A new week, and some more Secrets of Grindea art stuff! This week I finished up one of the most important “portraits” of the game – Dad’s boss portrait!

Let’s have a look:

In Fred and Teddy’s department, it’s still all about cutscenes (yes, they do take a long time to get just right), but there’s a few new things to show that won’t be too spoilery! Namely, a cool mirror shattering effect and… A very special attack charge by Marino! What in the world is he doing in our endgame?!

As for the Visual Novel, thank you guys for all your votes on the story ideas last week! We had a ton of votes coming in and it’s super interesting to see how you all feel about them. This week there’s another poll, featuring a bunch of style mockups for what art direction we could take the game in.

Make sure to make your voice heard and help us make the most visually pleasing visual novel for you guys! :D

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:

Now, time to showcase the second casino, which will feature a different kind of gamble than the first:

The Pin Collector will make an appearance as well, in a house that seems to follow its own physics (you will be able to see a background filled with stars through the darkness in the floor and walls – quite spacey! ;))

Next, with a battle against Grindea being imminent very soon, it’s high time to give her a proper boss portrait! Let’s have a look:

Next up we needed to make some adjustments to master Ji’s challenge rooms to remove the scrolling from it, so let’s resize that thing a bit!

Some more things some of you may or may not have already seen, the transition between Grindeas health bars and her cool space wings:

In this Monday’s Meeting, it’s been all about perks! We haven’t had a lot of those before, so we’ve spent some time thinking about what more interesting ones we could add. Here’s a list of our current ideas:

* A perk that gives a low chance of pins dropping from defeated enemies

* Arrows deal more damage

* Bigger chance of getting a specific type of event room (we want at least one of these for the fishing rooms, since it can be quite a challenge to catch all of the fishes, however, we haven’t decided 100% yet if this will be a perk or a quest or an item of some sort)

* Bigger chance of Loods appearing

* A perk that guaratees that you’ll get a pin as a reward after a challenge win

* A perk that gives you x gold at the start of every new floor

* Bigger chance of getting card drops from enemies

* A slightly wider selection of items in the shop

* A perk that lets you start with an HP potion

* A perk that gives you a good 1h weapon at floor 5

* Same as above but for 2H weapons and magical weapons respectively

Do you have any ideas for more perks? Let us know what you’d like to see! :)

Next up, I’ve made a test for a portrait of that fae that comes along to help you fight against bosses (for a fee). However, this is only the first try, and after some discussions we’ve decided we’re probably gonna give him a slightly different look, making him look a bit more badass. For now though, here’s the old version:

Next up, in preparation for another one of the rooms, I’ve made a bunch of Super Potions. These potions can be bought from a potion salesman that appears in questionmark rooms, and the potions themselves are stronger and last longer. To start of with, the potion salesman will present you with one random potion of the selection below, but if you pay up some essence you’ll be able to unlock a second slot in his shop which will also feature a random potion:

Now, time for a newbackground! This one features the Spa, where your character can regain some HP by standing in the enchanted pool:

In Teddy’s department, let’s take a look at a new interface of sorts, featuring Bishop as he provides you with a bet! Now he’ll appear in the lower right corner to remind you of the bet you’ve taken:

As you may have noticed in previous images of the seed system, the Jumpkin was missing from most of it! Therefore, let’s start off this week by making all of the Jumpkin stuff, including a new drop for the Jumpkin, replacing the pumpkin seeds it dropped previously (it’ll now drop a singular seed, which looks a bit different, which will let you plant it, but it’ll also drop a jumpkin stem)!

There’s also a menu button for the seed system store, which can be seen below as well:

Time for the final veteran portrait, this one featuring the lady with the giant hammer! Let’s have a look:

Now it’s time to make a little redesign of the enemy codex! As mentioned, we’re going to redesign most of the menu, but the enemy codex is the one we’re aiming to actually get into this patch as opposed to a future one, as it will show information on which enemies drop seeds!

Here’s what it used to look like:

And here’s the process of the redesign:

As you can see, we can now fit twice as many enemies on every single page, giving a better overview of each enemy and what it drops:

We’re not 100% this is the iteration that will make it into the game yet, but at the very least, it’s a start! What do you guys think? Better or no?

Continuing with a couple more iterations of the codex, these ones have fewer details for more readability, and some bigger spacing:

Which one is your favourite this far?

Meanwhile, Fred’s been working on some fun stuff, including a little cloud that will water those growing plats for you, and Grindeas idle animation! How cool is that?

Now, time to get back to work and what better way to start off a new work week after a week’s holiday than to make the first pieces of a whole new system? These seeds (appropriately enough, since it’s spring time over here and I just spent pretty much the entire vacation outside managing the garden) will drop from all the greenery inspired enemies in the game, letting you plant them in your own home! Let’s take a look:

I’ve also made all the preparations for the first such plant, namely the Power Flower, whose seed you can already get after defeating it in Story Mode:

Of course, we also needed some drop appearance, both for the potted and the ..unpotted versions:

Next up, time to make some more potted plants! Without further ado:

And here we have the full lineup, both with and without the actual plants:

We’ll also add some kind of sprout to these for when you’ve planted a seed and it’s starting to grow, at which point examining it will give you an estimate of how far off it is from turning into an actual plant!

And now, back to doing something I haven’t done in a little while, which is a new portrait! This is for one of the new older generation collectors you’ll find in the HQ at some point:

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, we see a sneak peek of a couple new things for the stable update: a couple shields, a sprout, and an idle animation for one of the veteran collectors:

Now that we’ve been back a while and gotten back into the groove of working, we thought it was high time to have a meeting about what we’re gonna do the next bunch of weeks! As you know, the frontline patch has been released and we’re currently working on stuff for the stable version of the same. As such we went over what things will be added, and had a few unexpected ones added to the list as well!

First up, as mentioned before, we’ll add a book series by Penn Wrythe, that you’ll find parts of throughout the game. The final part will only be written after you’ve answered a couple questions asked by the writer herself, meaning you’ll determine the ending. We haven’t yet started working on this, but it’ll be done in one of the coming weeks.

We’re also finally adding the final bunch of haircuts, giving you a bunch of new selections! We’ll also make it possible to choose from the opposite gender’s haircut pool.

A redesign of the enemy codex is gonna happen – to be honest, we’ll probably redesign most of the menu, parts of which you’ve already seen, but for now the enemy codex redesign is the only one we’re certain will make it into the stable update. Our aim here is making it look a bit more pleasing visually as well as adding a few more things, such as the plant enemy seeds! We haven’t yet decided if the seeds are gonna function like a normal drop in the codex, or if there will be a plant icon somewhere indicating that this is an enemy type that drops seeds. Both these options come with their own pros and cons, and as of yet we haven’t really made any final decision on how to handle it – but it’ll get ironed out in a meeting at a later date.

Other than these things we still have the other things mentioned previously such as the seed system and the basement beneath the church in Port Monnaie, most of which has already been finished!

Now, on to more work, got a lot left to do this week :D

New week, new improvements! We wanted to make the Bishop boss portrait look a bit more creepy, so I did a bit of an paintover to adjust just that:

We’ve also made some additions around the card room, adding frames for each card to the wall, as well a a proper entrance (bye bye dragon floor and puzzle stuff):

With us finally deciding the visuals for the floating isle that will be the final Arcade Mode room, it was high time to add that and Arcadia itself to the world map (proper layout of the isles yet to be decided):

And speaking of the floating isle in question, I’ve started working on that as well! Here’s as far as I’ve gotten as of yet, more work to come:

Finally, Fred makes some progress with cleaning up the Bishop’s animations (have a little sneak peek), as well as adding some light effects to the cards in the card cave, which will illustrate how many cards you’ve collected thus far:

A new week comes along with a new room in the HQ! This room is where the Silver Point to Talent Orb transmuter will hang out with his apprentice Bokus:

Next, it’s time to start working on Bishop’s boss portrait, here divided into two parts, starting off with the first Bishop:

After that, we swap him around and add a different weapon, after which we add the third Bishop, the scary guy with the scythe:

Back to the new HQ room, we had some talks about it and decided to make it smaller and a bit more messy, adding a pile of books for Bokus to sit on as well:

Fred, meanwhile, has continued work on Bishop, and so here we have him giving you a catalyst in a rather interesting new way:

The next floor we’ve been tackling has been the Tai Ming floor, which is all about returning to the past (unsurprisingly…) :)

You’ll enter into a large open space area, looking much like the ruined present version of Tai Ming, but smaller. A statue of ancient priestess Tessen in her boss form blocks the path leading to the next floor, although this version is edited to have slots for three emblems (oh dear).

You’ll travel back in time using a time rift, to a version of the map where any buildings are whole and it’s a nice village-y feel. There are NPCs from Tai Ming walking around this area, and talking to three of them will trigger you to travel to the present day where you’ll have to do a challenge of some sorts (battling various sets of enemies, most likely), after which the ghost of the NPC you talked to will appear and hand you their emblem.

Once you have collected all three emblems you can return to the present day version of the floor hand and insert them into the statue, after which it’ll come alive for an empowered version of the Priestess battle!

Now, just two floors left…. :)

Remember the skill point to talent orb transmuter from last week? Here’s his apprentice, a young boy called Bokus! He’ll hand around with his master in the HQ once they’ve been added to the game properly:

Next up, we’ve continued to work on sketches for what we’d like that final Arcade Mode room to look like. We’ve moved away from the idea of the church like structure, as that would imply you’ll be able to go inside it – which you won’t – but settled for having the final room set among the heavens, since you’ve, after all, climbed the way up there :)

Here’s a bunch of new designs for the portal that will take you back to Arcadia or on to more adventures, depending on your power level:

Our favourite this far is the first one (although technically, it was the last one I made) :) Our idea is that the gate will either be dark like in the sketch, or empty (as in, you’ll see the background on the other end), until you’ve opened the chest, after which a portal will appear within the gate, looking slightly different depending on whether it’s leading back to Arcadia or onwards :)

We’ve also been discussing the final tower interior and what it should look like, and as such I’ve been playing around with a bunch more sketches, where the amount of mirror material varies from barely any to full on “everything’s-a-mirror” mode.

Right now we’re kind of leaning more towards the ’emptier’ version, meaning little to no mirror decorations. What do you guys think? One of the reasons we prefer that is because we won’t be able to use a proper reflection for the character on mirrors that aren’t on the floor, which means the mirror effect won’t be too clear to begin with. Also, having a more ‘boring’ look means that once you break the tower’s spell and it reverts back to it’s normal version it should be a bigger difference compared to the magically transformed room you were just in.

Meanwhile, Fred’s been working on a bunch of Bishop animations, but what we’re going to show today is something a bit more exciting(?), the sprite for Maracas, the guy who will transform your silver point into talent orbs, or the other way around! Behold:

For the sixth final dungeon floor, we’re doing a mashup of the festival and Mount Bloom, which means you’ll be going to a festival in the mountains! And who better to host such an event than a score of Cavelings…. :)

Our idea is that you’ll be in a rather open cave system where you’ll trick phase between various stations, each having a little mini game challenge of its own. We haven’t yet decided whether you’ll need to do them in a specific order or if you can trick phase your way around the area freely.

Either way, our current idea is that it’ll be the same mini games as you had in the Evergrind festival after you finished the Temple of Seasons, only with a caveling twist for each event. So for instance, you might not win the fishing contest based on the best or most fishes, and the cavelings might use some other cheating tactics to make sure they win themselves in the running challenge, and so on. I won’t go into too much detail here but you get the idea – basically you’ll most likely end up getting swindled one way or another – what else to expect from the cavelings, huh?

This week we’ll be discussing the Tai Ming floor, and after that there’s only two more floors to go! Drawing ever closer to the end :)

So, another thing we’ve been working on recently has been a bunch of new gauntlets for the arena! Now there’s a total of four of them, each a bit more difficult than the last.

First we have the good old classic one featuring Pillar Mountains, Evergrind City and Pumpkin Wood enemies. The second one has enemies from Flying Fortress and Seasonne, as well as a guest appearanec from Phase Man and a couple puzzle block enemies. The third has enemies from the Temple of Seasons and Mount Bloom, and also features the Summer and Autumn Elder Fae and Black Ferrets! Finally there’s the final Gauntlet, which has enemies from across the entire world, as well as some giant thorn worms, Vilya AND Marino! Quite intense.

After having made these, we’ve of course spent a bunch of time testing them. I also decided to remake the icon for the original gauntlet (which was a single slime against a yellow background) now that I had to make icons for the new challenges anyway:

Meanwhile, the Bishop battle is turning more and more from a prototype into an actual badass battle!

We’ve added a bunch of attacks and cleaned up the graphics on some. After some initial testing of this version of the battle, I’d like to be bold enough to say it’s one of my favourite boss battles in the game this far:

Hopefully you guys will like it as well! It’s pretty intense, let me tell you that much! :D

Next up we have a new NPC we’ve been talking about adding for a long time! This guy will be ‘unlocked’ by finishing a quest in the Collector’s HQ, and will grant you the ability to turn your silver skillpoints into talent orbs (and the other way around!)

Of course, as such he needed a portrait:

Meanwhile, Fred’s been continuing on with refining the Bishop animations, making sure the battle against him looks as good as possible! Here’s some more of his animations: