This month has been all about one thing: testing!

In short, we’ve been going through the game with a fine-toothed comb, both together and separately, trying to catch every little issue that might be hiding in the code. We’ve tested Custom Mode, New Game+, and of course, the standard vanilla mode as well. While it’s fun to play around with all the fancy modifiers and changes that come with the custom settings, it’s important that nothing breaks in the original experience either. After all, every bit of code we add for new features or settings runs the risk of causing unexpected bugs in other parts of the game. As a result, we’ve been bouncing back and forth between modes, squashing bugs left and right!

Our goal is to get a Frontline version of the beta out for public testing within the next couple of weeks, but that timeline depends on how many more issues we encounter. Fingers crossed it won’t be too many!

During testing, we also revisited an old topic: how to visually indicate when a save file is a New Game+ run.

We tried a few different ideas, including an icon of Grindea next to your character, though we ended up feeling it might confuse players as to what it actually means. In the end, we decided on something more straightforward: a simple “NG+” text badge.

Here are the two versions next to each other for comparison:

We think the clean text version (shown at the bottom) does the trick without adding any unnecessary confusion. Sometimes, simpler really is better!

That’s all for this month! Hopefully by the time the next recap rolls around, many of you will be trying out the new beta and helping us iron out the final wrinkles.

See you then!

Hello again! Time for another update on what we’ve been working on lately, and this one’s a fun one!

Multiplayer is now fully integrated in New Game+! We’ve tested all the critical points we could think of: cutscenes, transitions, pins, enemy replacements, and so on, and everything should work as intended. Of course, as always, we’re counting on you to help sniff out any bugs we might have missed once this goes live.

Custom Game mode is also implemented, and yes, it works in multiplayer too!

What in the world is custom game, you might ask, as we haven’t mentioned that before?! Well, essentially it’s a mode in which you can pick and choose between a number of settings, creating your own version of the game, in a way.

Here’s a list of the Custom Game settings currently available:

Gameplay Settings

• Pins: Toggle whether pins drop from bosses.

• Enemy Pins: Enable random pins on enemies.

• Enemy Pin Totems: Whether the game spawns totems that apply pins to nearby foes.

• Randomized Monsters: Shuffle which enemies appear in what areas.

• Randomized Treasures: Mix up the loot in chests.

• More Than One Card: Enemies can drop multiple cards, stacking the effects of each card.

• Hyper Elites: Tougher elite enemies may appear.

• Hyper Farm: Enemies become stronger and drop more loot the longer you grind.

• Alternative Awakening Crystal: Replaces the card collection objective with… a very different kind of challenge (spoilers: Grindea fight).

Difficulty & Progression

• Maximum Player Level: Set your own level cap.

• Increase Health With Levels: Adjust HP scaling.

• Experience Multiplier: Change how fast you level up.

• Enemy Damage Multiplier: Make enemies hit harder (or softer).

• Card Drop Rate Multiplier: Tweak how often cards drop.

• Healing Strength Multiplier: Adjust how effective healing is.

Chaos Settings (a.k.a. “Candy Curse” Inspired)

• Enemies Drop Hazards on Death: Just like the Candy Curse!

• All Enemies Elites: Every enemy becomes an elite version.

• Darkness Descends: Evil Eye-like blue eyes spawn constantly; break them or go blind.

• One Slice Mode: A perfect guard followed by an attack deals massive damage (think 9999+ territory).

Whether to keep all these options is up for debate, but currenly, we’re leaning toward letting players go wild as much as they want.

Meanwhile, we’ve also implemented the first draft of the New Game+ unlock!

When you return to the main menu after finishing the game, you’ll see a popup letting you know it’s unlocked. Here’s a short video of that process in action (with placeholder graphics), and a screenshot with the finished version of the popup graphics for good measure:

Lastly, a quick update on the Production Book:

After going through the test print a few times, we’re honestly not completely happy with the quality. As you can see in the image above, the printing process at KDP adds a white border between the pages even though the size setting and bleed is correct. This sort of ruins the double page-spreads and generally looks off and low-quality. Because of that, we’re now leaning toward doing a limited edition print instead of offering it via print-on-demand. We’ll keep you updated once we’ve looked into more options!

For now, thanks for sticking with us as we inch closer to the big NewGame+ update!

Until next time~

Hello fellow Collectors!

Spring has sprung here in Sweden, and with the snow melting away, we’ve been busy polishing up some new cutscenes for NewGame+! Let’s dive in, shall we?

First up, a sneak peek at the visual effect for resetting time to kick off a New Game+:

Obviously, the UI window is using placeholder graphics, so more polish to come, but we’re pretty excited about the vibe so far!

Next up, Pin Man is back with a bang! This cutscene shows how he activates enemy pins in the arena, adding an extra twist to fights from then on:

The next time he returns is in Flying Fortess, at which point he creates the totems that will appear here and there from then on:

We’ve also been working on something to spice up your grinding a little bit. In New Game+, the longer you farm enemies in an area, the stronger they will get… but, the drop rate will also increase! In other words, the more effort you put in, the juicier the rewards. Just our way of making farming a bit more dynamic (and a bit more dangerous)!

Now, Teddy will be deep in the multiplayer code jungle, making sure all of these New Game+ features work smoothly whether you’re flying solo or smashing mobs with friends… More on that soon!

Enjoy the spring weather until next time :D

The months go by quickly and soon it’s spring! Let’s take a look at what we’ve been working on since last:

First I cleaned up this background so it could be used for a transition to the Grindea battle in the newgame+ version.

Then, I made a new background for Arcade Mode, which needed different entrances/exits depending on which area the room appears in:

The clocks in the background are sketches left by me for Fred, who will make his own versions and animate them. In fact, he’s already made a couple of versions which can be seen here:

While Fred was working on that, Teddy played around with the background, creating this starry effect:

I also finished up Aevum’s portrait so you can actually talk to him:

The latest iteration of the room can be viewed here, although the light effect behind Aevum is still a work in progress:

Finally, today’s the one year anniversary of Grindea’s official release!! To celebrate, we’re having a week-long sale where you can get the game at a 20% discount! Be sure to get it if you haven’t yet :)

Time for another monthly recap, and as expected, a lot has happened since last time!

First up, let’s take a look at these animated versions of the Totem we mentioned in some previous posts. These are all now functioning and looking really nice, thanks to Fred’s animations:

As for New Game+, we’ve spent a lot of time working on cutscenes to start off the mode and some where the traveler from Arcade Mode pops up to add his pins to the mode. As always, cutscenes are among the most time-consuming for us to make, both in terms of programming and animation, and there will be quite a few to add.

Here’s a little sneak peek of a new animation for the traveler’s appearance in Story Mode, as well as the portal that will take you to the Grindea battle mentioned in the previous recap:

Speaking of cutscenes, there’s also a new face we’ve got to introduce:

This is Aevum, a time wizard in charge of time crystals in Arcade Mode. He’ll get a proper cutscene the first time you’re eligible for a time crystal and die, at which point he’ll introduce the concept of time crystals and rewind time for you for the first time.

He’ll also appear in Story Mode as the one who starts New Game+ for you! Next up on our to-do list is making an arcade room and a portrait for him.

***

In other news, we’re currently in discussions with Makeship about creating a plushie version of one of the characters from Secrets of Grindea, and we decided to ask our community for their opinion on which character should be released as a plushie.

As you can see below, Bag was the clear winner out of our three suggestions:

If this project moves forward, we’ll begin by launching a petition to gather at least 200 pledges from people interested in purchasing the Bag plushie! If we manage to reach that goal, production can proceed, and everyone who wants one will be able to keep a grouchy-pouchy at home.

Stay tuned for more details soon!

This will be a short post, as we’re all with family right now to celebrate the holidays and relax for a bit. Nevertheless, I wanted to check in here and wish you all a very happy new year – let’s make 2025 a year to remember in all the best ways!

Happy New Year!

And stay tuned for the next monthly recap on February 1st :)

Hello everyone! We’re back with another monthly recap! Getting a bit chilly here in the north, some snow has already started falling. It’s been a pretty productive month, so let’s dive right in!

First up, Fred has spent a lot of time sketching designs for the Totems mentioned last month:

On the gameplay side, we’ve decided to make one significant change: Totems now spawn alongside mobs that must be defeated before the Totem itself can be destroyed. Previously, it was a bit too easy to rush in and take out the Totems first, so hopefully this change will make them stick around a little bit longer!

Fred has also made some animations featuring the titles of the enemy pins, so you’ll actually know what they’re doing! Here’s a bunch of his suggestions:

Which one is your favourite? :D

Next, we’ve had a meeting where we discussed how the potions are going to function when starting and looping through Newgame+. We decided that instead of redoing potion quests to unlock the potions & potion slots again, your rewards for completing the quests will be key items that give them a passive boost. One increases their effect duration, another makes them x% stronger, and a third speeds up their recharge rate. For every loop of newgame+, these key items will grow stronger as well.

We also decided that to unlock the third catalyst, players won’t need to collect all the cards again (after all, you’ll begin your newgame+ run with a full card album). Instead, you’ll face off against Grindea herself! The two other catalysts will be required to unlock this fight, and empty slots symbolizing them will replace the cards on the cave wall.

Initially, we considered replacing the Bishop fight with the Grindea battle, but decided against it. The Bishop fight is a pretty fun and memorable encounter in our opinion, and we didn’t want to lose that experience entirely in Newgame+ loops.

We also took some time to discuss the bow: in Newgame+ you’ll now be able to purchase a +1 upgrade for your bow with each Newgame+ loop. Just a small money sink that will increase your bow’s strength and keep it viable!

Other than that, the production of our Secrets of Grindea art/production book is now officially complete! We’ll be ordering proofs soon, and once they’re approved, the book will be ready for purchase. As mentioned before, our plan is to time its release with a major game update, so stay tuned for more details on that front!

That’s it for this month’s recap! We’re excited about these changes and updates, and we hope you are too. As always, thank you for your continued support and feedback – until next time!

It’s been another fun and exciting month for us here at Pixel Ferrets!

One of the highlights was joining the Moderskeppet cruise, which we mentioned in the last couple of posts. We were absolutely stunned to meet so many passionate fans of the game!! It was a blast seeing how many of you had already played Secrets of Grindea before coming on the cruise, as well as getting to showcase the game to new players.

The cruise in general was absolutely fantastic – we loved connecting with fellow devs on board, trying other games, and having the opportunity to listen to some pretty amazing music. Those of you who didn’t join this time around should definitely do so next year!

Here are some pictures:

NewGame+

On the development front, we’ve been hard at work, testing and refining the new systems for New Game+. We’re currently experimenting with several changes we think you’ll find exciting (we sure do, anyway):

1. Increased EXP
As you get to keep your level when you start a NewGame+ run, there initially wasn’t much leveling going on – the enemies simply don’t grant enough EXP compared to your high level! This ended up feeling a little boring, and we found ourselves longing for the level up animation and getting new skill points to spend. So, our first experiment has been increasing the EXP from enemies and quests, allowing you to start leveling up again when restarting the game!

2. Overleveling Skills
To give you something to spend your skill points on, we’re adding a new system to the game (for NewGame+ only): overleveling. In other words, you’ll be able to keep leveling skills beyond their original cap. The difference per level won’t be huge, but it’s a lot more satisfying and feels like your character is still making some sort of progress.

3. New Pin Slot Mechanics
Players will now start with just one pin slot in NewGame+, but you can unlock additional slots using skill points. This gives skill points another valuable purpose, as many players have likely settled on their favorite skills at this point and won’t need to spend all their points overleveling them.

4. Totems with Pins:
We’ve also introduced three new ‘enemies’, called Totems. The main purpose of the Totems are that they carry enemy pins – they aren’t proper enemies in the sense that they drop cards or give you EXP. In essence, they’re more like obstacles that make battles more difficult. Here’s a breakdown:

“Weak Totem”: Can hold up to three pins but is relatively fragile.
“Tanky Totem”: A sturdier option that can hold one or two pins.
“Mobile Totem”: This totem moves around like a Lantern Jack and holds one or two pins.

The pins the Totems carry can do anything from healing or shielding nearby enemies, sending occasional laser beams your way, or any other number of things to make your life more difficult.

If you have ideas for more enemy pins you’d like to see, please share your ideas in the comments or over on our Discord!

The Production Book

Our production book is also coming along nicely. It’s currently going through a rigorous editing process, and we’ve added 18 new pages, bringing the total to a pretty impressive 149 pages for now! We’re still tweaking and refining things, so there might be even more content by the time it’s finalized.

By the time of the next update we hope this editing phase will be done, which means everything will be proof read one more time before we’re ready to start sending it out. We expect the publishing to align with a bigger update or perhaps with the 1 year anniversary of the game’s full release – we’ll see!

Another month has gone by, and a lot of progress has been made – let’s take a look!

NewGame+

NewGame+ is progressing, a lot of testing is being done, and we’ve added a bunch of new stuff to it! As mentioned before, pins will be included in the NewGame+ run, but a new feature we’ve been testing is adding a bunch of pins used by the enemies! This means that certain enemies carry pins that can make them shoot laserbeams, heal other enemies or themselves, create shields, create slowing fields, spawn more enemies, throw slime at you – you name it!

We’re also playing around with there being a chance of enemies from other areas spawning among the regular enemies of each area, with the aim that these two features will help make the NewGame+ runs a bit more interesting and dynamic.

A few screenshots of these additions can be seen below:

We’ve also decided that when you get an item for the second time, instead of getting a simple copy of the item you got before, you get a +1 version of the same item, with improved stats. This will stack with every new NewGame+ cycle, so if you end up playing through the game 10 times you’ll end up with +10 gear, and so on.

We’ve also scrambled what items you receive in chests as well as quest rewards, so you never know what item you’ll get!

All in all, we’re very excited about these addition and the way NewGame+ is turning out and hope you’ll all enjoy is as much as we do while testing it!

The Production Book

After letting the production book rest for a while, I’ve printed out the whole thing and started the editing process. The book is already quite long but we may still add a few more pages to add more context to some aspects I didn’t spend too much time describing in the first draft – we’ll see!

What about that cruise?

We’re now confirmed that we’ll be joining the geek and gaming cruise Moderskeppet on October 10th! If you haven’t already, make sure to book your ticket for an absolutely amazing evening on board (in fact, I believe it may be completely sold out already but you never know)!

Some New Apparel..

In honor of representing the game at Moderskeppet next week, we’ve ordered some new apparel to look somewhat professional at the event. The black one above is the one we’ll wear as we represent the game, while the rest is stuff we ordered just for fun.

Would YOU be interested in any sort of Secrets of Grindea merch, and if so, what kind? Let us know in the comments!

Hello everyone – I hope you’ve enjoyed the summer! Here in the north, the weather is slowly progressing into autumn, with leaves turning yellow and auburn.

NewGame+ Status

As promised, we’ve started the development of NewGame+ and actually already come to a point where we’ve been able to do some basic testing!

Essentially, we’ve decided that in NewGame+ you will keep your character, your level and your gear. The enemies are more difficult – somewhat balanced to your level – and you will be able to collect an infinite number of cards. Yes, that means you can collect one hundred Rabby cards, if you like. The card effects will stack but possibly not at 100% – more testing is needed.

There will also be pins! Some of the pins from Arcade Mode won’t be able to carry over due to how different the modes are, so instead we’ve been brainstorming new pins specifically for Story Mode – some of which may also be added to Arcade Mode in the future. We’ll give you a list of our ideas later on but until then, feel free to share what pins you’d like to see in Story Mode!

Naturally we’ve had some discussions regarding the pins in this mode, specifically about how you’ll be able to get them. For now the idea is that one will spawn everytime you kill a boss, as well as them having a low chance of spawning on killing regular enemies. There will also be a small, randomized pool being sold by the Traveller (who can reroll the pool for a fee). This is subject to change depending on how we feel during further testing.

We’re also considering an idea that once you finish NewGame+ and start another NewGame+ run, you’ll have access to one more pin slots – which means that theoritically, if you play through the game enough times, you’ll be able to equip every pin in the game at the same time! Again, more testing needed here, but we think the idea is a lot of fun!

Going on a Cruise?!

In other news: we’ve been invited to showcase Secrets of Grindea at Moderskeppet which is a geek and gaming cruise taking place from the 10th to 11th of October, starting and ending in Stockholm, Sweden.

Right now we’re currently unsure if we’ll be able to attend but we certainly hope so, so if you’re in Stockholm early October be sure to check it out! Don’t delay too long, though, as rooms are already getting close to sold out.

We’ll of course let you know if we’ll be there during next month’s recap which should be available about a week before the cruise.

Next Time…

We should have been able to test the NewGame+ features some more and ironed out some further details on how things will work. Stay tuned!