Today you get the chopping block:

During level review this afternoon I was delighted to see some gruesome in-game chopping going on. When Grimm converts normal Lumberjacks into insane ax murders, they run around hacking at each other and any nearby forest creatures. Bloody fun!

Siege Towers are fun. Especially when they go from cute and happy to morbid and corpse filled.

Here in Shanghai the team has been working hard to complete episodes for an upcoming milestone. We’re finally starting to play around with “little” stuff like finished menus, loading screens, and other UI elements. Previously we ignored these bits and were focused entirely on core game play.

Now we’re heading into a phase where we’ll have our first Beta episodes. It’s a strange feeling, especially when considering that only a year has passed since we started work. Add to that the growth of the team, overcoming the “China factors”, and how smoothly everything is going… feels like it’s going to be a lucky year.

The image for today is… a Fisherman!

Again from the “Fisherman and his Wife” episode. This character is considered a central character – the actual Fisherman. Characters like this are used in “narrative scenes” throughout Grimm. Narrative scenes are what link together the story inside an episode. For something like “Fisherman” those might be, in order, a “Once upon a time…” scene, a “The Fisherman catches a magic Flounder…” scene, “Fisherman’s wife demands a castle…” scene, and so forth. These are anchor points to the episode and create a linear story thread from “Once upon a time…” to “The End”.

Inside a given episode there might be as few as six such scenes, but most episodes have over a dozen of them. These in-game scenes also serve to reinforce the “puppet theater” story telling aspect of the game. This is where the story for an episode is presented in “light” form (at the start of an episode) and once again in “dark” form (after Player and Grimm have darkened all the scenes).

Happy New Year’s everyone! I have a feeling 2008 is going to be a great year. The first episodes of Grimm will be released this year, 2008 is the year of the Rat – which happens to be my Chinese sign, 8 is a lucky number in China, I’m 35 this year (3+5=8), etc, etc. And nothing says “lucky happy New Year” like a Mega Squid:

This squid comes from the Grimm episode based on “The Fisherman and His Wife”. As we move into the new year the Spicy Horse team is taking this episode, along with two others, into the Alpha->Beta phase. Starting this week three new episodes will begin the Concept->Alpha phase.

This character comes from one of the more gruesome tales we’re dealing with. As you can see she’s been “given the chop” – rendering her handless:

Since my days at id Software I’ve been a fan of  blood, gore, lava, and guts. Back then we used to revel in “gibs”, laugh when imps were exploded into meaty showers of goo, and thrill to the screams of space marines bathing in lava. With “Grimm” I’m excited to once again be dealing in a fiction where blood fountains and rivers of lava are prevalent.

Christmas Holiday in China isn’t that big a deal. Mostly the Chinese use it as a ploy to push more stuff at retail. Then again, that’s what it’s become in most parts of the world. The Chinese just aren’t as good at masking the underlying capitalistic nature of the holiday. But give them a few years, I’m sure they’ll learn. On a positive note, the holiday is kept mercifully short.

And so, we’re already back at work!  And I have more concept artwork for you:

This is a nunnery from  an episode I’m not allowed to name. (Aren’t rules awesome?) In this image you see the before and after of a building which becomes a bridge. The in-game cinematic shows the building being pushed into a river of lava by nuns who are converted into winged demons. Nothing says Christmas like demonic nuns and lava!