Vilya's Workblog

Meanwhile, Fred has been working on a bunch of smaller things, including a couple of the new NPCs, and some secret easter egg stuff I won't show here, but will leave for you to find out during your adventures in the game!

Now, as is customary after a bigger patch, it's time for us to take a couple days off to recharge the batteries. The next blog post will therefore be available here on August 3!

Hope you guys are enjoying the summer, I'll see you then :3

Next in line in the mansion room creation is the second hallway, which connects the kitchen, dining room and first hallway:

And with that, the mansion is more than halfway done! What remains now is the grand corridor where Marino's dad hangs out, Marino's room, the master bedroom and Marino's mother exotic plant room!

Next, another face you'll find in the Mansion: another maid, polishing some statues in the main hallway!

Next, work on the mansion continues, this time with a dining room, where we can only assume Marino and his family have their supper with esteemed guests to entertain:

Hello everyone! Have you enjoyed your weekend? It's time for another week and another meeting, this time discussing the next quest we'll implement for Story Mode.

As you've seen before, Fred has been working on a bug net animation for a quest where you'll capture butterflies. The person who will give you this quest is Luigi, and one of the rewards will be one of those fertilizers that will help the squiggly plants you've seen across the world grow. Today we ironed out some more of those details.

To start off with, the point of the quest is that you'll get a bug net from Luigi, and use it to capture some rare butterflies found across the world. Turn in three (or four - we haven't decided the exact number yet) and you'll get a fertilizer, turn in all of them and you'll get a special trinket.

At first we weren't sure whether this quest should be given immediately or if it'll be unlocked later on in the game. Each of these options come with their own pro's and cons. The positives of having it unlocked immediately (well, after you finish the trial) is that you'll be able to capture butterflies as you go on your adventures, giving you something extra to do. On the other hand, unlocking it later on will give you a chance to go back to some places you've seen before, especially if you've taken notice of the butterflies before and wondered what you could do with them.

In the end we settled for having it unlocked immediately, since the first reward you'll get for the quest is a fertilizer, and that in its own is a sort of backtracking deal, making both the quest and reward a bit too similar if we went for the second option.

As for the final reward, we decided to go for a trinket that will get you a butterfly follower, sort of like the trinket that gives you a fae follower, but with a butterfly instead. We're also considering allowing you to pick between a set of different appearances for the butterfly, so that you'll always be able to pick one that you like best and/or matches your look!

We still don't know exactly how many butterflies you'll be able to capture across the world, but we'll try to spread them out evenly throughout the game. The main thing is that they will all be outdoors (and Luigi will tell you as much), to avoid having you look around in every nook and cranny of every cave and building when you're about to go looking for that final one!

It's finally time for those of you who play on stable to take part of the new Arcade Mode update!! With this new patch, you will get the full rebalance/rework of Arcade, including fewer floors, Traveller and his Pins, the difficulty changing Catalysts and various rebalances. Are you ready?

As always, feedback is much appreciated, and you can leave it here, on the forums, or in our discord! We all look forward to hearing from you soon :)

Swapping things around a bit and having Fred's Friday on a Thursday slot, although it's posted on a Friday because as always that 'schedule' button is a slippery thing?!

Anyways, as part of one of the Marino's mansion quests, namely the one with an arena challenge, we wanted to introduce some sort of more difficult fight, so we thought it was high time to make a proper boar boss! In our pursuit of this we wanted to make a more dangerous looking boar without having to redo exactly all of its animations completely, so Fred went to experiment on a bunch of different design ideas:

In the end, we went for the one in the top right, giving him massive tusks and some sweet hair (also, eyebrows, because why not?). Next came the question of what colour it would be, and though we were all fond of the red ones and might use one of those for something else (Boar fire train arena challenge anyone?) we decided on going for the 'elder' gray-ish look, having it match, in some ways, the Elder Rabby mini-boss:

Excited yet? We sure are! It's gonna be nice to add some more side quests into the game to make the world feel more populated and alive, with events that happen here and there throughout your journey.

Next up, the portrait of a woman you'll meet as part of one of the mansion quests we're working on; a PR woman hired by Marino's dad to handle marketing for the arena event:

Next up in the mansion is a room where Marino's mom takes care of the estate business; her office, if you will:

This week continues with more Marino's Mansion! To start off, the kitchen:

Fred's been busy animating those cute trees from last week:

And another NPC that will be involved in one of the quests in Marino's Mansion:

Among other things! More next week :)

Now, in case you missed it, the Frontline Beta has been updated since a few days back! Among the things that have been added you'll find the Arcade rebalance, catalysts that will make your runs more difficult as you beat them, Pins and a whole bunch of smaller enemy changes. The full patch notes can be found here or on the steam community hub, as always! Please let us know what you think, and send us any feedback on what you like, dislike, or would like to see changed :)

Next, work on Marino's Mansion continues! This time it's the library's turn to be made...

We've also been working on an user interface for adding those catalyst you get that will make your runs more difficult! Here we're playing around with various font sizes and colours:

To show a bit more emphasis on the statue and the catalysts added, we decided to fade the rest of the background into darkness as you play around with this:

Added 'headlines' with the name of the catalyst you're adding:

Same as above but with more colours:

Then we tried it out with smaller text, making the readability better.

And the end result, big headline, small descriptive text all together in one line and in one colour, which we felt gave the best readability:

Next up, a cellar room used for a quest in the mansion where you need to clear out some pesky enemies that have invaded! Using the Giga Slime Arcade Mode boss room as a base for the size here:

Time to make that tree stump! I'll be using the tree stump in Santa Fae as a base for the background and make it it fit the theme by adding moss, leaves and some seed things:

As mentioned before we've been looking into getting new desks for the office, specifically ones you can adjust the height of so you can change whether you sit or stand while working. A little while ago, they finally arrived, and now it's been time to set them up!

First though, quick reminder of what it used to look like. All black desks that looked completely different:

We had to do a bunch of the assembly ourselves, including drilling our own holes into a table top, which was quite nerve wracking for a bunch of people who spend most of their time by their computers and barely know how to operate a drill!

It all went by more or less smoothly though, and in the end the tables work quite well:

But to be honest, the biggest upgrade IMO is the fact that the office now looks a lot more light and open, with all of us having the same desk as well:

Now it's finally time to get back to work! See you next week :)

Oops, forgot to post this post!

After seeing Fred's sprite for the little sprout, I couldn't help myself but just had to make it's portrait before anything else. It's such a cute little thing that I can only hope the portrait will make it some semblance of justice :3

So to start off with, Fred has been making a bunch of design ideas for one of the tree stump's inhabitant, the strange tree creature who sells decorative trees for your house:

In the end, we settled for this design, aiming to keep it a bit cute looking:

And then we have their child, a very small tree, who we first thought would be just a smaller version of the big one:

But then we thought about making it a sapling instead, so Fred made a couple variations for that as well:

Finally, a couple colour variations:

Currently our favourite is the one in the bottom left, which we thought had the cuter face. Next up, its portrait!

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