Grimslair v2.0 Paintings of the Dead is live!

Grimslair v2.0 Paintings of Death Update

Hello Reapers,

It’s been a while since the previous update!

For the last few months, I’ve been obsessively watching people play Grimslair on streaming platforms, reading reviews, studying what works and what doesn’t in real time, and shaping the v2.0 version that should have existed from the beginning.

Version 2.0 is a complete overhaul of everything in the game. So much has changed that previous save files may not function properly, so starting with a fresh profile is highly recommended.

Let’s talk about the big stuff first:

NEW MUSIC & SOUNDS

• Every enemy now has its own song.

  • Each track is derived from the main theme in its own way and timbre.

  • This keeps battles sounding fresh throughout the game.

• The game no longer uses the metal/heavy metal music that was there previously.

  • It was cool, but it was a bit too intense for longer sessions.

• Every Location Vendor now has new music.

• Each NPC has its own sound that also utilizes the main theme.

• Music has also been engineered with volume controls that allow for a more dynamic flow throughout your experience.

• Sound volumes have been adjusted (some sounds were a little too loud while others were too quiet)

• Various sounds that were too harsh sounding have been replaced with something less intrusive

• Grim BOSS now has various hurt sounds (only had 1 hurt sound for some reason in the last build (not intentional)

NEW VISUALS THROUGHOUT

• Every aspect of the game's UI has been updated with better looking visuals

• Battlemode looks cleaner with no 3D cards in the way of the viewport

• New BattleDeck, Discard, and Exhaust UI visuals

• Perks and Dice UI now shrink/expand depending on how many you have reducing the space at which they appear (less clutter).

• All 3D models (Adam, Dog, and enemies) have been visually enhanced and have more depth and an outline that makes it easier to look at in general.

• HP and block indicators for all characters has been enhanced making it easier to read both at Day/night time.

• All Locations and Battle Locations have been improved visually with new assets and details.

NO MORE QUOTA SYSTEM

• Grim no longer forces you to find souls to give him by 9 AM.

• Grim no longer kills you or steals from you for failing to meet a quota.

• There were way too many pressure points in the game, such as:

  • The Clock

  • The number of days before Grim kills you

  • The forced soul quota system

• This system needed to go.

Now, Grim simply asks that you provide the specific souls he wants.

• Once all requested souls have been given:

  • Grim provides a new Perk.

  • You can continue giving him extra souls for Blood Money.

• Once all Soul cards in your hand have been dropped:

  • Grim asks for new souls toward the next Perk.

• This continues indefinitely until all Perks have been collected.

  • Good luck with that... there are a lot.

NO MORE “DAYS LEFT” SYSTEM + NEW GOAL

• In the previous update, there was a limit to how many days you had to grind your way to the corner before Grim forced the final fight.

• This was causing too much stress on the player and needed to be heavily addressed.

• It also became a forced way to balance the game, especially because many players were simply grinding to build the strongest deck possible before fighting Grim in the corner.

Now, you have unlimited days to work with.

• However, you may eventually:

  • Run out of locations

  • Die due to the new Nightfall Scalar System increasing enemy difficulty over time

Grim will now only appear when you click on a Chamber of Time Location Card.

NEW SEARCH MECHANICS

Previously, there were four Search cards with random cards underneath them. This was fun for a while, but over time it became too random, and finding cards you didn’t need started to feel cumbersome.

So instead, I’ve created new table slots:

• REAP

  • Allows you to find enemies immediately.

• SCAVENGE

  • Allows you to find Gold and Blood Money immediately.

• CHAOS

  • Contains every card in the game in one pile.

  • Allows for bigger rewards.

• INTERACTABLE

  • Shows cards like Location Vendors and Daily Events.

This changes Grimslair from a purely RNG-driven system into a more precise system, while still keeping some randomness here and there to make things interesting.

• You can only search three times per location on the map.

  • This means you must decide which pile to choose before moving on.

• Time Warps allow you to gain more searches in your current location.

NO MORE ROGUELITE MODE

Yup... this was a hard decision to make.

• Players would start in Roguelite mode and get so used to it that the game felt too easy.

• The shift from Roguelite mode to Roguelike mode caused many players to quit altogether.

• On top of that, balancing both Roguelite and Roguelike modes was a nightmare.

So, I removed the Roguelite version and heavily focused on Roguelike mode exclusively.

This was my original idea for Grimslair, and now we are back to what I wanted in the first place.

GRIM/ENEMIES NEVER START FIRST IN BATTLE

• Sneak Attack Dice always has the player start first

• New Fail (Red) Dice include:

  • Player Starts but with -1 Agility and -1 Card

  • Player Starts but with -1 Agility and -2 Cards

    • Both fail rolls can be rerolled with Bloodmoney

NEW NIGHT TIME UI

Since you will only be playing Roguelike mode, I have done a complete overhaul of the 9 PM Night Time UI to create more interesting choices.

You can now choose one of the following:

• REST

  • Heals 50% of your max health.

• SPEND SOULS

  • Lets you spend Soul/Essence Points on passive abilities.

  • This works similarly to the previous Roguelite soul upgrade system.

This replaces the very limited three-button RNG system, which was underwhelming and didn’t allow for much creativity.

Now, you can spend souls during a run on whatever upgrades you want, as long as you have the points to do so.

NEW SOUL CARDS / SYSTEM

There is a new WILD Soul card that some enemies and all bosses will drop when killed.

• A Wild Soul can be given to Grim no matter which soul type he asks for.

Each Soul type also gives Essence Points:

• Animal Souls

  • Give 1 Essence Point

• Human Souls

  • Give 2 Essence Points

• Undead Souls

  • Give 3 Essence Points

This ties directly into the new Night Time UI, where you can spend these points on upgrades.

NEW PARTIAL SOULS & "SEVERANCE" Battle Card Update:

Using Severance battle card or purchasing from vendors now provides a Partial Soul (no longer a full soul) and if you give grim 3 of the same type, this acts like 1 full soul card of that type. Same goes for the "Keep The Soul" as well.

Severance no longer levels up and is purely a "5" attack card. Severance also has all 3 soulword slots open at start but as a +1 agility cost for each soulword placed on it. This allows for early utility cards to be used without the need to find Tabula Rasa type cards later in the game.

NEW ULTA CARDS & BATTLE CARDS & FLOW

• I have implemented new Ulta Cards.

• Ulta Cards are expensive in Agility cost, but they allow for some wild synergies by utilizing passive abilities.

• There are about 20 Ulta Cards in the game.

• These cards can occasionally appear in:

  • The three-card Battle Card Collection popup

  • Location Vendors

• Depending on your starter deck and what cards you collect, the new cards that appear will most likely have cards that you will probably want for a build instead of just completely random. This allows for each run to feel satisfying but a puzzle to figure out.

NEW BATTLE MODE FLOW & PERFORMANCE

Battle Mode interactions have been completely rebuilt to feel faster, smoother, and more responsive.

• Card activations are now faster.

• Discarding cards is now faster.

• Card spawning is now faster.

• Grim cards now play faster.

• You can now click cards, enemies, and Adam much more quickly for faster-paced battles.

• There are fewer delays in general due to reduced left-click gating.

  • In previous builds, these script gates were necessary because the game needed time to catch up with the cards being played.

  • Battle Mode now runs through a queue system, so no data gets lost no matter how quickly you play.

NEW EXPLORATION FLOW & PERFORMANCE

Non-battleMode interactions have been completely rebuilt to feel faster, smoother, and more responsive.

• Search cards now move faster after being clicked on.

• Collecting Gold / Blood money is now faster

• Drawing of new cards (filling in empty action slots) is faster

• Moving to new locations and drawing of new cards is faster

NEW CLOCK SYSTEM

Clicking every card no longer moves the Clock forward by one hour.

Instead:

• Only Search cards (and Events sometimes) move the Clock forward.

• Search cards now move the Clock in three-hour increments.

• This makes time move faster and makes the Clock easier to read.

The Clock now only lands on:

• 9

• 12

• 3

• 6

This means you essentially have:

• 4 searches before Night Time

• 4 searches before Day Time

Game Events are no longer forced at 3 AM.

Instead:

• At night, the Location Vendor card refreshes into an Event Card

• During the day, the Event Card refreshes back into the Location Vendor card

Location Vendors weren’t working well in the last update. They sometimes didn’t appear when they should, and there were other bugs tied to them.

Now, they will always be there when you need them.

• Location Vendors disappear after you click on them.

  • Make sure you have enough Gold before visiting them.

REFINED EVENT SYSTEM

• The Event Card now appears at night.

• You can use it once every night.

• Events are very consequential, but they can also be extremely beneficial for specific builds.

LOCATION VENDOR OVERHAUL

• Location Vendors can now provide cards of any rarity at any time.

• Vendors no longer have specific rarity levels tied to them.

This allows you to find great cards early without needing to memorize which Location Vendor offers which rarity.

NEW STORE-ONLY PERKS

• Store-only Perks are very strong.

• They are also expensive.

• Killing a vendor now adds a major global consequence for all enemies.

GRIM / ENEMY BATTLE CARD OVERHAUL

• Grim cards now have new art for each enemy.

• Block cards now also include Attack, allowing them to block and attack at the same time instead of only blocking.

• Grim Cards no longer level up when played.

  • This ties into the new Nightfall Scalar System.

• Special cards no longer have chain connectors on them.

  • This gives players more breathing room during battles and helps fights feel less overwhelming.

NEW NIGHTFALL SCALAR SYSTEM

Previous builds of Grimslair had too many different factors affecting enemy difficulty, and many of them felt inconsistent or difficult to read.

I removed those variables and replaced them with one simple system:

• Every night at 9 PM, all enemies increase in difficulty.

• This increase affects:

  • Health

  • Attack

  • Block

• You can hover over the Clock to preview what these stats currently are during your run.

• Ascension modes increase these Nightfall scalar stats each time you Ascend.

• Ascension modes also introduce new systems over time.

  • This allows your pre-Ascension run, the very first run, to stay as simple as it needs to be without becoming too overwhelming.

CHAMBER OF TIME OVERHAUL

• There are now new paintings in the halls of the Chamber of Time that you unlock by defeating enemies in the game.

• Your run speed has also been increased quite a bit.

• Smonkey no longer appears in the middle of the hallway.

  • This was changed to make room for the paintings and to improve the flow of the Chamber sequence.

• Smonkey now appears right before Grim begins his countdown.

  • This makes the pacing feel faster, since you can select a deck and jump into the action more quickly.

• Isabella now has:

  • A new animation while she is alive

  • New dialogue

• New voice actors for Adam and Isabella are now implemented.

• Grim also talks faster in general.

NEW TUTORIALS / FLOW OF LEARNING

• Grim now talks twice as fast, while keeping the same timbre.

  • This helps him teach the player more quickly.

• You still have the Skip and Fast Forward functions as well.

• I played the intro of the game over and over with different tutorial timings, and this seems to be the best way to teach the player as quickly and clearly as possible.

NEW MAP VISUALS

• The map looks better overall.

• It now has a new hover mechanic that tells you:

  • Which enemies are in each location

  • How many searches are still available

  • Whether the location has a unique ruleset

  • Other useful information at a glance

NEW MAP ALGORITHM

• The map no longer procedurally generates in a completely random way.

• Each tile is now generated to create more of a path, instead of feeling like an open world.

This allows players to plan their routes more effectively.

PERFORMANCE & BUG FIXES:

• I have added various caching systems in the background that initialize during the loading screen.

  • This helps cards, both 2D and 3D, spawn without hindering FPS.

  • This should make gameplay feel smoother overall.

• I also went through every script in the game and patched potential memory leaks wherever they could occur.

  • This helped reduce FPS drops significantly.

• Grimslair is not necessarily a “friendly for every computer” kind of game, but I have gone through the scripts thoroughly to make sure most computers should be able to handle it much better now.

• All bugs mentioned in previous bug reports have been fixed.

  • If you sent in a bug report on the community page, those issues should no longer be a problem in the game.

  • Please report any bugs that you find in version 2.0 as soon as you can!

THINGS I AM STILL WORKING ON:

• Full Localization of all other languages (other than English). Hopefully finish this sometime this next week.

Thank you everyone that has supported my game up until this point and I look forward to any new reviews, feedback, Streamers playing the game, etc.

Cheers, Reapers! :)

Austin Williams