The Hunters Journals; Vile Philosophy
The Hunter's Journals Credits Cleanup
The good news is that as a result of implementing this change to the credits page, Red Ripper has passed the review stage, and will be available for the planned Halloween launch as expected! Many thanks to the Steam team for working with me on this issue. All of the links and full credits to the people who worked on this game are still available on the Grindwheel Games website, so everyone who worked on the projects are still getting the respect they deserve as well.
The Hunter's Journals - Red Ripper Store Page
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1311610/The_Hunters_Journals__Red_Ripper/
A teaser trailer will be appearing sometime in the near future as well, so stay tuned for that! In the meantime, please take a look at the fantastic cover art for the game below.
Grindwheel Games Merchandise on Shark Robot!
This collection will hopefully expand as time goes on, most especially when the new cover for Red Ripper becomes available. But, there are also plenty of other striking and sinister pieces of page art which could end up hanging on your walls.
Visit Shark Robot today through the following link, and check out all of the Grindwheel Games prints available now!
https://sharkrobot.com/collections/grindwheel-games
A Winter's Tale and Fan Art
As with the Halloween update, I have prepared a spooky story to go with the current sale. This has been split across three different chapters, which will be released through the day. In addition, these announcements will feature artwork by three talented artists. A friend of mine who has played the game has commissioned them to produce images of her hunter, Liliana, and this seems like the perfect place to show them off.
The second is by Rosekasart (https://twitter.com/rosekasart).
I hope everyone is having a great holiday season. Please enjoy the artwork and story!
A Winter Tale Part 2 – An Open Fire
Warmth and flickering light brought the woman back from the dark place her mind had retreated to. She couldn't yet recall her name, and still felt like a stranger in her own skin. But she began to perceive the world around her in more than the vague, ghostly manner she had been trapped in until now. Her head turned, slightly, and she looked directly into the flames.
She recalled fire. There was something she remembered seeing come out of a great cloud of multi-coloured sparks. The men, the ones with her, had screamed its name in a language which was not language. She had screamed too. The inferno had reached for her with wings of white-hot iron, which was when the hunter had come.
A stabbing anger in her chest made the woman's doll-like expression twist into a scowl for a moment. She was torn. On the one hand, the hunter had saved her from the creature of flames (hadn't she?), but at the same time she hated her. She felt, somehow, that the hunter's interference had stopped something important. Some greatness for which she believed she was destined. She thought she remembered embers being drawn into her nose and mouth, then stumbling away as the chains holding her were shattered with a slash of the hunter's sweeping blade.
As she watched vacantly, the fire in the grate began to give off thick plumes of smoke. These twisted together like ropes and drew towards the woman in a way she thought might have been unnatural. But then again she remembered so little about herself and the world around her. Her mind felt like an old book of prayers she had once tossed into a fire just to watch it burn. Little pieces of her personality flared brightly in the darkness of her skull, and then were reduced to drifting ashes in the void.
The memory of the burning book was replaced with one of another tome. It was open and massive, inscribed with names in hundreds of hands over the centuries it had existed. It was a covenant, she recalled. Had she signed it? Had she run from it? She could not remember. The woman found that she no longer cared either way, and the memory became ash. As did her hair, which smouldered and crumbled from her head as the temperature in the room spiked.
She had almost died in the cold, she recalled. The spark of life within her body smothered in the dirty snow. The doctor's coat ignited around her shoulders as her eyes boiled in the sockets. Stumbling out of her home, she had steamed like a boiling kettle, but moment by moment the warmth had retreated deep into her chest to escape the lethal touch of the cold, the cutting bite of the winds. She had run for sanctuary, then trudged, and finally just stumbled blindly forward. She hadn't even the wit to get into shelter. But now she was here, by a roaring fire which overflowed the stone hearth in her presence. Foot-long tongues of flame began to spread over the wooden mantle and up the wall.
Something inside the smouldering woman uncurled. The fire in her memories burned brighter with every second. Soon she felt less like a person and more like a delicate eggshell containing a raging bonfire. A great heat twisted in the hollow cave of her body, roasting the meat from the inside out. Her bones blackened and cracked, her viscera crumbled to cinders. But still she lived. Or, more accurately, something lived inside what was left of her. Just a spark, but enough to burn nations.
The last thing the woman recalled before she was gone, burned away, was a memory of a stern-faced man telling her that this was her family's legacy. To burn bright to bridge the gap between this world and her blazing angel's plane of existence. She remembered the exquisite pleasure of knowing her life had meaning. She remembered seeing the barbed and flaming being who's secret her family had carried within them. She remembered nothing more as what was left of her ignited.
The charred thing which used to be the woman stood, knocking over the flaming chair with a casual swipe of its blazing claws, and screamed.
Halloween Tale - The Fog Wardens
The old man nodded as the logs in the grate crackled and popped.
“Yes, I remember it well. There were seven of them, good hunters all. The marsh-folk had been plaguing travellers again, so they gathered up their followers and headed out onto the moors. This was at the height of the suppressions, you see, so there was still some fight left in those damnable mutants. I can't remember their names, but I remember their faces. They were smiling and joking as they set out in a great cavalcade.
“Seven hunters and two dozen soldiers, plus all the staff and porters for their gear. I waved and cheered with all the other children. It was like a festival, yes? The roads were almost clear for the first time in living memory, and these heroes were going to show the last of the bandits what-for.”
He paused, his blind eyes gazing into the fire.
“The one that made it back...that poor girl. She was so badly burned they thought she was a beast at first. The acid and poison had ruined her. But she returned to tell us all about the disaster. My father, the doctor, treated her wounds as I listened at the door.
“Something came out of the mist, she said. Tall as a tree and about as hard to topple. Spindle-limbed and hooting like a fog horn. Dressed like a soldier too, like it was mocking them. Like it was deriding our pogrom against the mutants. It melted men and animals, even the tents, as it moved. Nothing could stand that terrible miasma.
“Seven hunters faced it, and six died. The soldiers fled or were rotted where they stood. The porters died screaming. But she fought it, even as it burned her skin away. She cut it down and brought its head back as a trophy. Carried it in her fleshless hands for mile upon mile through the fog.
“But when they opened the sack she had dragged across the moors, there was nothing inside but filth and bog water.” He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “She laughed when she was told. Kept laughing too, all the way to the Bedlam House. Poor girl.”
Blissful Ignorance is here!
The Hunter's Journals - Blissful Ignorance is now available for purchase. You can find it on the steam store and Google Play right now. Brave the terrifying peaks of the Skybreaker mountains to investigate another dark, Lovecraft-inspired tale of monsters and mayhem.
Also, stay tuned as later today I will be releasing an in-game page from Vile Philosophy, along with a piece of fiction written specially for this spooky holiday. Have a safe and fun Halloween, and please check out our latest game today.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1168550/The_Hunters_Journals__Blissful_Ignorance/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.GrindwheelGames.THJBlissfulIgnorance
Grindwheel Games Halloween Sale!
Don't forget to check out Pale Harbour at the link below, and put Blissful Ignorance in your wishlist.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094170/The_Hunters_Journals__Pale_Harbour/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1168550/The_Hunters_Journals__Blissful_Ignorance/
Blissful Ignorance Store Page Released
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1168550/The_Hunters_Journals__Blissful_Ignorance/
Vile Philosophy available on Google Play!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.GrindwheelGames.THJVilePhilosophy
In the future I hope to have a simultaneous launch on all platforms, but due to a move and some Google Play policy changes this was impossible for the first two books. Hopefully Blissful Ignorance will be made available on all formats on the same day when it launches later this year.
If you have purchased and enjoyed Vile Philosophy, then you can now continue your adventures on the move using the mobile build. And don't forget that Pale Harbour is available both as a PC and Android release as well!
Grindwheel Games and Sanguine Productions
For more information, and to back the project, please follow the link below;
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sanguine/horror-stories-card-game