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Update - Game and Demo now available on Steam! http://store.steampowered.com/app/269770/ Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature&v=xDCLz_coPHs Demo: http://www.secretsofgrindea.com/index.php/demo (Contains multiplayer functionality, save transfers from Demo to Beta automatically) Devblog: http://www.secretsofgrindea.com/index.php/dev-blog Preorder: http://www.secretsofgrindea.com/index.php/pre-order (Early access, grants a Steam key immediately)  Well, they finally ended the closed beta, much to my surprise and about 3,500 beta applicant's delight. What is Secrets of Grindea? A pleasant blend of Secret of Mana and Legend of Zelda combat and aesthetics, spiced up with dozens of different upgradeable skills to make every character unique. There's also some Roguelike elements in the form of Arcade Mode, which mixes SoM/Zelda with Binding of Isaac-style gameplay.  So what's the attraction? Contrary to the name, there isn't any actual grinding involved. The combat system is pure skill using a mixture of precision attacks, perfect shield blocks, counter-attacks and spells. Despite this, the game only gets truly challenging if you run through Story Mode on Hard, or try to get to the end of Arcade Mode - in Normal play, you're able to enjoy the game at a smooth pace. You might die a few times trying to figure out the boss attack patterns, but there's no penalty for failure. There are also no classes. You're a blank slate at the beginning. You can mix and match anything and everything: 1-handed sword skills, 2-handed sword skills, archery, 12 different elemental magics or support magic. The art style is beautiful, all the animations in the game are smooth as can be, the music is pleasant, the dialogue is charming and there's surprisingly a lot of content available in the beta as it is, with updates coming regularly. Story Mode     Story mode is standard ARPG fare. You're a Collector, off to take the Collector's Exam and hopefully be deemed worthy of joining up with the Collector's HQ. Your father hands down one of the artifacts he found in his days of being a Collector, a living Magical Bag with a lot of snark. Survive bullies and make friends on the way there, and prove your worth. Past that is receiving missions from the HQ, exploring the world, plundering mysterious dungeons and solving mysteries. In this mode, you can currently: Hunt cute monsters for rare items, crafting materials and cards. And wreck everything with a couple friends. Partake in difficult challenges at the coloseum. Tame pets and level them up by feeding them vendor trash. Buy treasure maps and scour the game to dig up the plunder based on the hints given. Fish for treasure and fish to feed your pets. Complete in-game achievements that reward gold, EXP and equippable cosmetic items for your character. Fight through three different biomes, one storyline dungeon and four storyline bosses, with one optional boss. Roughly 3 hours of content, 10-15 if you do everything.     Arcade Mode Give Binding of Isaac a sword, shield and spells, and you have Arcade Mode. Kind of. Every level is a randomly generated series of rooms with randomized enemies native to the biome featured in Story Mode. Each biome consists of 2 floors, with a maximum of 8 floors currently in the beta. Surviving to floor 8 requires mastery over the gameplay, beating it is something few have managed to do. Advised for playing after Story Mode. In this mode, you can currently: Race against the timer in every room to score as many S-Ranks as you can, maximizing your score. And wreck everything with a couple friends. Use overall score gained to expand your very own personal town, adding in new NPCs, buildings and features. Take on sidequests within Arcade Mode that mix up the gameplay to unlock more town expansions, or vanity items that can be used in Arcade or Story mode. Complete random puzzles and challenges in a limited time. Fight 9-10? different bosses, many of which are unique to Arcade Mode. Try out any and every skill loadout in the game at your own pace, you're going to be dying an awful lot and leveling is much faster here. Herd chickens.    At a loss of anything else to add (unless someone has a suggestion for the OP), anyone up for trying out the Story / Arcade Mode demo and organizing a 4-pack after? Or just organizing some beta online multiplayer? The game is currently $15 for Early Access, $45 for a 4-pack and the usual indie preorder options for soundtrack / design-your-own-junk are there. Jesto fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2014 16:21
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Well, this fell onto page 5 in a hurry. Anyone playing and have any impressions?
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Apr 18, 2014 03:05
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I'm still deciding whether to drop money on it, but from what I've played of the demo it seems pretty entertaining. I could see it being worth 15 bucks if there's enough depth to it. Does anyone know how well the multiplayer is executed (in terms of difficulty scaling/netcode/etc.)? I'm considering convincing some friends to give it a shot but I'd like to know if playing with more than one person is fun/feasible first. Phreizr fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 04:53
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Phreizr posted:I'm still deciding whether to drop money on it, but from what I've played of the demo it seems pretty entertaining. I could see it being worth 15 bucks if there's enough depth to it. I think multiplayer increases enemy spawn and gives them an all around stat boost. For bosses, it adds an extra attack or two to their skillset that fends off surround-and-pound tactics, or a skill to disable one player by requiring their ally save them. Netcode is pretty smooth provided everyone isn't torrenting in the background, which is good because otherwise Perfect Blocking would be impossible. You should play some Arcade Mode with your friends in the demo, see if they like the action there first. Jesto fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 05:29
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This sounds like an appealing concept, how buggy is the beta test at this time?
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Apr 18, 2014 05:38
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A jargogle posted:This sounds like an appealing concept, how buggy is the beta test at this time? Not at all, from what I've seen. They had a ridiculously long closed beta before this point and have hammered out most of the bugs up to this point. New bug reports seem to get patched on Steam on the same day, or the day after.
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Apr 18, 2014 05:57
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Went in on a fourpack of this with some friends. Feels fairly stable but there's a fair amount of stuff not in the beta yet. It's fun in an SNES RPG sorta way.
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Apr 18, 2014 06:07
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Pretty short but a lot of fun, I'm really looking forward to the full game coming out / more content being patched in. I've played through the main storyline with 1H and 2H builds so far, magic seems less interesting overall but I'll probably give it a proper try soon. I was hoping someone would make a thread for it because it seems to be pretty lacking in attention for what is something I thought would get quite a lot. Well made OP!
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Apr 20, 2014 09:18
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Can't say much, I bought it but only played a little bit, but certainly not because it was unfun. It has nice flowing combat and solid skill/magic mechanics. Nothing deep, but it works well within the game. I certainly got quiet nostalgic playing it, it certainly has a certain Secret of Mana vibe to it. After playing through some of the starting quests I stopped though, cause I wanted to safe the large part of the game for when all of the actual content is in place and I can play through all of it at once.
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Apr 20, 2014 09:23
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It's pretty entertaining, wish there was more content in the current beta, it just seems to end so fast... Arcade mode is loving hard though. I got to a point where I got a quest to beat the first two stages without leveling and with every enemy being an elite. I can barely do those things with the ability to level and with normal enemies, dammit.
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Apr 20, 2014 10:14
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Is every single boss a bullet hell? Seems to be the case from the few I've seen. Sorta lazy design, and not particularly interesting to fight against. The rest of the game seems so cool, but the bosses seem like they suck if you're not a fan of that kind of action.
XboxPants fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 20:49
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XboxPants posted:Is every single boss a bullet hell? Seems to be the case from the few I've seen. Sorta lazy design, and not particularly interesting to fight against. The rest of the game seems so cool, but the bosses seem like they suck if you're not a fan of that kind of action. Two of them are, two of them aren't. The game is still being developed so ostensibly there will be plenty more who aren't since that kind of gameplay isn't present in any of the other monsters.
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Apr 21, 2014 21:24
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This game is pretty relaxing to play on your own. Plus the sprites are gorgeously animated and the world is beautiful
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Apr 21, 2014 22:45
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XboxPants posted:Is every single boss a bullet hell? Seems to be the case from the few I've seen. Sorta lazy design, and not particularly interesting to fight against. The rest of the game seems so cool, but the bosses seem like they suck if you're not a fan of that kind of action. In bullet hell games, you take one hit and you die. In SoG you can just put up your shield, which has a lot of HP that recharge, or perfectly time it and slam the projectile back at the boss's face. It seems incredibly forgiving unless you hate shielding. Shooty bosses: Phaseman Gundam Non-shooty bosses: Vilya The Helloweed Vilya+Teddy+Freddy Gigaslime Enraged Gigaslime The Zoo The Helloweed v2 Jumpking Summoning Crystal
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Apr 22, 2014 02:59
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Jesto posted:In bullet hell games, you take one hit and you die. In SoG you can just put up your shield, which has a lot of HP that recharge, or perfectly time it and slam the projectile back at the boss's face. It seems incredibly forgiving unless you hate shielding. It says something about the Summoning Crystal's difficulty that I didn't even remember its existence.
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Apr 22, 2014 03:05
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Infinity Gaia posted:It says something about the Summoning Crystal's difficulty that I didn't even remember its existence. In Story Mode it mostly seems like an endurance battle more than anything. You can kill it fairly quickly if you rush it down before it gets underway. In Hard Mode, it has a bit more survivability, so if a few crystals get thrown into the mix the fight could get out of control. In Arcade Mode, it's honestly the bossfight that has ended more runs for me than anything else. You just get swarmed. It might be more tolerable with multiplayer.
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Apr 22, 2014 03:18
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New dev blog has some interesting figures. http://www.secretsofgrindea.com/index.php/blog/3822 quote:We’ve currently sold 2954 copies of the game over all tiers... Jesto fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 04:50
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Jesto posted:In Story Mode it mostly seems like an endurance battle more than anything. You can kill it fairly quickly if you rush it down before it gets underway. Summoning Crystal is a hellish nightmare on hard mode solo depending on what it summons. Multiple homing shot drones or tons of green crystals quickly makes things nearly impossible to survive, but if it summons a lot of purple crystals or normal robots it's easy as hell. Hard mode in general doesn't gently caress around. Kanos fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 04:48
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Jesto posted:New dev blog has some interesting figures. Wow, they only get a third of the money, split three ways? That really sucks. Tallgeese fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 04:53
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Tallgeese posted:Wow, they only get a third of the money, split three ways? that really sucks. Free college education and guaranteed health care means super taxes.
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Apr 23, 2014 04:56
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Ah right, I went and read the breakdown. Works for me. Did anyone who was in the invite-only beta get anything special? I'm curious.
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Apr 23, 2014 04:58
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How pervasive is the meta 'humor', just the title or what?
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Apr 23, 2014 05:01
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Anatharon posted:How pervasive is the meta 'humor', just the title or what? The storyline itself seems to be lacking in any metaness. The dialogue in the game takes the premise of 'You're a collector, go collect Sentient Artifacts and poo poo' more or less seriously. Optional NPCs are a bit different. An orange-bearded dwarf named Simon sells treasure maps, there's a man called 'Oak' who gives you bait to tame monsters as pets with, etc
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Apr 23, 2014 05:23
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Bought a four pack and played with some buds yesterday, I'm no stranger to early access titles so I understand it's going to be a rocky road but so far a few things that bugged me were 1. If someone hosts, you play for a while, and then they have to go or something so you end up hosting, you won't be where you left off, you'll be back at the beginning unless the original person hosts again. Hopefully this is just due to beta and not something they intend to keep 2. The sprites look amazing, the portraits however are very jarring and I can't say I'm a fan of them at all. It's a weird clash of art styles, but it's not a deal breaker or anything. 3. Arcade mode with 4 people is loving absurd right now, It simply ramps up too quickly, and lack of a heal spell (which will probably be in the support tree which is pretty barren now) makes it not really feasible with multiple people (at least 4, haven't tried it with less) 4. Enemy respawns, I'd wish it was slower or they just respawned on screen change, not constantly. My friends and I gained like 4 levels on the first screen because we had to constantly fend off the fast spawning monsters to even look at our skill page for a brief second. Overall though, I don't really regret pulling the trigger, despite my complaints the game has a TON of potential, and I'm enjoying it alot. Not sure how much we have left in story mode so far (we're in the haunted woods) but if they can get arcade mode tweaked for multiplayer I'd be sated with just that for a while.
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Apr 23, 2014 05:25
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Jesto posted:The storyline itself seems to be lacking in any metaness. The dialogue in the game takes the premise of 'You're a collector, go collect Sentient Artifacts and poo poo' more or less seriously. For what it's worth, neither of those references really occurred to me. I tend not to look for that kind of thing though, so maybe it's just me. Ibram Gaunt posted:2. The sprites look amazing, the portraits however are very jarring and I can't say I'm a fan of them at all. It's a weird clash of art styles, but it's not a deal breaker or anything. 2. The portraits are in the process of being redone, they should look much better soon. 3. Arcade mode is hard as poo poo no matter what, you just need to be really good. It's actually easier with more people, in my opinion. 4. Enemies spawn faster and faster the more you kill them, it's designed to facilitate grinding if you want to. Still, I agree it's a pain in the rear end when you're doing multiplayer and you just want to have a breather to level up or whatever. At least in singleplayer it pauses for you. Read fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 06:58
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I'm interested, and did a little bit of research, but couldn't find anything; have the developers spoken about any plans to add more skills? The idea of the skill-tree being open-ended is very appealing, but when I downloaded the demo and looked at the available skill tree, it's honestly a little bit underwhelming as-is. Of course, with nearly a third of the spells not being implemented yet, it's not easy to judge, but for a game that seems to want to encourage a handful of playthroughs, I would expect a little bit more. (I also haven't actually played yet so this could very well be a misinformed opinion). I'm really digging this music, though.
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Apr 23, 2014 08:09
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I played the demo for half an hour, it's cool and the animation is pretty nice but $15 seems a bit steep.
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Apr 23, 2014 08:14
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a cat on an apple posted:I'm interested, and did a little bit of research, but couldn't find anything; have the developers spoken about any plans to add more skills? There's 5 1-handed weapon skills, 5 2-handed, 3 fire, 3 ice, 3 earth and 3 lightning skills. There's also 2 support skills in the game, for a total of 24 skills. The only skills really missing at the moment are weapon passives and support passives. Every one of these skills also has a Silver Charge rank, when enough points have been put into them. This changes them visually and mechanically. Fireball ignites enemies with DoT. Plants become flowers with greater reach. The snowbuddy becomes a proper snowman who is quicker, sturdier and stronger. Flamethrower allows you to float around and spew flames out. 24 skills with 2 ranks each seems like a lot to me.  I don't think it's possible to use even half of them on a single character, especially if you want silver ranks. Most people seem to choose 1-2 weapon skills and 1-2 spells.quote:1. If someone hosts, you play for a while, and then they have to go or something so you end up hosting, you won't be where you left off, you'll be back at the beginning unless the original person hosts again. Hopefully this is just due to beta and not something they intend to keep 1. They probably want to keep story progress tied to the host's progress to prevent save file screwyness, since you can join a host's game no matter where he is in the story. If you both complete something there even though you weren't around for the part immediately preceding it, the singleplayer save might glitch out since you broke the sequence on your end. It's not like you can't speedrun through the content you just got through on your buddy's file since you keep levels, items, gold and everything else, though. 3. I've seen some hilarious 4 player builds where they all take 2-handed Whirlwind. Everything just explodes. There has to be some good builds you guys could come up with, but I think the chaos is a large part of the fun. Unlike singleplayer you guys all revive after each room if just one person survives, which is a huge bonus. 4. Enemy spawn, as said, increases over time. It also increases with the number of players. 4 players who linger in any area will get swarmed in short order, but most maps have a safe place to go to to assign skillpoints at. The graveyard, Trick'n'Treats house, the archer's house, the steps to Startington, behind the bard, etc. You're not leashed together.
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Apr 23, 2014 10:12
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Jesto posted:Every one of these skills also has a Silver Charge rank, when enough points have been put into them. This changes them visually and mechanically. Fireball ignites enemies with DoT. Plants become flowers with greater reach. The snowbuddy becomes a proper snowman who is quicker, sturdier and stronger. Flamethrower allows you to float around and spew flames out. At the time I made the post, I was unaware of the Charge ranks, which now that I've found them, I think is pretty awesome! 24 skills is a lot, but given the existence of Arcade mode, I was a little bit worried that eventually it would be a lack of diversity. The ranks thing, especially since they seem to intend to add ranks past Silver, does a lot for diversity. I'm still curious if they intend to add more trees, because there's a lot of white space, but the white space could just as easily mean they haven't art assets to fill it, yet.
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Apr 23, 2014 10:38
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Have they announced any kind of adjustable difficulty settings for arcade mode or given any response to the suggestion that it's too hard for most people to enjoy it as it is? To be clear I don't have the game but if story is only a few hours it means I'd want to spend most of my playtime in single-player arcade mode but if consensus is that it's super difficult and that won't ever change I probably shouldn't buy it. Lakitu7 fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 13:36
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Lakitu7 posted:Have they announced any kind of adjustable difficulty settings for arcade mode or given any response to the suggestion that it's too hard for most people to enjoy it as it is? Arcade mode's real difficulty comes from inexperience. As you play more, you learn how to use the various skills in better situations and you get more accustomed to using the shield. I haven't heard anything about a difficulty option. But when I first started playing I couldn't get past the first floor, because Story Mode taught me it's okay to just tank damage. Now I can just breeze past the first four floors on auto-pilot without taking a point of damage, just by knowing enemy / boss attack patterns and when to shield. If you really just want to beat Arcade Mode, you can do so relatively safely with a mage-oriented skillset. Most people can get by by hitting and running with spells, like it's Binding of Isaac. The real difficulty is trying to S-rank every room without getting hit or taking too much time, which is just to increase your score.
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Apr 23, 2014 13:58
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Jesto posted:The storyline itself seems to be lacking in any metaness. The dialogue in the game takes the premise of 'You're a collector, go collect Sentient Artifacts and poo poo' more or less seriously. Don't you dare skip the motherfucking GUN-D4M, giant combat robot in your list. It's the best.
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Apr 23, 2014 14:29
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Jesto posted:New dev blog has some interesting figures. Oh hey! I'm glad this game is finally getting some much needed attention. This is one of my top Greenlight games that I'm anticipating. Unfortunately, it's still in waiting to be Greenlit section, which might explain the lack of pre-orders. I've tried searching for the game on Steam and there are no results. If they were to release their demo on Steam or do something like early access, I think their income and popularity would grow. For now, lazy people like me just check to see if the game is on Steam instead of going to Greenlight page and look for updates. I enjoyed the demo linked in the OP, although I do wish there was a healing spell, regeneration or an item to use to bring your health back up. Maybe I just haven't found any healing items.
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Apr 23, 2014 22:52
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http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92916246 I thought the thing at the top means they've been greenlit already?
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Apr 23, 2014 22:55
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They haven't released on Early Access because they're apprehensive about dealing with vitriol if they don't patch/complete the game at the pace people expect, having seen that kind of thing happen to other developers.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:33
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Tallgeese posted:I thought the thing at the top means they've been greenlit already? Are you able to search for it in Steam? It doesn't show up for me Read posted:They haven't released on Early Access because they're apprehensive about dealing with vitriol if they don't patch/complete the game at the pace people expect, having seen that kind of thing happen to other developers. Aye, I was saying something like Early Access or at least a way to pre-purchase the game and let people know that it's something they can buy on Steam. Releasing a demo on Steam would be great publicity but I don't know if you need to have a full game in order to release a demo.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:28
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SOLTAR posted:Are you able to search for it in Steam? It doesn't show up for me It's been greenlit and is currently on Steam, it's just not for sale through Steam. You can buy an early access key directly from them through their preorder page. Also, I dunno if there will ever be a healing spell. They had healing potions in the game in the past, then removed them because then they would have to balance the game around having healing items beyond HP orbs that drop when you're low on HP. Gold/MP is endless, but HP isn't.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:35
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When this releases on Steam, I'll be all over it providing it's as good as it looks. Any idea if it has xinput support? Not that it's a make-or-break but it seems like exactly the kind of game that would work well with it.
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Apr 25, 2014 17:25
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bloodychill posted:When this releases on Steam, I'll be all over it providing it's as good as it looks. Any idea if it has xinput support? Not that it's a make-or-break but it seems like exactly the kind of game that would work well with it. Releases in full, or is just on Steam at all? 'Cause they're already selling Steam keys via their website. Also, I don't know what Xinput is. Google seems to imply it's xbox controller support? If so, yes. If you press any button with an xbox controller plugged in, it will instantly change all on-screen buttons to xbox controller buttons.
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Apr 26, 2014 05:21
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Jesto posted:Releases in full, or is just on Steam at all? 'Cause they're already selling Steam keys via their website. Buyable on Steam, optimally. The game is now on my radar so if I see a lot of positive stuff out there about it, I may go directly buy a Steam key. Regarding Xinput, that's exactly it  Glad to hear.
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Apr 26, 2014 09:21
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