Unfinished: Secrets of Grindea 04/21/2014

I'd like to personally apologize for all the problems this video has had today. We're not sure what is causing a problem with our encoder system. If you download the file, it should play fine on your machine. If you watch the YouTube version, it will play just fine, as well. For some reason, it's having a problem on our player at roughly 10:55, and we cannot figure out why. Plus, a current glitch in our system deletes all the comments when we publish a new version of the video. Basically, everything is conspiring against me here. Again, really sorry. Hope those who have watched it have enjoyed it.

@patrickklepek: Don't worry about it. We all know that computers are the devil and full of gremlins. I sure you guys will get things sorted out.

@patrickklepek: A couple of hiccups are well outweighed by the enjoyment that watching you and Alex discover the game brings.

Enjoying the video, sorry things are breaking :( this happened on the worth playing video too. Hope you guys can figure it out.

I played a bit of this. I am a big fan of Secret of Man & Seiken Densetsu 3, so I had to give this a try. It's good. Not amazing, but good. It has potential. The shield mechanic is awkward, and I find the combat to feel slightly sluggish, but I'm willing to see where it goes.

The video worked fine for me, but I've been having problems with vids on the site recently, so maybe this is karma.

Last Straw is an amazing name for a scarecrow.

I can't see why Patrick and Alex are so impressed by this game's visuals. It's made worse when they rag on other 2D indie titles, because this looks exactly like other 2D indie titles.

I just clicked a little bit ahead in the timeline and the video seems to continue. It's definitely a strange bug though.

Can't definitely see why it might have been a bit frustrating to play it single player. Anyway, this was a great Quick Look/Unfinished.

@patrickklepek said:

I download the video and I have the same issue with it locking up at around 10:55 in Media Player Classic. In VLC it keeps playing but the audio drops out. In both cases seeking a couple of seconds past the point where is messes up fixes it. I tried changing the container from mp4 to mkv, but that didn't fix the issue. I'm guess Youtube works because they re-encode the audio and video when you upload to them.

This looks great! Seems fairly challenging also which is always a plus in loot grind games.

Man those sound effects are satisfying

@patrickklepek:

Don't sweat it, It also works without issues in progressive mode once you get past that first hiccup, so it seems it's only the streaming mode that's really choppy. I also remember one Dark Souls 2 video that Vinny recently posted (I think it might have been the PC Quick Look) that wouldn't play unless you switched to progressive mode. It could've been worse, it could've stopped at 11:06 (666 seconds), THAT would've been freaky. The game looks really fun though, I LOVED Secret of Mana! There is also a translated version of Secret of Mana 2 out there, but I think it only exists in rom form.

I got vibes of Ragnarok Online + Castle Crashers + Zelda. I played around with the demo and I concur with Patrick, the game definitely shines with a friend. I can see this being a great game to play with some friends, some beer, and some pizza.

To your point LikeaSsur, I think that at first glance the game just looks to be another pixel retro-like RPG but as Patrick mentioned you can see a ton of little polishes on details that really add to the charm, something which many retro-like games these days unfortunately miss. From the sound effects and animation to the interface and customization, you can tell there's a lot of heart in this. Granted there are still things that I didn't enjoy much, for example it didn't "feel good" using a shield, but overall it's a very impressive package for a game in beta.

The story seems kind of... meh, but maybe it's just for enough to move you along to get that loot. Maybe as you go it gets better, who knows! Definitely gonna pick this up at some point.

This game definitely looks awesome. Also please do more quick looks with the Alex.

video should be fixed!

It's a meta-commentary!

This game looks amazing. @likeassur because of the animation.

@eccentrix: It looks so amazing that it's worth to begrudge similar games? I'm not so sure about that.

This is a great QL. Often, whenever GB does multiplayer QLs while in the same room, the guys just want to be silly. This seems more like showing the game and mechanics off. I appreciate both, and would love to see more of these.

Will definitely keep an eye on this.

Love the art style, and Secret of Mana was one of my favorite games as a kid. Don't like how everything respawns so quickly on this however. I will watch it though, and see if they change some of that but it looks to be a core mechanic so probably not.

Put a Halloween themed section in a video game and you will always peak my interest

I picked this up after watching part of this video and it's great. The combat got really cool when I realised you can cancel your sword swing into a spell or even blocking with your shield. I'm going to hold off on playing much more until the final version though, don't want to burn myself out on the game before they fully flesh the game out into something even cooler.

Damn, really liking the look of this. Probably won't pick it up for a bit yet though, might just wait tell it launches.

I watched it on youtube, and at a point the audio cut out for a moment, I didn't check the time code, but I'd guess there's an issue with Patrick's recording setup, the same issue happened at almost exactly the same time code (10:53) in last week's Worth Playing.

Yes, please. Will wait till final build.

Wow it's fixed and it remembers where I stopped watching it earlier. Awesome!

You can't really tell as much in this video, but the animations in this game are way better than even most AAA titles of the age or 2D "AAA" titles these days. There's a LOT of frames of animation on things that really make the visuals pop. It's very, VERY smooth.

Secrets of Grindea.... Not a bad game at all!

This game seems really rad.

So crisp!!!

Please keep playing this together, and put up the vids on the site.

I already posted this on the last video for this game, but I'll just say it again in case people didn't read - this game DOES NOT have any local multiplayer. I e-mailed the developers about the lack of couch co-op and how disappointed i was, and they said they had no intentions of implementing a local multiplayer mode; they said the time and resources would be better spend adding new quests, items, areas, etc. Seems a little strange to me, since this looked like the perfect game to play with a few friends and a few beers...

More Navarro/Klepek Unfinsheds and Quick Looks, please!

so much mage so little magic use!

@patrickklepek: Wait, you mean that you didn't personally cause these technical issues to troll your haters? Missed opportunity. That game looks fucking sweet BTW. Also, Skyped Quick Look > Quick Look Solo. I hope you guys can do more Quick Looks over Skype.

@likeassur said:

I didn't say anything about other games, I'm just telling you why this one looks good to me.

Unfinished: Secrets of Patrick's Death.

here at giant bomb our motto is-HI-RES AUDIO

ok i kinda lusted after this when i first saw it and then my fervor died down but watching them play for 10 seconds and dem animations and I MUST NOT GIVE IN I HAVE SO MUCH ELSE TO PLAY

The variety of sprites and animations in this game is pretty great. Do I spot a Touhou reference during that boss fight?

It's pretty cool that alex is good at fighting but kinda crappy at the puzzles and Patrick is the opposite lol

The copious amounts of frames also serve to make the game feel weirdly unresponsive. When you break a barrel, the amount of time it takes to unravel the strange way it does just doesn't feel right.

The visual themselves don't look much better than big RPG Maker games. They're okay, but I'm really not sure why they think this game stands out very much when 10 billion other games look just like it.

Looks cool. Reminds me of Bastion.

Seems really cool. I love the animation and art. I'm holding off on purchasing until it's properly released, though.

So, would it be fair to say that the quest system in this game is similar to the Tomba games where there's a vague overarching goal and the game tosses a bunch of other quests at you as you explore or is it more clearly linear with a few sidequests?

That bag is probably evil.