Toontown: The Grindworks
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Toontown: The Grindworks is a new single-player Toontown roguelike! Play as some of Toontown's top Toons to take down Cogs Inc. from within!
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This game is great and perfectly captures the Toontown feel (with a few extremely minor details as exceptions), although some elements are rather frustrating, such as some of the near-kaizo-level platforming (I lost a god run to flame jets in the room with spinning platforms in the molten area). Especially when 99% of the game's platforming challenges are more in line with TTO in terms of difficulty, so the super extreme challenges coming out of nowhere feel like bizarre difficulty spikes. It's really frustrating to get 3-shot by something that's totally separate from the "main gameplay" of turn-based battles.
Also the fact that the items don't tell you what they do means they might as well be placebo, because you can't really plan or strategize around items in this game. You just have to hope they're doing *something* for you. The only time an item's effect was really "obvious" to me was when it caused me to start missing half of my attacks. Made me wish I never picked up those stupid glasses, or that I could at the very least drop or get rid of them. And when one of the only memorable items effects was actively negative, it makes me want to avoid picking them up at all.
Considering you don't know what any of the items are going to do, the "next area" selection feels pretty meaningless. It pretty much amounts to "how many anomalies do you want?" Or "what cosmetic do you want?" Because the items may as well be cosmetic with how few of them actually seem to do anything. Same goes for the shop. You're rarely able to afford anything that costs double digit amounts anyway, unless you get the pay raise item (that one was fun, I was rich by the end of that run).
Also a lot of systems aren't properly explained. The fact you need to hit esc to open an extremely important menu should either be explained to the player early on, or there should be an on-screen button for it. Putting a book icon in the lower right would probably help, because most TT players could reasonably intuit that it will open a menu with important information.
And can you hold 1 usable item or 2? Flippy seems to be able to hold 2, but Clara only holds 1? But this isn't said anywhere in their character descriptions? Or is there some other mechanic that dictates how many you can hold? In my first run, I had 1 blue and 1 green and could swap between them, but on my second run, I couldn't hold multiple no matter what combinations of colors I tried to hold. It was really frustrating realizing I spent my jellybeans on nothing, because I suddenly couldn't actually take the item I thought I was receiving.
Speaking of poorly explained mechanics, are the gags used in a certain order or not? The game seems to change its mind constantly. During the intro I was convinced squirt always had to come first, and I operated under that assumption for the whole run, only to realize near the end that I was wrong, and could use gags in any order? And then on my 2nd run, squirt forced itself to the beginning of the move order again! Is it a squirt-specific mechanic? If so, why doesn't it say so in the description when you hover over it, if it's a mechanic that no other gag track has??
Also the intro is fun, the bait and switch is an excellent way to start, but it gets tiring once you have to slog through it a 2nd or 3rd time. Please make it skippable after the first playthrough. Just have the elevator fall under the toon on the character select screen and have the title card pop up there, there's no reason to make me go through an entire battle that doesn't even matter, especially when I know about the bait and switch already. The surprise wore off, there's no reason to try to surprise me again by doing the exact same thing all over again.
Those are my only complaints so far, though. This is a wonderful project, and extremely well put together, I just wish some of its rougher aspects were fixed. Mainly, better explanation for the mechanics, actual item descriptions, and maybe make it so hazards don't 3-shot you when they're already so precise. The battles are fun and engaging, and this fangame is a perfect realization of a dream I've always had for a Toontown roguelike. Even with its faults, I'll continue to play it, because it's still really fun when I don't get screwed over.
Hello, thank you for your feedback!
To address several of your points here, there is currently a way to view in-depth descriptions of the items you collect via the Monocle accessory. It will show a detailed breakdown of items you stand near, as well as giving you the ability to hover over items in the menu to view descriptions for items you picked up earlier. This is something that I, for a long time was very intent on keeping the way it is, which I understood was not a popular viewpoint. After reading your comment, however, I'm more inclined to remove that feature from Monocle, and turn it into a toggle in the settings, or something of the sort. I will have to think on this.
A lot of your questions can be answered by just not knowing the Item functions. The Crown item allows you to queue Gags in any order you want, Spider Legs allows you to carry two Pocket Pranks at once, etc. For the intro, after your first victory, the settings menu should display an option for skipping the Cog building segment and getting directly into the game.
Overall, I'm very glad to hear you're enjoying the game despite a few issues here and there, and thank you again for sharing your thoughts with us.
Thanks for the clarifications! Yeah, after a few more runs (I've done like 7 at this point), I did end up getting the monocle, realized just how much of the game's mechanics were hidden, and decided to just start using the wiki whenever I got an item I didn't recognize, lol.
I feel like the items in this game fit into two categories: So minor/subtle you'll never figure it out without the monocole (most stat-boosting ones, or that backpack that only does anything if you know you're supposed to skip a turn for it to work, or any item that breaks TT's rules so fundamentally there's no way you can know you have its effect unless you're literally TOLD you can place traps under lured cogs now), or obvious enough that not having a description actually kinda works (any item which "announces" its effect in-battle, like the alien glasses, the dinosaur one with the meteors, and most pocket pranks).
A game like Risk of Rain can get away with a vague item description or two, because the items with those items usually have instant, obvious effects. "...And his music was electric", and all your attacks are suddenly doing big, flashy chain lightning attacks. Checks out, you know? But the game still explains all of the non-obvious effects, because there's no way to know otherwise.
That being said, I am still really loving this game. The characters have super interesting gimmicks (I'm in the middle of a run with Bessie, she's super creative, and my first item this run was the wizard hat which makes it 10x more interesting), the item effects are really cool when you understand them, the game's various "twists" are incredible (my jaw dropped when the game presented me with a 9x14 matching puzzle and I was like... you can DO that??), and the original music has been stuck in my head ever since I started playing. Special mention goes to the factory silo platforming room where it starts filling up with paint, that music and the final boss music are two of my favorites.
While the game is pretty noticeably different from Toontown in some ways, after playing for a while, I honestly forget it's not Toontown, and it's genuinely astounding y'all managed to recreate it this well in Godot. The controls/physics are at least 90% there, and the visuals are *totally* spot-on, and I can't imagine how hard it must have been to port everything so well like that. It's only super obvious anything's different when the game looks "too good", like the lava platforming room in the mints (which is a really cool effect, by the way).
The haunted golf course area is super cool, too. My only complaint is I can't see 2 feet in front of me, meaning I had to tap W instead of holding it for most of my time there, and the one time I did hold it, I fell right into an oil pit I couldn't tell apart from the floor. Aside from that, the "classic creepypasta" vibe of the place brought me a kind of nostalgia I wasn't really expecting! I had a dumb smile on my face the whole time I was there.
The faulty factory is amazing, too. I was taking screenshots of the cogs to send to my friend the whole way through. And I've had a lot of fun messing around with what it unlocks when you beat it!
Anyone know why I keep getting a bunch of pixel visual glitches whenever I play for long enough?
peak game
What is the custom seed?
Absolute cinema
The game crashes after starting it while using an override.cfg file that changes the rendering method to compatibility (it only works in the home menu), so the game is pretty much unplayable if you only have hardware that runs the OG toontown online game. Pretty funny case for a game that attempts to recreate the feeling of an old game.
Hey there!
If your computer cannot run the game, we recommend the community's alternative export using the OpenGL renderer: https://github.com/DarthMDev/ttgrindworks/releases/tag/compatibility-1.1.3
Thanks!
I'm having a serious issue with the cog creator.
When I go to import a new head and scroll down in the list of all the cog heads, it instantly freezes and crashes the game.
I think the custom heads are causing the game to crash when I go to view them in the head selector. It also sometimes just crashes when I load up the cog creator.
Is there any way to get it to stop crashing or to clear all the imported heads? Because with this being the way it is, It's keeping me from making new cogs which is mostly the only thing I do in this game.
I fixed it lol
Do you want to share how you fixed it?
This game is great! Unfortunately, controller support is broken atm, but I hope it does get fixed soon. Oh and I hope it gets released on Steam and consoles in the future. I would gladly pay for this game if it does happen!
As a longtime Toontown enjoyer, the innovation on display here shows a true love for the original game. Everything new here fits in really well and only one run in I've found a new addiction. 10/10 (PS: Remove Alien Glasses >:( <3 )
This is addictive. I love the gameplay loop, and I really enjoy the parkour design (which toontown doesnt get much of usually due to the more casual nature). Music's great, too. I'm interested to see if this develops any further.
difficulty settings plz the head of security is too hard
it's not official so don't bother asking here unless you think the creator will find you here
This game is awesome! I can 'grind' this game for hours. Is there an updated link for me to join the discord? I keep trying to join and it's telling me I'm unable to join.
The link works for me.
It is still not working for me and I've tried it on a couple different browsers. Any other suggestions?
I would recommend copy and pasting the link in Discord itself, to like a DM with a friend or something. The embed will tell you outright if you're banned from the server.
Toontown: The linkworksforme
After sending a few runs of this, I wanted to leave my thoughts.
First off, the good. RNG never seems like an issue, which is a really hard one to get right for roguelike devs. Here, the randomness seems really well thought out and balanced. I never once thought that RNG was what screwed me out of a run, only my own approach to battles. This is really hard to get right, and I'm pleasantly surprised this game gets it right! Another good point is the general design of the game, and how everything is changed to fit the idea of a singleplayer toontown. Each gag effect, the way battles work, it all feels genuinely like toontown.
There is a number of bad points though. The first is that, like actual toontown, the platforming feels bad. Secondly is run time: even if you can save and continue, runs being an hour+ or even two hours on average isn't something that I would want out of a roguelike; the best games in the genre are succinct and have an average run time of half an hour. But most importantly is the total, absolute lack of information conveyance. It's not 2011. You're not making TBoI. Tell me what the items do. Tell me what the status effects do. I shouldn't have to look at an out of date google sheet or join a public discord server to get half-wrong information. This one is the worst aspect of the game.
Hey there! I appreciate your thoughts here, but wanted to mention a few points I think are important to mention here. Firstly, the point about game length is probably fair. We've had a lot of internal discussion surrounding the average length of a run, and have made a few changes here and there to make the experience a little quicker. On the whole, though, we're pretty happy where run lengths are at. An average run being somewhere a little over an hour is just about the standard we were looking to reach just with how slow Toontown battles are. In practice, I feel it's allowed the slow, but constant progression of your Toon to feel more natural. To get to an average run time of about half an hour, we'd need to give the player items at potentially double, if not triple the current frequency, which already feels pretty fast in my eyes. It's also worthwhile to mention that making a faithful adaptation of the Toontown Online battle system meant we had to preserve the fact that the battles are incredibly slow. They always take up the vast majority of your run's playtime, and as such, we give you the option to speed them up as a bit of a workaround.
As for the lack of information, I don't entirely disagree here. We've been talking a lot about having a legitimate tutorial in the game, especially for people who may see this game on itch, and not have much experience with Toontown in the past. Right now, the game does a very poor job of giving those players an understanding of the mechanics at play, and that is something we should work to circumvent. For items, though, I don't agree with your stance that the effects should be immediately visible. We have an item, Monocle, that will display item effects before they are picked up. Part of the game design is meant to be some trial and error, where you don't know exactly which items are maybe not the best idea to pick up. Letting the player slowly build their own knowledge on the items is almost like its own invisible progression system. Though, I should mention, for status effects specifically, those aren't hidden and you can hover your mouse over them to read exactly what they do.
Finally, I want to highlight is that as a benefit to being an open source project, we understand we may not always make the best calls on the game design end of things. But we greatly encourage modifying the game in any way to suit your own tastes. And while I understand that may not be a satisfying answer, I do promise to keep an eye on the issues you've brought up here, because we may always end up coming around to your perspective on things later.
yoooooo its evan
No Commentary Gameplay
Reminder that I'm running an item guide for this game! Check it!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-NzxYwANEXSkbW2J9cFDmOTxnCKEdU8DMkiT82H-0Zo/...
The golden Jellybean pocket prank sells your chest item for jellybeans
absolutely wonderful!!! this is such a cool and unique take on the game. a fun new spin on toontown that i love very very much. peak game
so hyped for pocket pranks
What's that?
big update on may 1st
WOW THIS IS SO COOL!!!!! I'm enjoying it immensely. The music goes so hard. So creative and such a fun idea. Thank you so much for making this and sharing it with us. I'm very excited to see where it goes.
I've left my fair share of negative reviews on this game, I'll be fr here.
But yknow I realized you just gotta 100% everything in order to be able to progress, you gotta fight every cog, collect every treasure chest. and that's something I did not do. But ofc once I did this, I was able to actually progress and fight the bosses and beat the entire game lmao.
fr tho 10/10 game
what do you mean 100% everything? you don't have to fight every cog and collect every treasure chest. sure it helps since you get extra items but you don't have to
donnyboy stay mad that u arent good at video games, leave it to the rest of us who can do basic platforming
No need to be so inconsiderate..
Here's a small bug I've noticed in the room in The Mint with the money bags (the object, not the Cog) and two Cog battles. When you use a Lure gag, the money bags block the camera, making you unable to see anything but the bag during the luring (and trapping if used) process. This happens in both battles, but the second battle is less of a problem.
Please fix the gear room in the factory, I have died there twice, and my 2nd time i was semi far and died because the gear in the middle and the one thats semi high up, they either need to be slowed down or increase player jump height, I should not be missing multiple times in a row because the player jump isnt high enough and or the gear is turning too fast and one is to slow. Was fun up till the da offices with the big mine sweeper room and then the factory gear room.
Amazing game! Hope to see more in the future!
I beat the game with every character with 18 hours total playtime. Overall a really addicting game, just wish there was a way to know how to get every achievement
my pc still can't open the game. it crashes a few seconds after launching the game, support for opengl pcs would be useful !
AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you please raise the brightness on the haunted cog golf courses? I cannot see anything and I feel that losing all my laff from mazes and mole stomps isn't fun in the slightest, it feels rather bad actually.
This!! I know the point is for it to be limited vision/dark and spooky but during the day the sunlight on my monitor makes that level basically unplayable 🥲 would love an accessibility setting or something that brightens up the visible area
Is there some kind of discord where we can ask questions about the game? or is this and the youtube video comments the only place?
Yes, Hope my link still works.
https://discord.gg/ZJebwVDk
yeah that link didn't wor
Discord Link is down.
Hi, I wasn't sure where to leave this bug but when using the item that sometimes upgrades stuff by +1 tier, it will sometimes turn the $50 bill into a presentation, but the presentation doesn't lure anything, thus completely wasting the turn and all the gag points.
few bugs i've noticed so far
- final elevator in the final factory minigame room will sometimes not be there
- as moe zart, cogs that start the turn lured and are unlured with an attack will still attack
- also as moe zart, cogs unlure one turn too soon
- record profits sometimes just doesn't trigger when killing a cog (seems to be when killed by aftershock)
otherwise fun stuff
another bug i've run into at least twice now: clipping into treasure chests without being able to get out
Very fun game and overall, I've been having a good time with it! Though I do really wish that the Classic control scheme had *any* way to reposition the camera, because the default angle makes platforming and minigames like Find the Skulls unnecessarily difficult.
I wonder if it's just my own lack of skill but the stomp the moles minigames in the cog gold courses feel entirely unbalanced. I had a run where I had to stomp 10 in the open field, and I swear, I only ever actually even saw nine pop up at most before the 40 second timer ran out. Not to mention that with how quickly the moles dip back into their holes, usually, by the time you see one, it's already back in the hole right before you can actually get to it. I've had multiple runs that were otherwise going well ended by the moles in these manners.
Really enjoying this so far! I wish there was a way to make the platforming slightly easier so I didn't keep going sad in the factory but this game is still really cool.
made an account just to say this; i was playing clerk Clara on the last floor fighting the book keeper and traffic manager with a total of 4 cogs while she was focusing. i had to use lure, trap, and sound meaning she got hit twice and retaliated causing her to do all of her debuffs and then just out-right make me go sad. thats not fair and im shocked there's no lee-way or failsafe to prevent that. please fix this it was a very upsetting and bull run-ender. real shame too because i adore this game! its really really fun 5-minute post salt edit here: an idea i had is to garuntee she spawns on the left side as to avoid this or make her move i suppose? my gf had her spawn on the left side and had no problems, i had her spawn on the right and my run was ruined
I played 30 min and it was great, It's easy to get started, concept is fun,
I managed to get stuck but there a button for that, and the game is quick (even if I would love to press space or a button to skip animations)
but I got rect on the first boss T.T
Anyone know what I can do to fix it so I can actually play instead of getting exited out as soon as I select Flippy and go in the elevator?
same case here, game opens, i select flippy but closes immediately.
but to help you, you need to go to the discord of grindworks and submit the problem there
https://discord.gg/ZBgXzKxQ
Okay, thanks
I got stuck on a chest in the D.A. Office Room and the sweeping spotlight nearby killed me lol
Very very fun and feels rewarding to play :)
I love this game!!!! Everything about it is so cool, I love how accessories were implemented as boosts, very toony! And I only got a doodle once so far, but it was adorable and having it follow you around is perfect. love it!
My only wish is for the golden goose fight to be tweaked a bit, I've yet to find a way to really make it work for me and its difficult to keep up with moving the camera to keep track of things in it ^^' definitely where i most often die or almost die lol
you've all done something very special here with this game! :)
Is there a discord for the game?
Would really like to have a place where you can share 3d models and textures for the costume cogs feature.
Wouldn't know myself where to get the 3d models.
i really wish there was but i havent seen one yet
Really hoping for this would be easier than having to help my friends learn how to change stuff in the creator
https://discord.gg/pnP3Bjfj
Really good so far but I'd like to leave some feedback here.
- Please add a setting to change mouse sensitivity (like other people already mentioned)
- Please give us an option to skip cogs death animation or not ( I personally don't like how the animations are skipped after you defeat a cog while others are still present in the battle. The next cog immediately attacks and we don't even see it. I'm sure this is probably done to speed things up but I think it would be best for people to decide if they wanna watch the death animation like in TTR or if it gets skipped. Just like the option you gave us for battle speed.
- Minor things like the dog's ears disappearing at certain angles. Not sure if that can be fixed.
Looking forward what you with the grindworks in the future :)