Grindwick – Grind Your Way

Hey! I'm a solo developer, slowly making the game I've always wanted to play.

I really enjoy grinding and killing monsters. I like it when putting in the time to grind is the main way to make your character stronger.

That's basically the core idea behind Grindwick.

There are no quests, and I don't plan to add any. There may be some light lore in the future, but no big story. If you want to spend hours farming the same place because you like it, that's the place for you.

Grinding will always be the most important part of the game. There will also never be free level boosts or shortcuts that let you skip character progression.

What's in the game right now?

The game is still in Alpha, so a lot can and will change.

There will probably be quite a few progress wipes during Alpha. Characters, levels, skills, items and other progression may be reset when bigger changes require it. This will likely continue until the game reaches Beta.

Right now there are around 30 different enemies, 20 maps, and over 220 items.

Item stats aren't randomly rolled. There's also crafting, where you can use resources to craft random items.

Character progression

Your character has a normal character level, but that's only one part of progression.

Combat skills improve by actually using them, and there are three fighting styles. I don't plan to add more, but the passive tree will let you modify them a bit:

Melee — close-range fighting, with a mix of tankiness and damage. Magic — medium-range damage with access to party healing. Distance — ranged-focused damage. Great for solo.

You also unlock stronger tiers of spells as you progress.

There's a passive skill tree with around 300 nodes, although I'm changing quite a lot of it right now.

Pets are another smaller part of progression and give their own little bonuses.

Loot and farming

Drops are intentionally fairly rare.

I prefer seeing an item on the ground and actually caring about what dropped instead of ignoring 99% of the loot.

There's also an Auction Board where players can trade items.

Multiplayer

You can see other players in towns and create parties of up to 4 players.

Expeditions can be played solo or with a party.

In a party, loot and gold collected during the hunt go into a shared Expedition Backpack, and everything can be taken out, but watch out, there are no restrictions! You need people you trust.

Fishing

There's fishing too.

It's mostly there as a calmer thing to do when you don't feel like killing monsters for a while.

Sometimes you just want to fish.

Death

Death isn't completely free. The penalty is going to be increased once the game reaches Beta/1.0. :)

When you die, you lose character XP and skill progression.

Bosses and endgame

There's currently one boss — Atraxus.

The long-term plan is for bosses to use MMO-style mechanics like positioning, avoiding attacks, reacting to mechanics and working together with your party.

Boss farming will become much more important around the endgame, starting at roughly level 100.

There's no hard level cap, but XP requirements after level 100 increase a LOT.

Current state of development

The biggest thing I'm working on right now is the passive skill tree and balance.

Once I'm happier with it, the plan is to fix bugs, continue improving the passive skill tree, and then focus mostly on adding more content to farm.

More maps, more enemies, more items and more bosses.

I'm making this game mostly because I want it to exist.

Even if I somehow end up being the only person playing it, I'll still work on it.

As long as I'm alive and able to work on Grindwick, I want the game to keep existing and slowly getting bigger.

Feedback

I'd really appreciate feedback, especially about balance. It's getting harder to properly test everything on my own.

Please report bugs too, even small ones.

Want to try it?

Join the Discord and ask for a registration code.

Things will break. Things will change. And there will be grind.

A lot of grind.

Description translated by AI