Hi everyone!
It’s been a busy weekend and an even busier Monday. We’ve managed to fix a significant amount of issues that are being reported by you, our amazing and patient players.
New additions:
Added a slider to the game settings tab that allows players to adjust combat speed.
Major fixes:
Fixed an issue with enemies having one less avoidance token on normal and easy difficulty.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from receiving a map marker unlock in the green Moo’Shoe camp.
Fixed an issue that prevented Larvae from spawning in the Arthu Ruins after receiving the quest Winter Survival Kit.
Fixed all issues that caused some players to get stuck on a black screen when interacting with the Ancestor Totems in the Arthu Marshes.
Several fixes made to the quest “Sheep Dolly’s Secret”. This quest should now work as intended.
Several fixes made to the quest “Gardner”. This quest should now work as intended.
Fixed an issue which prevented players from completing the quest “On Sacred Paths” if the totems were activated in a specific order.
The Arthu Marshes now have enough flowers for the player to complete the quest “On Sacred Paths”. All flowers collected and spent should now be tracked correctly.
Fixed localization issues in the following quests: Things are Getting Worse; Piercing the Darkness; Dangerous Investigation; Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee.
Fixed an issue on unmovable creatures that forced them to skip their turn indefinitely, when afflicted with the “Confused” status.
Utility items will no longer get unequipped upon loading a save game.
The game will now properly detect the user’s desktop resolution and set that as the recommended setting.
The game now supports 16:10 aspect ratio.
Armor items will now correctly function in combat, lowering all incoming physical damage by the amount stated.
Fixed an issue that allowed users to avoid fighting the first Grotesque in the tutorial section of the game.
Fixed an AI issue, that prevented the Corrupted Valkyrie from acting.
Fixed Bruspul’s dialogue hub, that prevented players from progressing through his dialogue tree.
Fixed double Nyquist fight in the quest Captain Brann.
The quest journal should no longer display quests form a different savegame after load.
The quest journal should now properly track completed objectives.
The bell in the Arthu Ruins exterior no longer summons the Moo’Shoe.
Fixed an issue with some achievements not being tracked correctly.
Changed the way Alister’s helmet accessory works.
Minor fixes:
Removed music from Eleore catacombs, so it doesn’t conflict with the fresco jingles. Increased the time of the jingles, because some of them cut out too soon.
Removed music from Gobak’s House, adjusted candle volume.
Added sounds to Valkyrie movement.
Increased volume of Kiba’s sound effects.
Fixed an issue that made the sound of rushing water too loud in a sewage location.
Fixed a sound looping issue on the well interaction in Lower Brann.
Added the combat loss jingle to the game.
Changed the combat music in encounters with the Order of Alchemists and the Wailing Horror.
Changed the combat scene for the Eleore Catacombs in Brann from Arthu Ruins to “Sewers”
Minor fixes to the game’s final cutscene.
Changed one of the Grotesque’s skill icons to better reflect its effects.
Various dialogue fixes.
Various skill description fixes.
Various typo and localization fixes.
Fixed a broken dialogue hub and portraits for the NPC “Shera”
Rephrased dialogues and quest objectives in captain Brann to make the quest clearer.
Fixed an unreachable interaction point for a painting in the “Spicy Wind”
Fixed a highlighting issue on one of the statues in Lower Brann.
Fixed a highlighting issue on a Gurney in the Charnel House.
Fixed a crystal interaction object in the Mine Entrance to display an “examine” cursor, instead of the “interaсt” cursor.
Several other cursor and highlighting fixes.
Fixed an issue that prevented a GUI rollover from being removed from the screen when the Party Manager is closed.
Other fixes:
Some issues with internal tools fixed.
If you face any issues, please, report it via Discussions or our Discord channel. We're eager to listen to your comments and work together with you on making Grimshade even better!
Thank you for your patience and for playing Grimshade.
Fixed a blocker on the Streets-of-All-Trades. Now you can walk in and out to the Backer Street location without any issues;
Fixed a combat blocker caused by the Bleeding status;
Numerous localisation's fixes.
Minor issues:
Fixed a dialogue in the Spicy Wind tavern.
Added a quick travel point at the market in Capitan Brann's quest.
Some visual editings on a Night Brann's battle scene and Arthu's Marshes' locations.
If you face any issues, please, report it via Discussions or our Discord channel. We're eager to listen to your comments and start working on — together we can make Grimshade even better!
Thank you for your patience and for playing Grimshade.
We've just updated the game to fix all these issues you have been reporting us the whole day!
Minor issues:
Bosses achievements fixed — some of them didn't work correctly.
A pop-up window with hero/enemy description was moved away from the centre of your screen. So, you can look at the battlefield without any obstacles. :)
Dragging and dropping the equipment in the Character window perform much better now, especially at the battle.
Low-quality graphics settings made all the object's shadow squarish. Now we've made them more roundish.
More important fixes:
Fixed the wounds issue — any load removes all of them from heroes except one. Now the game saves all possible wounds on characters (max. 8)! Enjoy the game :)
Fixed the positioning bug. Now you can place all your heroes on the battlefield without any issues or reloadings.
Fixed the pop-up window with a hero/enemy description, which escaped from the screen on any resolution lesser than recommended one (1920x1080).
The cutscene before the first boss-battle is working correctly now. Sillie's robust medical supplies can cure wounds on your characters now.
Some fixes of the last part of the game. Achievements progress shows that no one reaches it:)
UPD: And tomorrow's patch will bring you a fixed cutscene at the Beast hide-out. We've just fixed it after uploading the build on Steam. :)
If you face any issues, please, report it via Discussions or our Discord channel . We're eager to listen to your comments and start working on — together we can make Grimshade even better!
Thank you for your patience and for playing Grimshade.
Our sincerest thanks for all the feedback you share with us!
It's been a rough day as we've got A LOT of comments and emails. Our team is on duty in our communities, replying comments and aggregating bug reports you post here.
The first day - the first update. That's what we've changed:
1. Kiba stopped wearing the spacesuit after his nightmare in Spicy Wind tavern.
2. Screen resolution issues fixed — If you've already played the game, please check in-game Settings (not Unity) and choose your native screen resolution. If your screen resolution is lesser that recommended (1920x1080), it can misbehave but shouldn't crop a half of your dialogue window.
3. Lots of small minor things fixed.
If you face any issues, please, report it via Discussions or our Discord channel. It really helps us to implement all fixes in the game as soon as possible.
The release is coming — less than ten days remain. We're almost here!
And we are thrilled to bring you a brand new video today! Learn more about our beloved eleore-badger Charlie in this chapter of Characters Spotlight:
https://youtu.be/Vs-xCLrjYsg
Less than two weeks remain until the launch day comes — the most rigorous and nervous time. We're working without cease on the game, fixing and polishing all sort of things to make Grimshade even better.
Thank you all for your support and have a fantastic weekend!
Talerock team
Release Date announcement & Character Spotlight #1
Hello everyone,
Today we can finally announce the launch date: Grimshade goes on Steam on 26 March. Yay!
Even more, we've made a series of spotlights related to the main characters and their combat performance. The first one is about Alister Garuda, the hero you'll meet at the beginning of your journey.
Enjoy the video!
https://youtu.be/D4ftPDkySYM
Add us to your Wishlist and follow us to keep yourself updated — we also share all important news here, on the Steam page. And, of course, help us to spread the word about the game!
Speaking about all this story with a publisher, it didn’t work. Business is business. But this six months of deafening silence allowed us to delve deeper into the development, reuniting the team around the game. It was enough time for us to believe in ourselves and be ready to put everything on the line now. And on the release day, we'll be sure that we did our best for Grimshade.
How did we end up like this?
First, even with the outsource boost, we didn't have time to finish the game till November. The game wasn't ready — still unpolished, buggy and messy it didn't suit our final vision as Grimshade should be. So, there were two ways: to go in Early Access in November or to postpone the release to improve the quality.
In the course of history, there have been precedents of great RPGs successfully existing in the EA stage and after (we double-checked this), but we didn't want to walk this path. The story that is told by Grimshade deserves to be perceived entirely, from the first playthrough, not overshadowed by any imperfections. Also, we've already got some improvements and commitments, deferred to the Enhanced edition and consoles. Cutting the game for EA purposes would be a crime.
Choosing the quality side, we decided to postpone the release until 2019 and got some extra time. And then the fun began.
Somewhere after the end of the Kickstarter campaign, a long period of decay and despair started — illness of crucial employees, general fatigue, some dismissals and the smashing success of the board game Deus lo Vult, a Kickstarter campaign we were strictly involved. Numerous events captured our minds and madeGrimshade feel like an unloved child. Needless to say, the work was not going so smoothly as it should.
By the autumn there was a radical change of mood — rejecting all the past difficulties the whole studio reunited around our main idea to bring it to an end. Finally, make a great game of our dreams. Which was, by the way, almost finished.
First, we analysed the game from the game design perspective... and remade it completely. Characters have changed beyond the recognition, losing part of their abilities and acquiring new ones. The army of monsters become more diverse, brutal and savage. And in general, the combat part of the game has become much more demanding to the level of your tactical skill.
Time has shown that our artists are the most diligent division in the studio. With a little rest on vacation, they plunged on the improvement of everything they met on their way. Some locations which were designed a long time ago were brought to the overall style of the game — dark Umbrage Weald became even darker.
As for the 3D part, we can say only one thing — we adore our new 3D-lead, who’ve joined our company in early autumn. That's the fact. Without his help, we could barely achieve half of today's progress.
After the new year holidays, there was some respite. Each person in our team played Grimshade and gave their feedback. Do you know what the best part is? Although the list of bugs and edits took our QA a week to analyse (in addition to ongoing fixes), everyone loved the game!
Then we’ve faced the big deal — narrative and localisation components. During the reconstruction of the plot and the whole history of Grimshade’s world, we managed to come up with some pretty good DLCs (hope we will be able to bring them to life). Then, ceasing to be distracted, we collected all the places and cutscenes from the game which requires immediate intervention and half of the studio became writers.
For today: Grimshade lives in Russian and English versions. The next localisation for implementation is German.
Now it’s the marketing time, where we had our hands tied to the utmost. But here we are, ready to present you a brand new gameplay video!
https://youtu.be/s1maksmH50w
And only the untested tutorial part withholds us from the completion of Closed Beta build. At first, we'll send it to our Kickstarter backers and use it in playtests.
Yeah, and we totally forgot about the release date. Two things stop us from setting the exact date: an insufficient number of wishlists and the need to show the game to outside players and to hear their opinion. As soon as we get the first significant results, we will think about it. However, we won't postpone it further than the spring of 2019.
***
Two years of game development taught us that things aren't always going according to a plan. Well, at least we have this. Even if the plan looks well-developed. But despite everything, the quality of the game is our top priority, and we keep working in this direction. Thank you for supporting us!
Unfortunately, we don’t have a universal recipe or any “Preparing the indie game's release in a month for dummies” books, so we are counting on your help!
Tell your friends about Grimshade in social networks, add the game to the wishlist (although we will send you the key anyway) and don't hesitate to leave us a couple of valuable tips and your feedback — with your help we could make Grimshade better!
Also, if you have a favourite blogger, streamer or an excellent news website that could be interested in Grimshade — please, let us know ;)
- Alexandra & Talerock team
Big news: Grimshade release is delayed to Q1 2019
Hey, all! We have important news to share with you.
Last few months we worked really hard to improve Grimshade. We put a lot of effort to polish everything and make the game as good as it gets. During this process, we realised the potential of the game, and we decided that there’s no room for compromise when it comes to quality. There’s so much more we could do to make Grimshade even better.
With that being said, we decided to delay the release to Q1 2019. We will announce the date soon. Not to mention that - and here’s better news! - we are now finalising an agreement with a really cool publisher!
So, why do we need a couple of months? Firstly, to finish the core gameplay with the idea of the Gold version. It’ll include an additional pack of the content and will be a free update for all players. This version will be ported on consoles. Moreover, we could run some extra testing, closed ones for backers and target group of players and super closed for our QA team.
As you may suspect, it was not an easy decision. It never is when you got such a great and involved community as we have. You guys are amazing, you kept us strong through last few months. But with your passion comes our responsibility. We owe you something. We owe you a good game. And that is the most important thing for us to remember.
We hope that you share our vision and could wait a few months for the release :)
Grimshade: the long-awaited stream — today at 7PM (EDT time)!
https://www.twitch.tv/asterion_games
Dear friends, at long last we are ready to show you the game live! You will see a walk through the beautiful world of Ree'Fah and completion of several quests. We will meet the residents, fight monsters, and moreover — we will have a boss fight!
Tonight's anchor — the leading game designer of Talerock studio, Max! He will answer all your questions!
