News - Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess

Hey there!

I’m Staples, one of the community managers and members of the marketing department at the former Playtra Games, and want to welcome you to this very special developer update.

Not only has today’s blog post been a long time coming, but it’s got some massively important pieces of information about Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess.

So, allow me to waste no time, and jump right into it.

GRID FORCE - OFFICIAL TRAILER & RELEASE DATE

After months of teasers and hints and, well, more teasers, I’m proud to present the official trailer for Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess, plus, the release date!

Click here to watch the trailer.

And yes, you saw that correctly.

Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess will be released on the 11th of August, 2022.

And, if I can get serious for a moment, I am personally delighted that this trailer is finally available for your eyes and ears and whatever else you use to consume trailers. It’s been in the making for a long time, and, for those unaware, I edited this over the course of… a while, and through so many iterations and drafts that they practically reach the triple digits when you combine them all.

Seeing it go from a crummy lil’ design document I wrote to an equally as crummy initial draft that used pantomimed emojis instead of actual footage (yes, really) to this final version has been quite the experience.

Of course, a trailer like this can’t be made without one hell of a game to show off, and the team has done an incredible job of making Grid Force everything we believed it could and should be. I feel that’s best illustrated, right here, in the official trailer.

Plus, additional credit must go to our composer & SFX legend Nicola who provided the music for the trailer, as well as some crisp custom footage and much-needed moral support. And, our CEO and co-founder Dan, who’s a dab hand in After Effects, provided the visuals for the text on the title cards that really made the trailer pop.

(If you find yourself lovin’ the trailer, please share it with everyone you can. Friends, family, pets, anyone. It’ll really help us out.)

WE’RE IN THE ENDGAME NOW

Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess couldn’t be any closer. (Well, it could, but hush.)

Releasing on the 11th of August, you’ll finally be able to experience Grid Force in its entirety.

Remember to check out the trailer, wishlist Grid Force on Steam, take a crack at our latest demo, and mark your calendars for August 11th.

Take care, everyone!

• Staples [Community Manager at Playtra Games]

GRID FORCE - JULY DEVELOPER RECAP

It's coming up, it's coming up...

Hey there!

It’s time for the Grid Force developer recap for the month of July, 2022. This one will be on the shorter side because we’ve had our heads down this month, but, there’s still a little bit of news to get stuck into, regardless.

In case you missed it last month, this will be the final developer recap that I, Staples, will write here at Playtra Games / Dreamnauts Studios.

It’s been a truly great experience and an honour to be a part of the Dreamnauts team, and to get to interact with so many of you from our community, whether it be through our Twitter, Discord, Steam Community Hub; wherever. Even if you’ve just tweeted at us once, or popped in our server just to ask us a quick question, I appreciate all of you.

I’m definitely going to be lingering around the Grid Force space, too, and am looking forward to finally being able to play it alongside the rest of you!

But with all that being said, for the last time, I’m going to take you through the month of July at Dreamnauts.

AUGUST DELAY BRINGS SEPTEMBER DISMAY

The first and perhaps most important part of this blog post is that Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess has been delayed from the original launch date of August 11th, 2022, pushing it back to September.

Although it’s a shame that we can’t get Grid Force into your hands as soon as possible, the extra month is hugely beneficial for us when it comes to ensuring the game launches in the best possible state. When we were given the chance to polish the game for just a little bit longer, we thought it’d be for the best if we took that chance.

Thankfully, it’s not a huge delay, and we’re very much looking forward to getting Grid Force into your hands in September! (Mark those calendars! Or, like, update those calendars, I guess.)

PAX RISES WITH GRID FORCE SURPRISES

We snagged ourselves a few spots during the wonderful PAX Rising event, wherein we tackled Advice to Aspiring Developers, Picking New Projects, and Designing Games in some roundtable discussions, as well as a post mortem for Grid Force and some let’s play stuff, too.

Thanks to everyone who took part or engaged with us over the streams and events and roundtables. We were delighted to share the space with so many other incredible talents in the gaming industry, and we hope you learned something along the way!

(Speaking of engagement, we hit a very important milestone this month…)

COUCH TO 10K - STEAM EDITION

As a marketing, community, and social media gremlin, there’s many ways in which to measure success on a project.

Keeping documents and spreadsheets fully updated with our monthly goals and then how close we came to reaching those goals, or, in many cases, how much we surpassed them, is a good way to help dictate the direction of our marketing material.

It lets me know when something isn’t working, for example, like a Steam capsule image or a series of screenshots.

It’s always a great moment, then, when a long-term goal is reached on a project, and for Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess, that came in the form of our Steam wishlists!

Wishlists are a great way for us to measure the overall interest in our game, and our goal of reaching 10,000 wishlists before release was not only met, but one we’ve blown right past as we continue to gather those sweet, sweet numbers.

We have you to thank for that, for wishlisting the game, telling your friends to wishlist the game, sneaking onto your families’ computers whilst they’re not looking and wishlisting the game for them (don’t do that one). It all adds up.

(Here’s to the next 10k!)

BUG OF THE MONTH: NOBLE DONNA

Finally, the Temple Trials, our little survival challenge in the Grid Force demo, has been a blast. It also came with its own fair share of bugs, and members of our community managed to capture some on their way to the legendary 50th wave.

Here’s something that cropped up on our Discord, courtesy of Mechpolaris.

From my understanding, at the 30th wave of the Temple Trials, Donna defeated the boss and, well, just decided to stick around. Forever.

This also meant that Donna could not be switched to during the next waves, either, so she’d just stand there to soak up any damage coming her way until she was, eventually, eliminated.

If you’ve read prior posts from this developer diary series, you’d know that characters being where they shouldn’t is something we deal with every so often. Still, it’s great to know about these things, and we’re always hugely appreciative of our community who jump in our Discord or poke us on Twitter to let us know that something isn’t looking quite right.

That way, we can focus on it, find out the cause, and get it fixed!

(I hope your Temple Trial run went well, and don’t worry, even though the prize / challenge aspect is over, the trials are going nowhere…)

IT’S DARE

TL;DR:

• Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess’ release date has been pushed from August 18th to September.
• We participated in many, many PAX Rising events.
• We hit 10k wishlists on Steam.
• The Temple Trials had a cheeky little bug again.

And with all that being said, this marks the end of this developer recap for the month of July!

As stated up top, this will be the last one of these that I write for all of you, so, if I don’t see you lurking around the Discord or wherever else, I sincerely hope you enjoy Grid Force when it launches in September, and that these posts have been somewhat informative regarding game development from the inside!

I know I’ve had a blast writing them.

Anyway, have a great August, take care of yourself, and do the work.

• Staples (Community Manager at Dreamnauts Studios)

Grid Force – May Developer Recap

Yes, I'm a Future Seeker

Hello!

Welcome to the Playtra Games developer update for the month of May, 2022.

We slowed down our event attendances and sped up our game development as we blast through the final months of development on Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess.

And, due to a last minute change of plans, there’s a lil’ bit more going on in this blog post than expected, which is why I’m writing this after the rest of it, and why it’s reaching you a day later than usual

(Sorry.)

We’re very close to release now, the final stretch, and next month we’ll likely have tons more material to share, too, so even though this puts May in an awkward transitional period for us, don’t fret, as there’s still a lot of stuff to share with you today, including some livestreams we’ve been doing, some spicy asset updates in Grid Force, and, most crucial of all, the new Grid Force demo.

Send it.

THE NEW DEMO

Let’s start with the most important bits first.

Last month I mentioned that we were rolling out a new demo to Steam in the near future after getting feedback on it at both Insomnia 68 and Format. Well… it’s here, baby!

The team has been working hard on getting it as polished and bug-free as possible, and with the development of the main game happening simultaneously, it’s a more time-consuming task than one might think.

Even still, in case you missed our update yesterday, to coincide with our inclusion in the Dreamhack Beyond Steam event we have unveiled the latest, shiniest, brand spanking(est) new Grid Force demo for everyone!

(Try it out, and let us know how you got on!)

ABSOLUTE PERFECTION

Next up, residents of our Grid Force Discord server (join the server please please please) will have seen some asset upgrades that are being worked into Grid Force as we approach our release date.

There’s too many to show off in this post, but here's a couple of our most recent before & after snapshots to show the night and day difference between the old assets and the new.

And for the next one:

If you’d like to see more of these, keep up to date with the graphical reworks as they’re made, or even ask questions to the artist directly you can do so via our Discord server.

(But, perhaps you’d like to see the assets whilst they’re being worked on? Well…)

SOMEBODY’S WATCHING ME

We’ve been putting a lot of effort into building and interacting with our community as best we can over the last few months, and the next step in that plan for us has been the introduction of the PlaytraGames Twitch channel.

We’re still working out how to best utilize our livestreams so we can chat with viewers and get some work done at the same time, so, here’s a few tentative examples of what we’ve been up to.

• Level Design / Character Balancing w/ Dan
• Grid Force Bug Hunting w/ The QA Team
• Art Streams w/ Noemi
• Asset and Visual Updates w/ Pietro
• Educating Fudge!

We have something akin to a schedule, but we’re also open to streaming spontaneously, too, so if you’re interested in seeing our work in real-time as crack on with Grid Force, you know where to go.

(Here. It’s here.)

Alongside that, occasionally we’ll be taking one of our streams, chopping it down into something more manageable, and throwing it up on our YouTube channel.

Like this one!

BUG OF THE MONTH: EVIL PAN

The team hates bugs.

They’re annoying, they break stuff, they take a lot of effort to root out and fix; it’s just a nightmare. Now I’m not saying that I, community & marketing gremlin at Playtra, love bugs, but what I am saying is that the bug reports are very funny to read.

Unbelievably, this next bug was captured live by the QA team.

For context, this segment appears early in the game, the first full stage, in fact, and comes as a result of making a certain decision wherein Pan sends out a healing orb to bring Pai back from the brink of death.

However, Pan is… well, not the best shot, apparently, so the orb just bounces around for a bit instead of striking Pai to heal her, before vanishing into thin air as unhelpfully as possible.

At the time of writing, this has been fixed, but it gave us a good laugh when it came up.

SO I’M SAYING MY GOODBYES

With all that being said, I’m going to wrap up this month’s blog post!

It was on the longer side than it was a few days ago, and as June is also going to be such a hectic month for us here at Playtra, there’ll be no shortage of content for the next one. In fact, I suspect it’ll blow the lid on a lot of the bits and bobs we’ve been keeping under wraps for the time being.

With an updated demo available right now, and a brand spanking new trailer coming soon, the latter edited by yours truly, we’re going to have lots to talk about next time.

Until then, though, I hope you’ve had a great May, and I wish you all the best moving forward into June.

Be good to each other.

• Staples [Community Manager at Playtra]

Hey there!

You’ve read the title. (Hopefully).

You’ve seen the teasers. (Maybe).

You’re here to conquer the grid. (Who isn’t?)

So, we’re pleased to announce that the new demo for Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess is officially live on Steam.

Dropping you into the very start of the game, the new demo will give you the chance to experience the story from the beginning, try out the heavily reworked tutorial -- or skip it entirely if you’re a Grid Force pro -- and blast from Clea’s Temple to Tohora with optional dialogue, secret encounters, and chances to upgrade your squad.

What to expect in the demo:

• Graphical updates and asset overhauls.
• Roaming feature implementation.
• Reworked tutorial.
• 2 stages | Clea’s Temple & Tohora
• Improved upgrade system.
• New UI.
• Story opening.

With our previous demo being from October 2021, we’ve been working hard over the last 8+ months to crack on with development of the game, and with us being so close to getting the full release out there, we wanted to give everyone the chance to experience how far the game has come in that time.

Plus, the previous demo had a few… unsavoury bugs, shall we say, and we wanted to put our best foot forward with this new one.

Also, to coincide with this, we’re part of the Dreamhack Beyond Steam event!

Thanks to those at Dreamhack for letting us share a space with tons of brilliant games, and, if you’re here from that event, hello! Please consider wishlisting our game as it really helps us out.

And, if you’ve been on the fence about trying Grid Force, now is the best time to give it a crack.

Here’s that link again! (Don’t say I never do anything for you.)

So, jump in, let us know how the game feels, and most importantly of all, conquer the grid!

Take care,

• Staples [Community Manager at Playtra Games]

Grid Force – April Developer Recap

Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream

Howdy!

Welcome to another developer update for the month of April, 2022.

It’s been an exhausting yet wonderful month for us here at Playtra, and as always, there’s plenty to update you on, so much so that I’ve chosen to squeeze a lil’ TL;DR at the end of this post in case you want to skip to the cold, hard facts.

I won’t be offended.

(I might be.)

We visited some gaming events. Two, to be exact, and we’ve a plethora of content to share from those, as well as a handful of progress updates, and the game mode that could’ve been.

Let’s roll.

COUNTING SHEEP BUT RUNNING OUT

A handful of us here at Playtra attended the i68 Insomnia event in Birmingham on the 15th - 18th of April, and boy howdy, it was an adventure.

We got to meet many of you there and give away some event-exclusive Grid Force merch, as well as show off our newest demo that’s not currently available to the masses. Don’t worry, though, as we’re looking to push that demo out onto Steam in the coming weeks, so everyone gets to have a crack at all the new iterations Grid Force has been through since our last playable teaser.

To get a better look at what we got up to at Insomnia, swing on over to our social media pages, such as this TikTok, and this one, too.

You can also head over to our Twitter, or, better yet, our Discord, and have a peruse through our events channel.

(Oh, and if you were at Insomnia, give us a shout so we can find you!)

((Not in a weird way.))

AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A FORMAT PARTY

In addition to going buck wild at Insomnia, less than a week later some of the Playtra team did the very same at FormatGG’s gaming event in Manchester.

Once again, getting to meet so many gamer folks, streamers, journalists, and other content creators really was a dream come true for us. All the feedback we received during these events is invaluable to our team as we press onward with development.

To get a better look at what we got up to at FORMAT, swing on over to our Discord, and be sure to let us know if you were there as we’d love to hear from you.

(You may have also gotten a sneak peak of the upcoming Grid Force trailer that I’ve been working on, but shh, don’t tell anyone.)

ASSORTED FUDGES

It’s not often I’d dedicate a whole segment to talking about a quick social media post we made, but, with the recent addition of social media and community legend Fudge, Playtra’s newest team member, our TikTok page has had some much-needed life breathed into it, and nowhere is that better demonstrated than the #GamingSkills speedrun post, now boasting a hefty 120k views.

If you haven’t done so already, head on over to our TikTok page and give the video a watch.

Also, don’t forget to follow our page because, in the words of Fudge, more bangers coming…

(Should we do another speedrun challenge soon? Hmm…)

GRID FISH - BASS OF THE GODDESS

This one isn’t real.

April Fools is an interesting holiday.

Sometimes you do a quick goof that deploys the dopamine and moves on, nice and easy, and sometimes you spend several hours of the only life you’ll ever have designing a game mode as a joke until nobody thinks it’s a joke anymore and your colleagues become greatly concerned.

Anyway, here’s what a fishing minigame would look like in Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess:

It might be hard to tell from this gif that’s had all the pixels squeezed out of it, but you don’t just stand at the water and get a fish for free. In fact, if you try and pull a fish too soon, or too late, you’ll get nothing. But, if you nail the timing, a Physhilla could be yours.

Or it would be, if this was going in the game, which it isn’t.

Unless…

(I am actually legally required to say that this is not going in the game ever.)

So why am I showing you this?

Well, I think there’s a lot to glean from this regarding Grid Force, and game development in general. To make a fully-fledged fishing minigame that would feel appropriate and respectively polished in Grid Force would be a real time sink and, from a budgetary standpoint, not that viable either. But, being able to visualize our ideas is an important part of seeing what does work, what doesn’t work, and what we just don’t have the time or resources for.

It’s a shame we can’t do it, but sometimes that’s the way it is. You gotta make the tough decisions to keep the wheels in motion. Plato said that.

(Probably. I dunno.)

Grid Force won’t have a fishing minigame, but the systems we have in place made something like this possible, so, make sure you keep an eye out on what else our game can offer when it releases in the summer of this year.

(If anything, I’m just annoyed at Nicola for getting me all hyped up for a fishing minigame that we’ll never get to see.)

JUST THE TIP OF THE (ICE)BURG

Lastly, our beloved second stage in Grid Force, ‘The Burg’, is getting a facelift.

For those unfamiliar, the Burg is the stage currently serving as the demo for Grid Force, at least, it is when this developer diary is being posted.

That means it’s time, once again, for our traditional before and after image:

With a shift in the time of a day, some extra props on the side, and a cheeky bit of graffiti, the Burg is the nearest hot spot for champions wielding huge laser cannons looking to destroy giant robot teddy bears.

Like the changes? Let us know in the comments!

WITTY ENDING HEADER

At last, with all that being said, it’s time to wrap up this month’s blog post!

Thanks for reading, and be sure to add Grid Force - Mask of the Goddess to your Steam wishlist.

We wanted to thank everyone who has already done so, too, as it helps us out tremendously.

As for the quick notes…

TL;DR:

• We went to i68 Insomnia and Format.
• We have a new community & social media team member.
• We concepted a fishing game for a laugh.
• The Burg has had a visual redesign.

Take care, everyone. See you in May!

• Staples [Community Manager at Playtra]