Goblins & Grottos – Cutscene System

A lot has happened in Goblins & Grottos since my last blog post. In July we went onto Steam Greenlight and were greenlit in just 4 days, with hundreds of positive comments from Steam users. Of course this is hugely encouraging and gave us a nice motivational boost as we started moving past our one-level demo and planning the game proper. We also entered a small competition (Indie Revolution Expo) and won the ‘best design’ award.

What I will focus on here though is our cutscene system, which has been becoming more detailed over the past few weeks. We’re putting a lot of work generally in making the map editor as user-friendly and fun to use as we can, and to encourage players to build stories into their maps. Cutscenes will be an important part of this.

Cutscenes are triggered when the goblin moves into the invisible trigger identified during map-editing by the clapperboard icon. You identify which ‘actors’ will be part of the cutscene, and these characters have their normal game behaviour over-ridden with the rules specified in the cutscene. Actors can include enemy heroes, friendly creatures (other goblins, imps, etc.) and also the goblin himself. If the goblin is included as an actor, then the screen zooms in and normal game controls are frozen for the duration of the cutscene. If the goblin is not included as an actor in the cutscene, then the cutscene plays out while you are playing as normal – this allows us to make little stories and interactions occur which you can choose to eavesdrop on or simply ignore. It’s a simple but pretty cool idea and we can already see how it brings the maps to life and gives a feeling that the world around the goblin is alive.

So far, our cutscenes let you define where actors move to (identified by invisible flags that you place in the map) and what they say. You can also open/close doors, have heroes kill creatures, and have heroes ‘log out’ (the joke is that they’re playing an online game and – in an act of ultimate insult – they log out straight after killing the goblin’s family, leaving him the quest to track them down and seek revenge). You also define the amount of time that elapses between each step, and centre the camera on different spots on the map – so you can accurately control how the cutscene action plays out.

Goblins & Grottos first playable prototype

We have reached an important milestone with Goblins & Grottos: our first public release prototype! You can download this for Windows and OSX over at GoblinsAndGrottos.com. The prototype has one game map built in, and the map editor component has been removed for the moment. The plan is to work on getting the map editor up to the standard needed for public release within the next month or so, and look towards another prototype at that stage.

We also put the game up onto Steam Greenlight and would appreciate it if you could vote for us there!

The reception so far has been really positive, and the quality of the trailer video (above) has certainly helped this! I’m delighted with the video editing skills of Jonas and the fantastic original music of Ian, and the way they synced these together in the trailer gives a very professional look.

And of course our main artist Björn has been busy too, working up some new ideas for enemies!


Including this Druid character who launches a pet owl as a scout. And changes into a bearded reindeer ;-)


And remember folks…


Introducing Goblins & Grottos

Goblins & Grottos is a new collaboration between Psychic Software (from Ireland) and Goblin Portal (from Sweden). We’re calling Goblins & Grottos an “inverted RPG”. You play as the goblin, trying to escape a series of dungeon levels while a team of callous adventurers lays waste to everything around them. The idea is to turn normal RPGs on their heads, and see everything from the eyes of the poor helpless cannonfodder for once.

Goblin Portal have created a clean pixel style for the game, and I’m the programmer (of course). It’s working out well under control of a 2D physics engine: we have spent a lot of time getting the core animations and interactions with the environment as good as possible; the goblin runs, jumps and climbs walls, swings from chains as he attempts to escape the numbskull adventurers .. who in turn have no respect for the goblin, seeing him only as a quick kill for 10xp which brings them along the road to their next level and unlocking their next skill.

I’m using the same core set of technologies as I have for several recent projects: it’s written using HTML5/Javascript packaged into a desktop executable using nodewebkit and with pixijs for pretty efficient WebGL rendering. Nodewebkit gives access to things such as local file reading/writing, which isn’t normally possible from a browser. I’m using the matterjs javascript physics engine to move stuff around, but other than that there’s no actual game engine to be seen. I have found this suits me well for the 2D games I have been making lately – I can construct my own architecture rather than having to learn someone else’s; and the lightweight nature of Javascript suits me.

The near-term plan for Goblins & Grottos is to make a playable one-level demo, and to engage with players while expanding this into a complete multi-level adventure, starting with the goblin’s parents being hacked down by a merciless bunch of greedy adventurers, and ending with an unexpected and heart-wrenching moral dilemma. Or something.

We’re also planning on releasing the map editor as a core part of the game, and on making an on-line repository for player-made levels. There’s plenty of creative freedom in the map editor I have been creating, including customising the skills and chat text of the adventurers.

You can sign up as a tester over at goblinsandgrottos.com, or follow us on Facebook. A playable demo should be available within the next few weeks.