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[leonelc29]

ohh god, this thing is pretty!

and the release date is the end of the year/early next year, that's mean i can save up some buck to throw it into your bank

[Eldboll]

O'hoy sailors!

So, we're getting ever so close to finish up our first beta of the game. This has been our goal for the last few weeks and while there's still a bunch of stuff to do before we are completely happy, we're starting to see the end of the tunnel!

However.
We've been given the opportunity to work on Grindea for one of our courses in school, something we felt made sense. This way we can focus 100% on the game! The bad news is this is a project course so we needed a somewhat isolated element of the game that would take about five weeks to complete.

We’ve chosen to create a new field in the game, and as such, the stuff we had planned to do will be frozen until this course is done. It’s mostly good news, since we’ll get more done, and all of us sort of secretly wanted to work on new environments and enemies. The updates will probably be more interesting as well, for that matter! However, due to this arrangement, we’ll postpone the beta testing as well.

The area we’re going to create is temporarily called the Halloween Forest, with plans to change it if we can come up with something better! The zone is somewhat scary (as you probably figured out from the name) yet still cute. The enemies and decorations will include things such as pumpkins, lanterns, candle lights, scarecrows, ghosts, mist and spooky trees. This is the home of the odd Candy Witch, a couple of wicked twins and a mysterious hooded man. It’s also here you will have the chance of helping a lonely scarecrow in a quest!

This is one of our favorite areas (at least to talk about) so we’re looking forward to a few entertaining weeks for all of us. We hope you’ll will like it as much as we do!

To start things off, here's the first inhabitant of the Halloween Forest, a little jumpin’ pumpkin!



We're really looking forward to the coming 5 weeks and plan to give you guys some juicy updates at the end of every week. Be ready!


Windybeard, Poe
Thanks guys, we really appreciate it a lot!

Franklins Ghost
Haha, thanks man! Yeah, we're trying to cover it all. I'm personally more of a pad player, but I know there's a lot of keyboard fans out there as well. We just figured it wouldn't be fair to gimp down the keyboard controls in favor for a better gamepad setup. Doing both of them seemed like the best thing to do!

Ashkin
We had a lot of back and forth battles within the group about that feature In the end we decided to go for it and I'm really happy about it. I'm always the guy leveling away from my friends and I've missed a similar feature in a lot of games.

Leonelc
Thanks!
We're doing our best and hopefully we'll be as close to finished as possible at the beginning of next year. It's hard to plan it out though, with new features and stuff being added pretty frequently. We're really aiming to pack the game with content to keep players busy with more then just slayin monsters all day!

[Eldboll]

As promised, we’ve been crunching away with the Halloween Forest this week! We’ve got the basic color scheme and props down, as well as nearly all of the enemies that will inhabit the region.

Apart from this screen, we’ve iterated the whole forest layout to something we feel pretty confident will work out, so what’s left now props wise is mostly bigger set pieces, like the witch’s cottage, and putting everything together in a nice way!

Here’s the enemy lineup I've been working on

And below are idle animations for a couple of them!

• The pumpkin will be a cannonfodder-type enemy, which means there will be quite a lot of them, and they are pretty straightforward to defeat (but certainly more deadly than slimes and rabbits)
  
• The flying jack o’ lantern is a ranged type, and fires small projectiles at the players. He also scales with the number of players, shooting more projectiles if there are many players. His flames can be blocked with a shield, or even reflected if timed properly!
• The scarecrow is a tanky, melee type that can withstand several hits before going into hitstun. Using the shield to find openings is a dominant strategy here.
• Finally, the ghost is a harass type enemy, which stays invisible until it is in position for an attack. It appears as it charges, so you have some time to react, but will fade away again soon after the attack is finished. You’ll want to dispose of these buggers as soon as you see them! They are trickster ghosts of sorts, waiting around for unwary travelers to play with.

We’ll also be adding a plant enemy called Halloweed, which is an upgraded version of the flower you might’ve spotted in our videos. We’re still trying to nail his color scheme though, hence his absense in the lineup! He’ll use his vines to whack players that are close to him, but unlike his less agile brother, this guy will burrow and chase you underground if you’re out of his reach for too long!

Encountering all of these enemies all at once would certainly be a daunting (and frustrating) challenge, so we’ll spread them out a bit and try to make sure the spawn compositions are varied and well balanced!

[Franklin's Ghost]

That Halloween forest is looking great, really like your colour scheme.

[Windybeard]

I WANT TO EAT THIS GAME AND KEEP IT SAFE IN MY BELLY POUCH! 

[Shawny]

the delicious rpg style
the gorgeous backgrounds
the brilliant animations

I THINK IM IN LOVE ;;

[ScaryPotato]

Really lovely stuff. Those animations are sweet, and I especially love the subtle bum on the pumpkin, intentional or not! One nitpicky thing is that the graphics are SO detailed, the grass seems a little lacking with the same amount of love everything else has. Not like it matters when you're playing of course:) I like how smooth everything is in the video clips. Like everyone has said before me, this is really polished and professional!

[larsiusprime]

This is a really sweet looking game. Can't wait to play it Halloween forest looks good - I like how the grass is pretty low detail to contrast with the high-detail forest and characters.

[TheSpaceMan]

I think says it all.

Really looking forward to this, specialy playing it with my girlfriend.

And since it's stated as 10% complete i really look forward to when it aproaches 100%

[Eldboll]

This week, Vilya has been working on some sweet set pieces, while I've been whacking away at the many animations. Without further ado, let’s dive right into the pixels!

This here is the house of a candy cooking witch! Somewhere down the line, she must’ve realized candy was better for business than potions. Don’t eat her walls though; she won’t like that…

Here’s an old shrine in a small graveyard, tied to the ancient religion of the world.

On the animation side of things the scarecrow has sprung to life, ready to cause trouble for any collectors traveling through the Halloween Forest!


Franklin Ghost
Thanks dude, cool that you like it! We're gonna try to top it off with some light effects for all the lanterns and candles for some extra cozyness!

Windybeard & Shawny
<3

ScaryPotato
Thanks man, I'm doing my best with the animations
About the grass, yeah. We've been going back and forth a lot about the detail level of it. In the ended we decided to keep it on the low side to not make it all too cluttered. This was something we discussed way back though in like the starting weeks of the game so it might be something worth revisiting if a lot of you agrees!

larsiusprime
Thanks dude, can't wait for you to play it

TheSpaceMan
Thanks dude, hopefully you and you're girlfriend will have some kickass times with it when we're finished
Yeah, it's super hard to determine how far we've actually come, progress wise. We might be getting closer to 20%, it's hard to tell. There's still a lot of core systems and stuff we haven't touch so, we're keeping it on the low side rather than the opposite!


Once again, thanks for all the comments and feedback guys, it really means a lot and helps us make the game as good as it can be!

[jmac]

Incredible, not much else to say.

[zede05]

I echo the above statement. Really charming. Hurry up and be done!

[Franklin's Ghost]

The scarecrow animations are looking great. Also like the grass as it is because it's not as distracting as if it was more detailed and lets you focus on the rest of the beautiful visuals you guys have created.

Definitely one of the games I'm most looking forward to being released 

[baconman]

I'm loving how energetic the bouncy animation is, and the art style is amazingly whimsical! You planning on doing other such themes?

Also:



Amazing chest ahead!

[Eldboll]

This week, we’re taking shelter from the spooky forest inside some buildings! Vilya has been busy creating the cozy, candy filled house of the witch, as well as a substantially less picturesque abandoned house…

I hves mainly been busy with cleaning up all of the basic attack animations for all of the enemies. Here’s a sample of this week’s workload in form of everyone’s favorite flying pumpkin wizard, the Jack O’ Lantern:

We’ve also been working on getting some lighting going to boost the atmosphere in the forest, and after some sweet feedback from Reddit, this is what it looks like at the moment:

As always, we appreciate any type of feedback!


jmac, zede05 & Franklins Ghost
Thanks for the encouragement guys, means a lot!

baconman

Thanks dude! We're trying really hard to make all of the areas stand out from the normal stuff you're used to in classical RPGs. I mean, we're not going full out bananas or anything like that, but most if not all areas will have some little whimsical twist to them! It's hard though, we're really happy with how the Halloween Forest has turned out so far and might have to spice up the other areas we have planned

 

[baconman]

One idea I'm still kinda toying with (arguably unsuccessfully) is an Ice Palace full of pushblock platforming/switches puzzles. The trick being, of course, to present a number of options that cut one another off, and may limit you based on your starting position of a screen. Kinda dropped it now, as it appears to be extraneous to the more action-oriented flow my project is going for, but it could be useful.

Also, I'm focusing less on typical biomes, and more on fun/exciting settings to toggle between.

[Eldboll]

So the time is closing in for us to say farewell to the Halloween forest. Although it has been a lot of fun to do something new and exciting, all the props have been made and now only detail work (like actually putting it all together in the game) remains. Last week was spent mostly on that note on the programming and animation side and will probably continue on like that during this one.

While we’re shifting our main focus from the Halloween Forest in order to connect it to the rest of the game, we’ll try to set some time aside to record a gameplay video of us fighting inside it some time in the coming weeks!

Vilya’s final stretch in the forest was to make these portraits:



These are the NPCs you will encounter along the forest! Who they are? Remains for you to find out!

What we’ll do after this (and which Vilya has already gotten into, as you will soon see) is to return to the city of Evergrind, filling it with indoor designs and people. We’re also gonna look into adding more skills and expand our menu and level system in the near future, so look forward to that in the coming weeks!

Before that, however, here’s a sneak peek of two buildings that will be featured in Evergrind:



This is the Dojo, a place ruled by a great master of all fighting styles. Perhaps he can show you a new trick or two?

Another way to learn different types of tricks is to attend school:



Here you can learn details about monster types and other helpful hints and strategies that will make your grinding life easier.

baconman
Thanks for pitching suggestions, it's always much appreciated. Sometimes you need some outside help to get those creative juices going!
As for a ice area, we already got one of those pretty much fully fleshed out. I think it's going to be really sweet actually, might even rival the Halloween Forest! But just might.
We'll probably tackle that after we're done with battling the first dungeon, which will be a huge project on it's own! But that's later down the line!

[PompiPompi]

By the way, if you want more followers(I am not you need more currently since you definitly get the attention of anyone who sees the beautiful artwork), you can post about this game in Aveyond.com.

[Eldboll]

While much of last week was spent working on the project report for school, we’ve still managed to squeeze out some more stuff for the game! The inside of Evergrind City is continuing to take shape. Here’s a couple of the buildings Vilya furnished last week:

Above is the Hat Store! Here, you’ll be able to purchase and craft some sweet, sweet headgear! Headgear which you can show off to people online in order to impress friends, seduce the man or woman of your dreams, or to nail that job interview!

The slightly messy abode of a slightly messed up Alchemist! He might be crazy, but he’s a good guy. Not to mention he’ll be your go-to guy for stuff like potions!

Me on the other hand have had a hard time leaving the Halloween Forest without a proper goodbye, so I stuck around for another week. Besides finishing up the last reaming bits of the Halloweed, I also did a cute little death animation for the Jumpkin!

PompiPompi
Thanks man, we'll check it out for sure! More followers is always a good thing (I think?)

[Kit]

Why in the name of the holy Gods of Gaming do you not have an Indiegogo or Kickstarter page yet???  I'm all like: And there's nothing to throw my money at D:

In part because this game looks amazing, but mostly because of my selfish desire for you guys to be able to work on it more easily Really looking forward to this.