6:45am

GrimKeep - henrik

A few words about style and inspiration

TL;DR: We like comic books!

One thing we've heard a lot about GrimKeep is "That reminds me of \[most commonly Darkest Dungeon]". If you're working in any visual arts field, you're probably used to this. Brains are pattern matching machines, and when presented with stimuli, it will spit out the closest or sometimes most recent match it has. Sometimes to hilariously off-the-mark comparisons!

So, what was the inspiration for the art style in GrimKeep?

The truth is that the end result is an amalgamation of many things. Let's break it down:

Most obvious - the drawing style

Once we had settled that it needed to be a 2.5D game, we intended to explore various styles, but one of the first tests was based on older fantasy comics like "Savage Sword of Conan" and others from that era. The brightest shining artist from that group, is John Buscema, although many greats have illustrated comics in that era and style.

Immediately after doing the first test drawings inspired by this style, we felt that it was 100% right for us, so we just stuck with it. Quick not about inspiration; we're not putting a lot of energy into copying exactly how these comic book greats drew. We know we're not the crème de la crème of that style. It's a starting point, and we're using some of their techniques, but we're our own artists, and we're using different tools and have different constraints. So apologies to Mr Buscema and his colleagues for the blasphemies we commit! :)

The colors and values

Something that took a bit longer to settle on was which colors and values (how light or dark it is). In the beginning there were a lot of reds in the drawings and the UI. But as we were fleshing out what kind of world the game takes place in, it wasn't quite right. We eventually settled on unhealthy greens, greys, and browns. The greens represent the eldritch, the lovecraft-esque monstrosities. The greys and browns represent the dystopian reality of a world without hope. Also, grey is a backdrop color, something that lets other more saturated colors draw the attention of the viewer. Browns are low saturation orange and red, which is complementary to green. You could almost say that it's basically a green game, and the rest is just supporting those greens.

We do allow ourselves to use any color we want for highlights, accents and color pops, but the general impression should be towards greens. Art direction is to a large degree self-imposed restrictions, and so far, we're pretty pleased with the ones we've picked.

There's also values. I guess it's pretty clear that GrimKeep is a dark game. Not just in setting and theme, but also in value. It's probably no surprise that we'd avoid brightness and strong colors in a dystopic setting like ours. But finding the right balance have taken some doing. It also forced David to implement Gamma settings very early in the project. We have had a few awkward presentations where a screenshot that looks great on a high quality screen in a shaded room, apparently becomes just a dark grey square on a projector in a lit room!

Finally, all these 2D assets are all put together in a 3D scene in Unity. Here we have some tools at our disposal that the comic book artists of the 70s and 80s didn't have. We (mostly Samuel to be fair) add lights, effects, and some post processing. These are very nice things to have, that adds life to what is essentially still images.

User Interface

The UI has its own style, separate from the art. It took many iterations to settle on it. We tried to make it in the same drawn style. We tried several versions of highly rendered material-based elements. Nothing really clicked until in a fit of inspired frustration, Henrik did a quick test with very flat UI elements, focusing on the color, values, silhouette and dropshadows.

Most of the effort goes into tweaking and testing the values of the individual elements, to make sure it is in its right place in the "attention hierarchy". UI needs to be clear, readable, and obvious most of the time, but aesthetically it should not overpower the art, the environments, the characters.
Every screen is a delicate balance act of what draws the attention of the viewer, and in what order.

Item icons

Another major part of GrimKeep is the "items" that you equip on your journey.
These are drawn similarly to how we draw the characters, but with a bigger focus on readability and them fitting neatly into the item slots. They could represent any object, which can present a challenge. In particular long and thin items like a sword or spear, would be at very small scale if you're trying to fit them into a small square. With these we take some liberties, and show the most significant part only.

See this in action

If you're curious, on our various socials we regularly post timelapses of the artists drawing.
Check them out on Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram or Bluesky.

6:43am

Blackscreen Fix Update

How to Train Your Cock - Ang

Hello c*ck trainers!

This update aims to fix the blackscreen bug that many of you have encountered.

To make sure the bug gets fixed without needing to disable fullscreen optimization, you will have to reinstall the game, so Steam can update the installation's folder name.

Make sure you're running the latest update (1.0.140-full). Look for the game version in your in-game Settings menu.

Ps: Reinstalling the game shouldn't affect your save files.

If for some reason the issue still persists, check this thread for other possible solutions:

🚨 FAQ (Black screen, Save, etc) :: How to Train Your Cock General Discussions

Thank you for your time and have a great week!

Angelo

6:42am

Demo v1.0.1 – More Content, Fixes, and Improvements

Divine Intervention - Quran Miracles - destrakz

Peace be upon you travelers,

A few updates following demo release - thanks for playing and sharing feedback!

Additional Content

Added a new interactive scroll in the second level for you to discover

General Fixes & Improvements

Fixed a bug where the quests journal gets stuck in place when opening and closing too fast
Enhanced audio quality for certain UI and SFX sounds
Adjusted SFX volumes that were too loud
Further performance improvements to crowd simulations in the second level

Heard your feedback about adding text to speech and exploring best options for its implementation.

Keep the feedback coming to help shape the game and be part of the journey!

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/59FszrBmkT

❤️~Solo Dev of Divine Intervention

6:40am

Patch 0.5.4.0

Draconia - Dracosis

Hello Draconians! Unfortunately the movement test has to be delayed a little and won't be included in this patch!
We will let you know when the test happens!

In the meanwhile, here is a sneek peak of the new gliding mechanic: https://youtube.com/shorts/ujoQScwZP54?feature=share

Added: New locations to explore

Added: Various new Ka'sai-only crafting recipes

Added: New crafting materials

Added: DLSS 4 support (needs testing)

Added: Epic's Mover plugin

Added: Crafting Table, Meat Cutting Table, Jewelcrafting Station and Alchemy Table to Ka'sai crafting list (No limit; require claimed area)

Added: New mover based character BP/class and type

Added: Very basic mover code and dependencies

Updated: Moved Draconia to UE 5.6

Updated: Old crafting recipe categories

Updated: Crafting recipe level requirements

Updated: Effects of consumables that can be made by the Ka'sai

Updated: Item description of the legendary pearl and the legendary Aurin nugget

Updated: All building parts now use a single resource as upkeep and repair material. The new resource can currently only be looted from all harvestable sources (they will display the "Harvest" prompt!). Make sure to swap out the materials in your totem to prevent decay!

Updated: Increased light falloff distance of 'Volcanic Torch' and 'Volcanic Fireplace' significantly

Updated: Build maker bat/EU config to include crash reporter in Linux game builds

Updated: draconiaserf plugin's Steamwork SDK

Fixed: Typos in item and crafting recipe descriptions

Fixed: Lake water not rendering

Fixed: Lake water surface scaling

Fixed: Some lighting issues that would make shadows very dark sometimes

Fixed: 'Leather', 'ipomo root' and some volcanic rock rendering settings

If you want to see more frequent news on upcoming game updates make sure to join us on Discord! Want to report a bug or want to know what other things we have on our to-do list visit our Trello Board!

6:40am

Dev Transmission (October 2025)

SENTRY - Gary

Hi everyone,

This month we’ve been primarily focusing on all of the associated tasks surrounding our Tech system, which is replacing Passive Gear. If you missed the post that describes what Tech is, you can catch up here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/544495527868237649
We’ve been working on a collection of Unique Tech – this is the purple ones that have a standalone and more powerful impact (previously we’d been working on the Stackable – i.e. blue ones).

You gain new Tech every battle and make your selection from a random pool on the After Action Report, so we’ve re-done this screen to allow that functionality as well as sprucing it up:

The above is still work-in-progress, but gives you an idea on how you choose your Tech (hovering over an icon will give information on each piece of Tech in a tooltip). You can equip up to five pieces of Tech in the Loadout menu, so can lean into certain play styles accordingly.

The blank “Optional Objective” is part of an accompanying system we’re currently working on. The idea here is twofold:

First, it’ll provide an extra layer of gameplay variety in combat through optional challenges.

Secondly, achieving these objectives provides a bonus you can use in the After Action Report when you choose your Tech. For example re-rolling the current selection or allowing you to make two choices – essentially giving you more control on the sort of build you want to craft in your run.

Because we’ll message Optional Objectives in the HUD – and we had a few feedback points we wanted to address – we’ve done another pass on how this looks:

We’ve got a new wave icon, changed the colours on the health and armour bars, added some improved functionality and messaging on the ammo and secondary fire modes in the bottom-right, and only have one instance of the word “BREACH” in the top-left. It’s not shown here, but we’ve moved the breach timer to be just below the middle centre underneath the phase banners.

One thing you may have noticed in the screenshots above is that our font has changed. There were a few aspects with the previous font that were problematic, whether that be how it was hard to read when smaller through to how the upper case ‘D’ and ‘O’ looked too similar – for example the “RETURN TO POD” message basically looked like it was “RETURN TO POO”. While that may have amused my immature mind, it was a good time to address those problems with a focus on legibility.

A lot of the new Tech utilises status effects, so we’re also working on fleshing them out. Their damage over time is varied and has additional gameplay effects to further differentiate them. For example:

Burn deals damage rapidly. It can spread between targets that are close. It can be extinguished if affected by venting and if the player repeatedly crouches and stands in quick succession.
Poison (which is being renamed to Toxic) performs low damage over a long period. It increases firearm spread by a % amount (more for enemies than the player). It damages armour at a greater rate than health and can be cured by healing either via dispenser or the Stim.
Bleed gives high damage in stabs over a short lifetime and moving above a certain speed increases the frequency of damage. While suffering from Bleed you are also weakened to other damage (the enemies even more so). Bleed can be stopped immediately by healing and if you’re wearing armour it won’t even take effect.
Enemies have immunities and weaknesses to certain status effects (for example the drones suffer increased damage from burning, the creatures that spit green projectiles won’t suffer Toxic damage)

Aside from the above, now that we’ve implemented playtest feedback Alex has been arting up the two new levels (Conduit and Hab), here’s a WIP screenshot of the former:

Sean has been doing some early balancing work on the equipment and enemies – with lots more to come as we look to get MU4 on a Beta Branch for testing!

From the Community

Another couple of posts this month from our community. Discord user Furious George posted this for when they roll a Chasm defense:

I’m sure everyone has a level they feel something similar :)

While fellow Discord member Fritz X posted this video regarding the general vibes for listening to the game music:

Probably a good time to say that yes, the soundtrack will be released – we’ve still got a few more tracks coming though, so we’ll wait until those are done before putting it out.

As ever, keep the cool submissions coming!

Stay up to date or provide feedback through any of the channels below:

Thanks for your continued support!

6:39am

⚓ Demo Patch Log #Version-0.11.4f1

All Will Fall - Demo - Misao Kamiya

Hello, Stranded Survivor! ⚓

Just a small update today after some of your feedback on our latest major demo update!

Don't try drawing stress gauge if stress drawer is disabled,
Citizens remember how to bring resources to construction sites again.
Validate tasks when the game is loaded. Handle missing deconstruction sites - fixes game becoming stuck on loading older saves,
Fix several memory leaks,
Make path nodes more dense in 4x4 wood block to support citizen building from it,
Correctly draw the resource hut range,
Fix all citizens becoming stuck because of reference to non-exiting building

Wishlist & Play the Demo now

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2706020/ALL_WILL_FALL_PhysicsBased_Survival_City_Builder/

Thanks for reading Survivor! Follow ALL WILL FALL: Physics-Based Survival City Builder to stay updated. Have any feedback for us? Visit our discussion page here or join our Discord server to let us know. Keep building, just don't crumble!