – I doubt anyone want to read a full novel-lenght’s worth of how we designed the game. For now though I’m trying to put in as much information as possible since it’s a lot easier to cut things out than squeeze them in afterwards. As such, the outline has grown a lot since the last time you saw it:

I’m still not sure how much of this we’ll keep or in how much detail we should go, but once it’s all in place we can start cutting things or moving them around. At present, I’ve gone through the first year of weekly blog posts to refresh my memory, and that has resultet in 13,624 words written. That means there’s still ten years worth of stuff to read. For reference, a full-length novel is usually around 80-100k words, so it’ll certainly be interesting to see how long this turns out in the end. Of course, most of the more complex systems and mechanics were designed right at the beginning so it’s likely the latter years will be more focused on art and lesser designs, things that won’t need as many words to describe them.

As for Teddy and Fred, they’re mainly focused on the battle against Dad and Zhamla. One of his new attacks involve a plant summon, much like your own but a lot bigger! Let’s have a look:

Hey guys, this is just a quick update from me!

We’re all finally done with covid/the flu, but a little while after getting better I got diagnosed with something called Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. We’re currently guessing it’s because I was recently sick, but nobody really knows why it happens. Anyway, it means that I’m currently having big problems being at the computer as I’m suffering from a lot of vertigo and nausea. I’m currently doing a bunch of exercises that will help me get better quicker – and it’s a lot better already, thankfully – but, just typing these few sentences is almost making me wanna throw up so I’ll try to bring you guys a more detailed update next week, or have Teddy or Fred type one out for you then.

Rest assured, Teddy and Fred are working as I type this so progress is still happening! Just not a lot of updates right now, haha. Thanks again for your continued support, it means the world <3

Okay, so as mentioned last week I’ve been spending a lot of time doing some writing on the production booklet that will be available for all Snowbacca Tier supporters for free (and also – at least very likely – available for a small price for everyone else).

This booklet will detail the whole process of how we made the game, from idea to finish, and the things we changed in between. It’s probably gonna be quite long – so a lot of my time is gonna be spent on this in the near future. Writing is one of my favourite past times, but finishing a whole book does take some time. Perhaps it’s good, then, that most of the art for Grindea has been finished (although there’s still a few backgrounds left).

Today, let’s start off with taking a look at the basic outline:

The biggest part here will be the Story Mode part, in which we’ll go into detail of how we made each of the areas. A lot of the material from this blog will be featured there, but in a compressed version. Arcade Mode will likely be something similar but divided into what made us create the mode and then two separate parts for Arcadia and the actual floors. Of course, this is all a work in progress still, and we may yet change or add sections.

After taking a look at this basic outline, is there anything you feel is missing? Or anything in particular you’d like to know more about? Let us know and we might just add it in :)

Now, as you can see we’re missing some stuff from Teddy & Fred’s department this week, and that’s because we’re struggling a bit with what’s very likely covid-19 at the moment (my test came out negative but another person from the same small gathering we went to tested positive the same day, so it might just have been a false negative).

Either way, I’ve only just gotten sick and it’s not showing any signs of getting better yet so most likely next week will be a devblog free week, as I’m anticipating I’ll spend the next bunch of days in bed. With any luck, we’ll be back again on August 15 with more new stuff! Until then, take care of yourselves out there :)

This week I’ve partly spent finishing up my part of the fight against the mirror, which means a new couple portraits as well as the boss portrait has been made:

I also started work on the balcony, which will lead you to the building where Zhamla lies waiting:

Mainly, though, I’ve started proper work on the production booklet which will be a part of the Snowbacca support tier! More on that next week… :)

Teddy and Fred continues on with the fight against Dad – so here’s a couple more animations from that department:

We’re back guys! Seriously, having a couple weeks off has been great and we’re now super excited to get back to work and finish this game up! Thank you for being so understanding and supporting us throughout these years – what a journey it’s been, and still is. Now as we’re drawing closer and closer to the end, it’s time to start taking a look at one of the final battles – the one with your own dad. We’ve been working on a bunch of attacks for him, so let’s have a peek:

No Grindea boss is ever really complete without having to dodge a bunch of stuff, am I right? So to start off, he’ll have one attack featuring Amalet and his annoying energy orbs, while you also have to dodge that annoying sword you just found out about.

Speaking of said sword, it’s sure out to get you, and has a bunch of attacks of it’s own – here with the aid of a Gaantlet teleport:

Some more dodging action:

And Gaantlet creating ice fields to make this battle even more difficult, oof:

The attack above looks a little wonky as it’s been recorded in 30 fps – don’t worry, it’s gonna look a lot better in the actual game with the actual graphics.

And here’s a little sequence featuring the attacks we have so far in various patterns, giving you a little preview of what parts of this fight might look like:

All WIP still, of course! In Fred’s department, he’s been busy making the proper animations for the attacks we’ve come up with this far, so here we have a couple of them:

Next up, I’ll be working on the final backgrounds, the last few puzzles and the last couple boss portraits! So close now :)

Work on the tower continues with a bunch more backgrounds. First, some new elevators for that barrage attack where enemies from various areas will appear at once!

These elevators will feature a Collector’s HQ setting as they’ll show the Black Ferrets, who you last fought over there:

Next, the top of the tower, allowing you to finally exit all of it:

Teddy’s been working on some more puzzle ideas, so here’s a little sneak peek of one we’re fairly certain will make it into the game as one of the three challenges:

I won’t go into the details of how it works as you’ll have to solve it for yourself… But we think it’s gonna be nice, involving time rifts and season swapping!

Speaking of season swapping, as work on the cutscenes continue we’ve utilized the season change effect to transform the Shadow Slime elevators into its Pumpkin Woods themed counterpart:

This is just one of the many small details we’ve been adding and working on in the cutscene department – those things take a lot of time. But hopefully, it’ll all be worth it and look super cool in the end!

Next week and the one after we’ll be taking a little bit of a summer break in order to spend some time with friends and family. Therefore, the next blog post will be available on July 18th, when we’re back in the office! Stay tuned until then :)