Hello, we are SyntaxFossil and PixelRoseBud, the developers of Graytail.
Graytail's new demo has finally been released! This build contains the fruits of our development journey spanning over two years.
For us, this is an important milestone in our long development journey, and also an exciting moment as we await our first serious evaluation. To celebrate this special build, we'd like to share our project's story with you.
Kickoff (Month 0)
In the summer of 2022, we began gathering ideas for our next project after our mobile game 'The Way Home'. Mobile or PC game? Roguelike or something else? We spent about 6 months contemplating our direction. Then, around winter, we happened to play 'The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap' and fell deeply in love with it, inspiring us to create a similar exploration-focused adventure game.
"Won't a year be enough?" In January 2023, we started with high spirits.
We thought it was fine back then...
Alpha Build (Month 14)
It took over a year from the start of development to complete a playable build. Being unfamiliar with dungeon and field level design, our early work had many issues: repetitive, too difficult, lacking distinctive features... We repeated the process of erasing maps and redrawing them, barely preparing a build in time for game shows and contests.
Bosses (Month 18)
We put a lot of effort into creating bosses, which were absent from our first demo. We wanted to make bosses with special strategies, not just big and powerful enemies. We wanted to deliver the same sense of awe we felt facing Zelda's bosses, if not more, in our game. We spent over a month on implementing each boss.
Worm boss under development
Mostly discarded boss concept art...
Official Demo Build (Month 26)
Implementing puzzles, action, and adventure elements well while also taking care of the narrative was truly challenging. Sometimes we doubted whether two people could handle it all, but we didn't want to give up on any aspect. That's why this build is especially meaningful to us.
In this demo, you can play through Chapter 1 (excluding side dungeons) up to the first boss, with an estimated playtime of about 1 hour. There are still bugs, gaps, and areas for improvement throughout the game. If you leave feedback in the discussion forum after playing, it would be a tremendous help to us.
Thank you for playing!