Project Grove follows ageing Alchemist Edric and his portable platform L-P1N on their journey to locate the mythical Grove. In this 10-hour-long bombastic genre-bending 3D puzzle-platformer you navigate dangerous terrain, experiment with exotic flora and harness powerful alchemic abilities. With non-linear puzzles, you carve your own path and uncover the secrets of the Grove using your own brand of alchemy.
Project Grove is currently being developed for PC Windows and the approximately 45-minute free demo is available on Steam and Itch.
“[Project Grove’s demo] really impresses with its gorgeous visuals, chilled out atmosphere and creative puzzle design.” – Alpha Beta Gamer
“Dacrima looks to bring a personality-rich, dynamic twist to the puzzle-platformer genre.” – GameGrin
“I love this approach to the game because it gives players a way to progress, even if they’re stuck on a certain platforming puzzle.” – Power Up Gaming
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Bridge gaps, block off hazards and overcome a variety of spacial conundrums. The core concept behind Project Grove is unrestricted exploration with help from a single platform.
Project Grove begins with the L-P1N basics: crossing gaps, climbing higher, and safely descending drops – all ensuring you know how to use your plucky robot companion. Once you’ve mastered the basics, our puzzles will encourage you to get creative with L-P1N.
Investigate the open-world environment before choosing your path with L-P1N – beware, Dacrima is a dangerous place and one misplaced step can lead to your untimely demise.
Dacrima is abundant with Flora Magika, harbouring powerful alchemic ingredients. These are protected by Enchantments which can be unlocked by activating hard to reach Glyphs.
Bring the forest back to the lab; grow wild Flora back at base camp and experiment on them for visually dazzling and potentially propitious results. Not since mad uncle Fred grew those ‘potatoes’ has an allotment been so terrifying.
Gather samples from Flora Magika and head back to your laboratory to begin experimenting with your new ingredients.
Craft potions and gain new abilities by successfully combining magical ingredients. Every potion enables you to solve Dacriman puzzles in different ways.
Your laboratory is equipped with a cultivation area, enabling you to grow your own ingredients and study the growth cycles of Flora Magika. Brew specific Flora Treatments to gain extra ingredients and other unlockable effects.
Project Grove has a range of potions waiting for you to discover their formula. Once brewed, potions will give you the ability to explore Dacrima far and wide. Here’s two of them:
Bubblate is a staple potion of acrobats, miners and flatulence enthusiasts everywhere. The protective layer projected by this potion,keeps the user safe from nauseous gases, unwanted advances and even the inevitable outcomes of a four-storey fall to the floor.
Sparculous is the ultimate potion for all spelunkers, party hosts and late-night readers. The wonderous glow given off by this particular potion allows the user to break the night with an array of colours, as well as altering environment objects in peculiar ways.
The combination of these key features produce the real magic of Project Grove: exploring the world of Dacrima with open-world play. Project Grove is a non-linear world, giving you the freedom to explore at your leisure, unlike many puzzle games where you complete areas level by level.
The potion loadout you choose in your base will determine where you can go and what you can do in Dacrima. Take charge of the magic in Dacrima and change the environment to suit your needs.
Dacrima will do everything in its power to stop you harvesting the Flora Magika, from well-timed boulders knocking you off your path, to inconvenient poison mushrooms. L-P1N can help you overcome some of these hazards.
Project Grove tells the tale of a treacherous expedition which builds trust in two unlikely friends, overcoming conflict and finding humour in dark places. Inspired by British greats, Project Grove is packed with irony, sarcasm, wit and self-deprecation.
Enhance your expedition with curious and bizarre side quests. Need some new feathers for your bed? How about an abusive house plant? Try retrieving a particular sword from a stone, it might not work out the way you think…
You may have heard of Edric Tate from The Academy of Alchemy. He’s a traditionalist, brewing his own concoctions and invented many of the potions used in everyday life. Edric is a little bit kooky from decades of alchemic practice.
An older model in the P1N range, L-P1N was created by the alchemic and robotics corporation Potentium. The L models are largely regarded as faulty by Potentium, the main reason Edric chose it. L-P1N has an expansive database of knowledge and tries to help Edric in every possible way.
Potentium is a huge corporation specialising in robotics and alchemy. When The Great Rot escalated to an epidemic, they lobbied the Empire and won a contract to explore the sacred forest of Dacrima in hope of finding a cure.e.
Lorna Casely is the Vice Lead Liaison Communications Relations Manager and overseers Edric’s expedition. She is Potentium’s strong, sassy mouthpiece through Project Grove – a stickler for Potentium’s rules and regulations.
Dacrima is a peninsula on the edge of the Empire. Spectacularly beautiful, but a deceptively dangerous place, full of unforgiving terrain and is unexplored by modern man. There are many myths surrounding Dacrima; the most popular one speaks of the birthplace of magic, The Grove.
It is believed that ‘The Old Ones’, mankind’s ancestors, lived harmoniously in Dacrima with the Flora and Fauna Magika. They are said to have worshipped The Grove and built a magnificent temple around The Grove to keep it safe.
The Aetheric energies and precarious terrain of Dacrima are as enigmatic as they are wondrous. Take care when navigating the terrain around Flora Magika, and know that beauty can bite.
The Empire has undergone an industrial revolution in the past 10 years; the advent of steam-powered technology has given rise to unprecedented feats of alchemy. Work that would once take ten alchemists now only requires one.
Great advancements have come at a price: only the most adaptable alchemists can find employment, mass harvesting of flora has devastated the ecosystem, and a deadly plague called “The Great Rot” has evolved.
No known medicine can cure the plague and in desperation the Empire’s rulers have turned to Potentium, an alchemy and robotics corporation. Potentium believe that Dacrima, the rumoured birthplace of magic, may hold a cure. Renowned alchemist, Edric, has been hired for an expedition into the heart of Dacrima.
Edric could not resist Potentium’s offer. Where others had once failed, he would discover the Empire’s salvation in Dacrima. The once feared forest now shines as a beacon of hope and it’s up to Edric to unveil the truth of Dacrima.
Project Grove was our dissertation at Brunel University London, winning Best Games Design & Development. From there we were selected as Tranzfuser Finalists and were awarded start-up funding.
Several demos later and six months of feedback from publishers and the public at trade shows, we started working on the full version. Since then, we’ve put two years of hard work into Project Grove.
Take a look at our Tranzfuser pitch from 2018 including the original Project Grove prototype. We’ve come a long way!
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We’re a group of friends who started out in university game jams and decided to team up for our dissertation, Project Grove.
“Soaring strings, epic percussion and colourful harmonies are combined in big orchestrations. Moments of memorable melodies are contrasted with sparse and ambient sounds. Ethereal harp textures and subtle piano improvisations evoke the often otherworldly spaces of Dacrima.”
For two years we’ve worked alongside our community on Project Grove and loved every moment. We’ve bootstrapped as much as we can and now we need some support to finalise Project Grove and release it for you to enjoy.
Why we’re choosing Kickstarter:
We have the funding to work part-time and release a basic version of Project Grove but with your help we can do so much more. With your support, we can dedicate all our effort to Project Grove and work full-time.
Thank you for reading about Project Grove! Please follow us for updates and tell others about our 3D puzzle-platformer.
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We are well aware of the risks and challenges that a project of this scope carries. Some of these are; – Feature creep and snowballing the game’s scope We’re super strict with our scope management, we’ve had to cut back on features we’d love to have in for the sake of ensuring Project Grove stays in reach of releasing. Some of these features are shown in our stretch goals, if we get funded further we’ll be able to increase our scope with a sensible time-frame and budget. – Delayed release due to unforeseen setbacks We’ve structured our team as so to ensure the project does not dramatically fall behind schedule should anything occur. If something should happen to Emily or Lauren, they are both able to cover each other, as well as help from the rest of the core team. Currently there are two team members on the development side – anything that hinders Harry (Programmer) or Tom (Lead Designer) will have a direct impact on how long the game takes to make. We are looking for additional resources and Kickstarter pledges will help us get those. Those key resources among those key resources are an additional programmer and additional artist. Both Tom and Harry know the game’s build inside and out. Should anything happen they can cover each-other, as well as our additional new hires. Tom is capable of filling in for either Harry or Charis (lead artist) in an unexpected situation, and Harry can, and has done, in-engine level design if Tom is otherwise indisposed. – Game feature changes during further game development We’ll ensure feature changes are for the better and we’ll ensure it doesn’t hinder the scope of Project Grove. We’ve always listened to our community, for the good points and the bad, and it’s you guys who’ve helped make Project Grove a better game. – Team management challenges due to increased team size, We’ve got a Producer (Emily) who ensures the team is managed and that production stays on track. Emily has had commercial experience managing large teams (up to 20+), as well as experiencing managing multiple staff members at Antler Studios. – Requiring more time and running low on funds For any indie, finding funding is a constant challenge until you’re at the stage of releasing the game. Kickstarter will help secure our team and the development of Project Grove until release date, meanwhile Antler Studios will still look into further sources of funding (whilst ensuring we retain our IP) to make sure we can weather any storm post release. All in all, we strongly believe that we are able to control and successfully direct the upcoming period of development for Project Grove. We have been able to create a solid Demo of the game to prove our capability of successfully managing this project, which we hope you’ve all loved. Furthermore, the entire team consists of talented and performance-driven individuals that will go the extra mile to make this project a reality. The team consists of people with excellent expertise ranging from game development and business management alike. We want to deliver a great game from a successful Kickstarter campaign and want to prove our talent and ambitions to the community that we indeed are an independent developer that is novel with ideas, dedicated and trustworthy. It is for this reason that we believe together with the community, we will finally get Lorna to stop nagging everyone and say Project Grove is launched! Thank you for your support! STAG