🎉 NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO 🎉
I am pleased to share that this special Toon Talk Live video is an interview with the @toontowngrindworks.com team!
We take the time to chat about the game one year on from its release.
Check it out!
youtu.be/KX7tygi_hXs
#toontown #toontownthegrindworks #youtube
you are the goat lav
It has officially been one whole year since the launch of Toontown: The Grindworks on March 1st, 2025. There are truly no words to describe how incredible this last year has been for our team, and we can do nothing but extend our sincerest gratitude towards all of you for being here for it.
👋 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everyone! 👋
In 30 minutes join me for Toon Talk Live, where we talk all things toony and toontastic!
This month, I'm interviewing some of the team behind the incredible Toontown: the Grindworks so come check it out!
twitch.tv/pandaphilplays
NEW DATE FOR TOON TALK LIVE!❗
I will be interviewing some of the incredible team behind @toontowngrindworks.com on Monday 23rd February at 7:30pm GMT / 2:30pm ET.
I am truly excited for this latest addition of Toon Talk Live, and I hope you are too!
Join at twitch.tv/pandaphilplays
#toontown
I am really excited to share that on Monday 16th February I will be interviewing some of the team behind Toontown: The Grindworks over on Twitch!
Stream starts at 7:30pm GMT / 2:30pm ET - hope to see you there!
twitch.tv/pandaphilplays
#toontown #twitch #stream
whether the @ toontown debacle really mattered in the end, imagine a mario 64 mod team that just started calling themselves the "Mario Team". and started offhandedly referring to their mod as just "Mario". it's weird and confusing and comes off as egotistical.
i actually don't entirely disagree with the questioner on this one. yes, ttr is always referring to itself when it says "toontown" because ttr has built a brand around being *the* toontown. it's like my least favorite thing about them in all honesty, as it's very anti-community.
tl;dr: the toontown community takes itself way too seriously. it was a mistake to present these projects as brands first, and people second, if at all. each project has beating hearts behind it that deserve more recognition than they are given.
this is definitely due largely to the fact that these projects feel so un-personal. people try to create a brand around their toontown projects where i think collaboration and human connection between projects and players is far more encouraged in other fan-game spaces.
reminder that there was a decently visible outcry when ttr released field offices and they had the gall to "steal" corporate clash's idea of status effects in a turn based rpg. something unique to corporate clash that no one could ever possibly conceive of outside of them.
it's part of the toontown community's grander aversion to "plagiarism" as a whole. where plagiarism in this case just means finders keepers. despite the fact everyone's making the same game, if you come up with a cool mechanic or idea, no one else is allowed to use it or that's stealing.
there's a long running inside joke on the development end of toontown projects that if it keeps up, they'll all run out of unique business terms and be forced to start using the ones other projects used. but the kicker is that we're talking about words in the english language no one ever owned.
one of my (least) favorite parts of the toontown community is how projects seem to have this idea that if another project did a particular idea, we *have* to do it differently.
no we can't call them managers, that's clash. we can't call them supervisors, that's ttr. (grindworks does this too, tbf)
it has officially been a year since i posted this trailer. this project grew to heights i never saw coming, and i’ll always be proud of the work myself and others put into it. i hope you’ve all enjoyed what we were able to put together 🫡
renders I did for @itisevan.bsky.social and Purrsetter 🤍
I been feeling gifty again 😈
#toontown
mild inconvenience
it always saddens me to see people spending time with their family instead of camping outside retail stores for 20% off a printer or something. we are a nation built on consumerism, damn it! try being “thankful” for the blockbuster deals on smart refrigerators for a change.
the only radio station i’ll ever need
Having nothing to do for the first time in 10 months has been a very strange feeling. Pretty much every day from beginning to end there was always some task I needed to work on. I finally feel like I’m giving myself an actual break from that. I’m learning to enjoy the silence in its absence.
Oh hey, I can finally share this drawing I made almost three years ago!
@itisevan.bsky.social commissioned this for his Toontown: The Animated Series retrospective, and it's really something.
Happy to have been part of the project!
#art
ok but uploading “sonic unleashed all cutscenes” with inspector gadget at 5% opacity for the whole thing sounds awesome
A drawing of Flippy from Toontown saying "Lemme see what you have!" to Lil Oldman with an eager smile on his face
A drawing of Lil Oldman from Toontown replying "A Knife!" and holding up a dagger to proudly show Flippy. Flippy is horrified at the thought of an elderly man wielding such a dagger and shouts "NO!!"
FINALLY got to try out the new grindworks updates ^w^ who gave him that.
#ttgw #toontown #grindworks #toontownart #toontowngrindworks
TL;DR: Toontown: The Grindworks is no longer my main focus project. I’ve still got bugs to fix and ideas I’d like to see through, but releasing a major expansion to the game every few months is definitely not a realistic goal to keep up with.
(Kinda used “me” and “the team” a little interchangeably here, but I can’t speak authoritatively for everyone on the project. Above all, this is just a reflection of my current feelings towards being the lead developer of a fan project I never thought would get this far.)
So, I wouldn’t call Grindworks dead by any means. But I do hope folks understand that going forward, I and many others on the team will be seeing it as a side project. Something to work on here and there while we focus more on our other endeavors.
But I am acknowledging that Toontown can’t be my home forever. I’m very proud of myself and the team’s work on the game, but it’s not a project I think we need to update and maintain forever. Making the project open source was an intentional decision to allow the game to continue through anyone.
To quell any fears this isn’t a “Grindworks is over” thread. Just a bunch of my jumbled thoughts on Toontown development in the admittedly limited time I’ve been doing it (depending on what “counts” to you, either 2 years or 7 months).
Toontown is very fun to work on with the right conditions and people around you. Though by nature of it being a fan project driven solely by passion with no way to earn a living off of it, eventually you’ll have to leave the nest and do the scary thing of making an original video game.
Making Toontown fan games is a double edged sword. Having a built-in audience is great for improving your skills as a developer/designer. Though at some point, you do start getting diminishing returns on the thousands of hours you spend working on free content.
