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 :)