Hello cyber-bike riders,

We have finally released on Steam, Nintendo eShop, Epic Store, GOG and Humble.

It was long and hard way. Emotionally and physically. For our team Gripper is the first game. Feels like we've lived the whole life while developing.

The world of Gripper is created on stages of Grief. The main story is based on our game designer's story - he lost his mother and this game helped him to go through his loss.
On every stage of development all the team went through Shock, Anger, Depression, Acceptance…And the main message is to learn how to deal with it.
Hope you'll feel it and go through the story, gameplay and art.

Here is our release trailer.

Grab it with 10% OFF discount for the first 7 days after launch.

Our social media: Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Tiktok, Youtube and Discord channel.

Best,
Heart Core team

Hello cyber-bike riders,

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks at Heart Cord HQ, following the release date announcement for Gripper. March 29th is fast approaching, and we can't wait for you to get your hand on the game!

Today we want to share the exciting news that we’re working hard on making Gripper Steam Deck compatible at launch (or as close to launch as possible). We actually sent the game to SteamdeckHQ for them to play the game on the Steam Deck. You can read their preview here.

While we can’t officially confirm the Steam verification of the Steam Deck port, it's fair to say it’s very close to being complete. 

If you don’t own a Steam Deck, but still love the idea of gripping and ripping on the go, remember Gripper is releasing on both PC and Nintendo Switch on the 29th of March. The on-the-go ripping potential is endless!

If you missed our Japanese trailer, you can watch it here.

Leading up to the release, we’ll also be holding a couple of competitions, where you’ll get the chance to win a digital copy of Gripper. To keep up to date with these competitions, be sure to follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, you can also join the Discord server.

Not long until you’ll get to meet None and Cat-Kit yourselves.

The Heart Core Team

Hello cyber-bike riders,

Today’s update is an exciting one. Gripper has a release date!

Join None and Cat-Kit on the 29th of March, when Gripper will release on Steam, Nintendo eShop, and Epic Games Store.

The Heart Core team has been working hard on Gripper for over three years now, so we’re really excited you’ll be able to jump into the game soon. We plan to share some more info about some of the cosmetic progression Gripper offers in our next post. 
Leading up to the release, we’ll also be holding a couple of competitions, where you’ll get the chance to win a digital copy of Gripper. To keep up to date with these competitions, be sure to follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, you can also join the Discord server.

And here's our Release Date Trailer on YouTube: Trailer

That’s it from us for now, a short but very exciting update.

We can’t wait for you to experience Gripper for yourself,

The Heart Core Team

Hello cyber-bike riders,

Today’s update is about our recent travels to the Taipei Game Show, Steam Next Fest and a little insight into our emotional and impactful bosses.

Burning Rubber on the Road
The Heart Core team recently had the pleasure of traveling to the Taipei Game Show. This was our first physical convention of 2023, so we were really excited to see the player's reaction to our most up-to-date Gripper build. I’m so happy to say the reaction was more than we could have dreamed for.

Not only did 100s of players stop by to test their mettle against the grueling bosses of Gripper, but we were also visited by the legendary Shuhei Yoshida. This was his second time playing the game, and he was full of praise for how Gripper has grown over the past five months.

Our trip was capped off by the wonderful Xbox Team, who really made our journey special by showing us local places and introducing us to an industry people. We were also fortunate enough to attend the Xbox and Neon Doctrine party, which was incredible!

The New Demo
A couple of weeks back, Gripper took part in the February Steam Next Fest. This was a big milestone for us as it was the final showcase of the Gripper demo before the launch. We’ve been working hard on getting the demo as close to the final product as possible.

The festival saw (enter how many downloads the demo had) players take control of None. The feedback we received from the festival has been vital as we approach the full release of Gripper…not long now.

The Emotional Bosses of Gripper
As we mentioned in a previous developer blog, Gripper is a story built off emotion, pure raw emotion. Every boss in Gripper represents an emotion that we’ve all experienced in our life, from Anger to Depression.

The mechanics and visual design of a boss represent the emotion it’s named after. For example, Anger, a titanous truck that’s hell-bent on killing you, drives at erratic speeds with an element of randomness to them. It was very important to really capture the true feeling of that emotion in every boss.

We don’t want to tease some of the later bosses. You’ll have to ride through those emotions with None and Kat-Kit when Gripper releases soon. To keep up to date with Gripper, be sure to follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok. You can also join the Discord server!

The Heart Core Team

Hello cyber-bike riders,

It’s been a very exciting two weeks for us at Heart Core HQ, with the official announcement of Gripper. If you missed this then you can catch up with it over at Game Tyrant or Nintendo Life. We’ll have more news about the release date soon, so keep a lookout for that.

Now the burning rubber has settled on our announcement, we want to share more details about Gripper. More specifically, regarding the main protagonist None, and his trusty, if not slightly sarcastic sidekick Cat-Kit.

Despite Gripper being a game where you can rip off a mechanical spider's legs, at its core, it’s a heartfelt story full of emotion and loss. None’s story is one of mystery. After running away from home following a disagreement with his father, he returns to find that the source of this disagreement may be the cause of what is now a barren waste and dystopian home, plagued with dangerous mechanical threats.

Progressing through the challenging boss fights of Gripper will provide both answers and more questions as to what happened to None’s parents. Although Cat-Kit may put on a big front, they’re gentle at heart and hold the key information None needs to find the source of the new corruption.

We really wanted to make None and Cat-Kit feel like a true partnership, like a boy and his life-long pet dog or cat. We build a sense of this through their seamless interactions together, both in and out of combat. Let’s just hope Cat-Kit isn’t the only remaining member of None’s family home.

If you’re excited to start gripping and ripping, please be sure to wishlist Gripper. It really helps us out.

To keep up to date with Gripper, be sure to follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, you can also join the Discord server.

The Heart Core Team

Hello cyber-bike riders,

Today’s update is about the news that we will soon release Gripper on both PC and Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, we cannot share a full release date yet, but it won’t be long until you’ll be burning some serious rubber on the tunnels of terror!

Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing lots of information about what you can expect from Gripper. From the mech-melting upgrades you can unlock to the variety of Guardians you’ll be fighting…we’ll even introduce you to Cat-Kit, the smart-ass sidekick with all the answers and a heavy side of sarcasm. Today, we want to share with you the origins of Gripper and where the idea came from. 

Gripper was born from the brain (and heart) of our Co-Founder, Kirill Zolovkin. In a recent press release, Kirill said “The idea was born when I lost my mother and as a game designer I wanted to express my feelings through gameplay,”. He went on to express “Such sensitive emotional topics are usually covered in adventure games but I dreamt of a boss fight game where each boss is a stage of grief. Throughout the game you literally tear enemies apart to reveal their hearts, which sing with voices of those who you lost. Each one gives you an ability. Once you regain them all you are ready to rescue your family. Or to understand: you were rescuing yourself. It was never about gripping and ripping. But rather about letting it go.”

At the very core of Gripper is a family-tied emotional story that represents Kirill and the Heart Core team’s vision. This story is shared with the player through beautifully hand-drawn comic-book-style art and visuals. The synthwave soundtrack is the very heart bead of the game, and it is designed to sync with the emotion and theme of each different boss fight.

It’s going to be a very exciting year for both the Heart Core team andGripper as a game. We cannot wait to share more information with you about the game, mechanics, and of course, the release date. If you’re excited to start gripping and ripping, then please be sure to wishlist Gripper. It really helps us out.

To keep up to date with Gripper, be sure to follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, you can also join the Discord server.

The Heart Core Team

We were very surprised by this trip because we went to the very core of entertainment culture. In our childhood, we watched beautiful cartoons from Disney, and we had an incredible opportunity to see the people who created these children’s miracles. We were honored to meet the actor/stuntman who played the role of Michelangelo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was also very cool to talk to people who voice-acted for cult classics such as: Cowboy Bebop, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, etc.  

When we showed our game to the players, the responsiveness and kindness of the audience, to put it mildly, surprised us. People at Games Con love video games, they understand game mechanics perfectly and describe in detail what’s happening on the screen and in-game hints for them is just another bother.  

The experience we had was very pleasing, it showed the depth of the gaming culture. The admiration cannot be expressed using words. The love for video games at Games Con is felt in the air. We were convinced of this when Kirill Zolovkin – the head of our team, was going about his business with a Gripper poster in his hands and then suddenly, he was stopped by two security employees. They began to ask Kirill various questions about the poster in his hands: what new game is it? When will it come out? Where did Kirill get that poster from? After they found out that the creator of this game was right in front of their eyes, they were shocked and even asked for Kirill's autograph. Moments like these are very inspiring, they get you pumping with energy that helps you make your truly dream-game. 

Shoutout to the organizers of the MIX zone, these guys do an excellent job they sure know what they’re doing. The incredible atmosphere that they created at Games Con is unforgettable. Hundreds of interesting people from various communities and all in one place! It was great to get to know the people who made a fond that supports the LGBTQ+ community. The diversity of the gaming industry amazed us. We saw that both the city itself and the gaming culture are multinational, we were all united by one thing - the passion which video games give us. It’s very pleasing to acknowledge that people take video games seriously: there were many children who came to our booth and their parents asked us about any age restrictions. Fortunately, our game is suitable for any age, we try not to use rough language or any violent scenes. 

We also gave an interview and are waiting for its release to share it with you! 

We’ve dropped more photos of Gripper at Comic Con LA in our official Discord server

Lots of headway has been made within the team, with some exciting updates. Some I can share now, some you’ll have to wait and see!

We’ve been busy making sure we have the bare bones of all the arenas and tunnels, so later on we can focus on polish and making them all shiny. This has included making sure all the decorative objects are added, as well as interactable ones. VFX, lighting and shading has also been added, with textures being played around with and voted on within the team’s Discord server.

Making sure there’s collision has also been on the task list, as we don’t want players riding through objects that are meant to be a challenge to navigate. Within the tunnels we had placeholder objects that had yet to be sculpted, but progress has been made turning our flying rectangles into threatening daggers. Check out the before and after video on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gripper_action/status/1565757698242740230?s=20&t=nEzk1LaSH-iyVXnEscjfZQ

Physics has also been a topic of discussion, with ideas circulating around interactions between different elements (such as heat evaporating water). It’s too early to definitively say if this will make it into the final build, but we’re all about creating the best environments and atmosphere’s we can — only time will tell!

Boss concept art has been created so the team has a reference for the final boss models. These models have also been created for the most part, and are being added into their arena’s. We’ve been starting to animate models to ensure they don’t look stiff and clunky, with the main protagonist seeing some improvements. In the words of one of our artists,

“None became the proud owner of controlled knees and elbows”.

Movement and combat design are all in the works, to try and make the fights feel as epic as possible. We’ve changed and updated textures for certain objects like the bike, making the wheels and windshield reflective rather than matte.

Updates to characters have also been done, with multiple characters starting to come to life. Narrative has started to be written, with character artwork being updated to show different expressions and personality during dialogue scenes, as well as during gameplay. Designing new and interesting characters is a challenge as there are so many great characters out in the gaming world, but the team have dug into the world and the story to try and achieve engaging persona’s.

The team have been working on UI, and have added in a controls menu to make sure players can readily check what the inputs are. Whilst quick time events have already been implemented, refining QTE’s in terms of their timing has been done. It’s important for the timings of our QTE’s to feel fluid, and adjusting timings around whether a button press will be a success or a failure has been fiddled with to get this right.

Continued QA tests have allowed us to find bugs within the main build and the dem- oh phew, nearly let that one slip! As is the nature of game development, we’ve managed to find and fix issues found within cinematics, boss fights and audio. As more gets added into the game there’s more chance of bugs popping up, but we’re confident in getting these smoothed out before launch.

Gamescom 2022

We were fortunate enough to have a booth at Gamescom this year, where we were found in the Indie Booth Arena. It was both exciting and daunting, but we had the best time talking to players, devs and press alike. We loved being able to see your reactions to playing the game for the first time, and really understanding what it is that you’re all excited about for when Gripper releases.

Creating marketing art for the booth (both digitally, and printing posters and stickers), ensuring we had a playable build, setting up an online stream and all the admin behind-the-scenes stuff were just a few of the tasks we faced in making sure we had a successful time.

Going to a convention as big as Gamescom was a massive learning experience and we found you could never do enough preparation. It came with its struggles, but overall the experience was invaluable. The support and feedback we received was so welcomed by the team, and it was a kick into reality to see how far Gripper has come over the years. We couldn’t be prouder of the team for making it happen, but most of all we want to thank you — the players, both new and old to the community — for sticking with us and making this all possible. We can’t wait to share the game with you.

Thanks for reading this far! We’ll see you again in October with the next update!