PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:

Hello! I’m Bronze the developer of Granvir and Airmen. Nice to meet you.

Granvir is a 3rd-person roguelite mech-builder. The goal of the game is to fight your way to the enemy stronghold while upgrading your mech with new parts you find alone the way. During a campaign you’ll alternate between piloting your Granvir in realtime to complete a mission and managing resources like time and money to repair, supply and upgrade.

TELL US ABOUT GRANVIR.

The first spark I had for the game was a coworker describing Armored Core as a game where you could successfully finish a mission but be worse off because the ammo you used to do it was so expensive. That sent me down the path of a resource management based game and my goal was to make a game where you could take on crippling to debt to afford ammunition.

At the time I was also pretty deep into playing the Persona series for the first time. I was really enjoying the way the gameplay would alternate between the dungeon delving combat and exploration of the palaces and the social narrative of the real world. They each fed into each other and served different purposes. That’s more or less where Granvir’s alternating mission and downtime gameplay comes from.

As for the mechs and building I’ve always loved vehicle building games. I have an obscene amount of hours in a game called Robocraft where I would terrorize and amuse lobbies in an absurdly combat capable donut. My first game Airmen was all about building airships you could walk around on and in between. I learned a lot about building games there and I wanted to dial back from the complexity of a voxel builder like Airmen. Mechs to me felt like a perfect fit where they have a reasonable number of parts people can imagine swapping instead of the 700 you’d put together to make an airship in Airmen.

When I dove a bit deeper into the mech genre in gaming it felt like something really underserved with how much passion I can see for it. There are great mech games out there, don’t get me wrong, but it felt like there were even more people that wanted to play great mech games.

HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN

Development has been slow from my perspective. I was lucky enough to be able to work full time on my first game but for the entirety of Granvir’s development I’ve holding down a day job. Thankfully, when I do get time to work on it, I think I’m pretty fast.

WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?

I went with Unity since that’s what I’ve been using since I started with back in 2016. I really don’t have much experience working with anything else which kind of works out because all my habits are molded around what works well in Unity. I can build my game in a way the engine likes to run games without slowing myself down. Ultimately I want to make a game more than anything so I’ll use what I’m confident I can do that with.

WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?

My biggest hurdle so far has been art. I’m a solo dev baring a few assets like audio and icons I’ll work with specific artists to create so the overwhelming majority of content is done by me. Programming is the task that comes easily to me which I’m not complaining about haha. I was doing some real simple stuff in Airmen and I knew I’d need to up my game for Granvir. So much of why mechs are cool is visual and I really don’t want to fall short of that fantasy. I still wanted to release the game though so I didn’t set the bar too high and chose a simplistic graphical style.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to design a mech like some of the incredible artists out there (or just work with them) but for now I’m pretty happy with my progress. I like to joke that I learn 1 new Blender hotkey a year but it’s probably a bit more than that haha. I really just wish I had more time to practice my modeling. Don’t even get me started on my environment art too. That journey still has a lot more to it haha.

ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?

My advice to people doing their own projects is to finish the project by any means necessary. That’s a bit of a misdirection and I don’t mean to break your back over something you don’t care that much about. Another great way to reach your goal is to move it closer to you. Be really aggressive on what needs to be done and get that bar as low as possible. Just because you cross the finish line doesn’t mean you have to stop running. Maybe this won’t work for everyone but it’s so much more motivating for me to be making the game better instead of making the game. Granvir’s been in this state for almost a year now. I don’t means to say it would have been good if I released it earlier but it’s been fun and playable for a long time.

ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?

Cookies:

Ghirardelli Brownie Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 20 oz box Ghirardelli brownie mixCan also use a different brand of mix. If your mix is less than 20 oz, add flour until it is 20 oz.

• 1/4 cup all purpose flour

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil

• 2 eggs

• 1/4 tsp espresso powder (optional)

• 1/2 cup chocolate chips mini chocolate chips or regular semi chocolate chips (Not needed if using the mix that includes chips)

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 375°F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

• In a large bowl mix all of the ingredients together until combined. I used a hand mixer, but if you don't have a hand mixer you can use a wooden spoon and just mix until everything is evenly combined.

• Using a 2 T sized cookie scoop, scoop dough onto baking sheet, spacing each dough ball 2 inches apart from each other.

• Bake for 8-10 minutes or until edges are set but centers still look doughy. Remove from oven and let sit on baking sheet for 3 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

Notes:

I use the brownie mix sold at Costco, which is 20 ounces in each bag. If you use a brownie mix that is NOT 20 oz, just add enough flour to the brownie mix until it is equal to 20 ounces. THEN add the 1/4 cup of flour that's called for in the recipe.

Store in an airtight container or bag for 3-5 days.

Nutrition

Calories: 59kcal

-Bronze

❤️

Granvir on Steam