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!