We have rounded up 33 of the cutest pictures we could find. Enjoy! :)

1. Momonga pretending to be a French Flying Squirrel

2. A nice furry tail keeps this fella warm

3. Nuts! I smell nuts!

4. This twig doesn’t think I’m overweight.

5. Whatcha looking at?

6. Iiit’s… n..not f..freezing at all… look I’m s..s..miling!

7. Momonga playing peek-a-boo

8. Beautiful shot of Pteromys Momonga

9. Goodmoooooooorning!

10. Sittin’ on a stick, eating nuts.

11. This one looks cute, but look closer – he is preparing a ninja attack.

12. Shy little momonga

13. Practicing his roll-up-like-a-pinball-move

14. Do you think my butt looks big?

15. Beautiful shot of what must be a wise old momonga

16. Holy cow, batman! Was it a plane? A rocket? A flying squirrel?

17. Friendship keeps you warm in the night

18. I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am Darkwing Squirrel.

19. One likes the other more than the other likes him back.

20. Omnomnomnomnom twigs are the best breakfast evah.

21. I bet you can squeeze your head through this hole.

22. You can tell that one of those two cracked a dirty joke.

23. My… nose… is… frozen stuck… in the snow…

24. Yummy tail.

25. Here. Have a cigar.

26. Fits like a glove.

27. Morning yoga!

28. Goodies :)

29. Get a room you two!

30. Howdy partner! Wanna join for dinner?

31. Power to the squirrels!

32. My eye is too big.

33. Guys, I think we’re being snuck upon…

Bonus: And here is Momo, our version of this overly cute fluffball :)

This concludes our ultimate list of momonga cuteness. Hope you enjoyed it, and share the love! :)

- Derk & Peter

No animals were harmed during the making of this blogpost.

Sources:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/theangryluddite/meet-the-momonga-25-photos-of-flying-dwarf-squir-5dn9

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pteromys-momonga

http://ceron.jp/

The Game HUD

The game HUD shows the player the info about the game session. In our case, that’s the number of lives left, the numer of stars picked up, and the time left for a bonus. There’s also an update bar for challenges, so you are notified when you complete an objective. Last but not least, there is a pause button that allows you to restart the session or go back to the main menu.

Here is the old design:

Not too bad, but it could be a bit better. For example, the color orange is used for buttons, but in this case it is also used for panels that cannot be clicked. We also mixed circular items and rounded corner items – not very consistent. Here is the new design:

Level Selection Screen

The level selection interface was crowded. There was too much information, and we had 14 buttons on one screen (the screenshot below doesn’t show all levels). For an iPhone interface, my rule of thumb is to have 3 buttons on the screen at most (of course with an exception here and there). With that rule, the old Level Selection screen had almost 5 times too many buttons! I was a bad interaction designer. And it didn’t work out. So I try again.

The old design:

This shows your score, challenges with description, high scores, and it allows you to select a level. All levels are laid out on the screen and there is a “back” button (called “menu”) and a “play” button.

The first thing we wanted to do was to split all this up. We now have three different screens:

1. Chapter Selection – instead of 9 levels, we have 3 chapters, each with 3 levels. Here you only see the high-level layout of the storyline, with more room for the backdrop drawing of the world.
2. Level Selection – here we get deeper into level selection. You need to see your score and any open challenges for the level you are about to play.
3. High Score screen – no need to show all that information when you just want to play a level. This should be a separate screen.

This is what the Chapter Selection looks like:

When you select a chapter, you go to the Level Selection screen:

The superhero names are placeholders, we use them as identifiers (see this post for more info).

The bottom panel with “Life Saver” is a Challenge. It’s a bit like a quest, and can be anything from “Finish the level in 30 seconds” to “Find the hidden gem” or “Kill 600 boars and report to the chef cook”. You unlock these challenges by finishing the level, and they give you a permanent score boost if you complete them.

Victory Sequence

When you finish a level, it’s rewards time. You need to know how you did. The old interface looked like this:

That was not so bad, but again it was way too crowded. There are too many buttons, too much information. But the worst part is that people instantly pressed the “Next” button, after which the next level would start. Very efficient for speedruns, but it missed a sense of progress.

Players also failed to understand how their score was built up, and every single player we tested it on missed the point of “Challenges”. And because Challenges are essential for replayability, we needed to pimp this victory screen. But how do you feed the player all this information?

The answer is to give little bits of candy, one bite at a time.

First up is the challenge: If you complete it, that’s a big thing! You did great, and you are awesome. You get medals. A score boost. Maybe even a badge! There’s progress, there’s victory. It’s important, so it comes up first.

If you didn’t complete the challenge – no worries, we simply skip this screen.

Then we start the regular score sequence, which has three parts:

• A counter for a specific “building block” of your score, for example how many stars you collected
• Your total score (this counts up as we continue)
• Your stars (also counting up as your total score increases)

The whole thing will be animated, Momo will be on the screen, and it should have a general sense of pleasantness about it. It looks like this:

First we start with the base score giver: the stars. We then continue with the time bonus:

Then there is a bonus for any lives you have left:

And last, but not least, there is a bonus for all the challenges you have completed for that level:

All this adds up to your total score, and you get a maximum of 3 stars for the level. The interface will be animated and players can skip by touching the panels. There is a convenient “Restart” button to try again, and you can check out your high scores while you’re at it.

We removed the “Next” button that skips directly to the next level. We want players to take a step back and see where they are in the scheme of things. So the new “OK” button takes you to the Chapter Selection screen, showing your progress. It will slow you down a bit, and it’s a couple more taps on the screen, but I believe it will be a better experience nonetheless.

In-Game Dialogue

There will be a story in the game, and the characters will be talking to each other. This dialogue needs an interface. Here is the design for that:

Sweet and simple – no fluff, nothing special. We have a cutscene, a character icon, and some text. The only thing I want to note here is that we give the text room to breathe, and we will only show one line of text at a time. This forces us to keep the whole story supercompact and easily digestible.

That wraps it up for this Monday! What do you think? Is it an improvement? Any suggestions to make it better? Let us know in the comments!

Cheers,
Derk

For all you people living under a rock, the Winnitron is an arcade cabinet with new-skool indie games. It is stuffed with brilliant contemporary gaming gems from all over the world.

The past days have been hectic and we barely met the deadline. But we made it, and these pictures tell it all!

Look, here it is all painted and shiny:

Hmm, still missing a control panel though. I’ve seen it around here somewhere… Ah! Niels is playing with it:

Niels, stop that! You’re supposed to be applying T-molding.

That’s better. Keep up the good work!

Wow! Great stuff guys! Still no controls though. Where’s Tijmen? He’s great with that sort of thing. TIJMEN!!!

Great, guys. Get wiring.

Looking good! Meanwhile in the arcade cabinet…

Niels is making nice progress with the hardware, and small wonder…

He brought his father for backup :-). At this point Tijmen and Guido decided to have some sort of tea party:

After that it was assemblytime!

First a nice glass plate to protect the monitor:

And, of course, the controls!

Niels’ mom also tagged along for that finishing touch :-)

Let’s fire it up!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand…

IT’S WORKING! IT’S WORKING!!!

And there you have it. Our Palatron.

You’ll notice we left in the coin drop-system. We thought it would be nice to maintain a retro-look and figured the coin-drop would help achieve that (don’t worry it’s not operative, you won’t have to pay squat to play the Palatron). We also left this sticker on the back for the same reason:

So everyone can see that it used to be a Mortal Kombat cabinet.

So, the Palatron is finished. Well, it almost is. We still plan to add some graphics to make it even prettier. But we’re officially unveiling it this afternoon. Want to come play it? I, personally, accept all challenges to a game of Super Crate Box. And Fabian claims he can defeat anyone in a game of Nidhogg.

Come and have a beer with us and play the Palatron. You can register for the unveiling event here. Or you can just swing by at your leisure :-)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Fabian has challenged me to a game of Nidhogg.

Cheers!

Peter

But we won’t leave you hanging on Momonga Monday, so here are some fresh work-in-progress screenshots of the game:

Above: Momo crosses the river

Above: First encounter of an owl bandit. Oh noes!

Above: Fry is helping you with bashing these two owls

Above: Bam! Way to go :)

Above: General Kuton lets out a war cry

Above: Attacking Kuton

Next week we’ll be back with more goodies. And now we’re off to honor our Queen! ;-)

- Peter & Derk

We have recently redesigned the entire interface for our upcoming game, because we realized the user experience simply did not work as we intended. There was too much information on screen at one time, and without a clear focus, people did not understand what they were looking at. People looked at the screen for about 1 second, then clicked on the “Next” button and started the next level. In other words: The interface simply did not do its job.

Above: The crowded victory screen that is currently getting a full make-over.

For all you game interface designers out there, here is an 8-step guide to interface design – specifically tailored to iPhone, iPad, and Android games.

Ready? Let’s go! :)

1. Determine the platforms

The first step is to find out which platforms your interface will support. With Momonga, we are supporting iOS and Android at launch. This seems simple enough, but in fact we need to support for the following screens:

iOS device resolutions:

• iPhone 3GS and equivalent (480 x 320 pixels)
• iPhone 4(S) and equivalent (960 x 640 pixels at 326 ppi)
• iPad 1 & 2 (1024 x 768 pixels)
• iPad 3 retina (2048 x 1536 pixels at 264 ppi)

Android device resolutions:

• Samsung, HTC, Acer, Asus – resolutions are all over the place!

The displays for iOS are fairly straightforward. There are two aspect ratios, and retina simply doubles the pixels. If you are only developing for iOS only, you could consider making 2 different interfaces: One for iPhone / iPod Touch, and one for iPad. Design it at retina resolution and scale it down to fit the older models.

For Android, however, there are so many different devices out there that it is impractical to create a custom interface layout for each one. We therefore chose two basic resolutions (one for phones, one for tablets). We worked with the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the Droid, but any popular device will do.

We then make sure that the design matches those resolutions perfectly. The interface should scale and adapt to other resolutions. It will not be perfect on those devices, but it will work without too much extra effort.

Step 1: Determine which platforms you will support and make a list of all the resolutions the interface should cater to.

2. Determine the orientations

This is an obvious but easily overlooked step. Will you support portrait or landscape orientation? Or both? This is a critical question before you do any design work at all.

Choosing one orientation cuts your work in half. For Momonga we use landscape only, because the game simply plays better in landscape mode. Don’t be lazy though – there are many different mobile gamers out there, and they each have their own preferences. Play around a bit to see what works and what does not. Then stick to that decision.

Step 2: Decide the orientations you will support.

3. Search for references

There are so many great games out there, that it would be silly not to look for references. Buy some games, make screenshots of the interface and take a bit of time to think about the decisions these designers made. Will they apply to your game?

These are some of the iPhone games I have looked at for the Momonga interaction design:

Above: Interfaces for Angry Birds, Heroes of Kalevala, Squids, and Tiny Wings. 

The trick here is to look beyond the visual splendor and identify the purpose of the screen. Bluntly copying a design won’t make you smarter, and it might not fit your specific goal. Ask yourself these questions:

• What information do I need to convey to the user?
• What kind of functionality does the user need?
• What needs to stand out from the rest?
• What is the context for this window?

Step 3: Use references for inspiration and benchmarks. Don’t copy, but learn from them. No need to invent the wheel.

4. Make the Screen Flow

Before you start on the individual screens, make a list of all the windows your game will have. This is your to-do list for the upcoming weeks. ;)

When you have that ready, it is time to make a flowchart of all those screens. I call it the “screen flow”. It is a handy flowchart that states how do all those screens relate to each other. When you complete a level, which screen comes first? Should you be able to go to the high score list from the main menu? These are tough questions, and you will probably have to make changes to the screen flow as you progress through the design process.

Here is the screen flow for Momonga:

Above: Example interface flowchart. (Click for larger version)

It has a main menu, a victory sequence, a game over screen, level selection screen, all the things the game needs to work well. The screen flow tells you which buttons need to be on every screen. Players need to be able to progress to the next window and in most cases, move back to the previous one.

Step 4: Make a list of all screens you need to design. Then create a flowchart with those screens. This will allow you to see how they all connect together.

5. Choose the functionality

The next step is to choose the functionality of the screens. This is where you actually start the interaction design for your game. An interface does two things: It provides information and it allows the user to do something.

It is your job to decide what information should be on the screen and what actions the user can take. I make small and simple sketches of what buttons the interface should have, and what info should be displayed. These sketches are small and rough – they don’t take into account size and positioning. The question here is: To Be Or Not To Be. Should the button be here or not? Where you place it, and how big it is, that is for the next step.

Here are some examples of this:

Depending on my mood and the stage I’m in, I sometimes sketch with a marker, sometimes on super small stickies, sometimes in Photoshop.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Less is more. Keep information and buttons to a minimum.
• Stick to the one primary purpose for the screen.
• Keep the context of the screen flow in mind.
• Try to remove any doubles you may find, unless it is a necessary one.
• Consider splitting things up on multiple screens, to keep the info bite-sized.

Step 5: Make the functional drafts of the screens. The result is a basic sketch of the interface, outlining what needs to be in there.

6. Make the Wireframes

This is where things get Photoshoppy! The next step is about making the basic layout of the screens, without colour or fluff. This is still about interaction design, but this time we start to think seriously about positioning and size. In step 5 you were probably making a doodle on a napkin, but a wireframe is more than that. It is a guideline for the designer, and you want to do the thinking for him.

Here are my tips for wireframing your game interface:

• Use a template that supports all your device resolutions.
• Before you start, sit down with your programmers to discuss the implementation.
• Along the way, sit down with your programmers regularly to verify that your design is feasible.
• In Photoshop, make a group for every screen of your game. Fill them with your wireframes as you go along.
• When making a destructive change, copy the entire group and start with a new one. You can always go back that way.
• One grid to rule them all: Create your guides and stick to them, no matter the platform or screen you are working on.
• Work in greyscale. Emphasize buttons with colors if you need to.
• No rounded corners yet: you will do a lot of re-sizing and plain rectangles are much easier to work with.
• With Dropbox you can easily test the designs on your target devices. Save it as jpeg in Dropbox, and open the design right on your iPhone.
• I like to save the designs as jpeg often. In the end I have all chronological steps in numbered files.

Step 6: Make the wireframes. No fluff, but don’t leave any gaps either. Test on your target devices. Make sure the programmers and designers can take it from here.

7. Create the design

This is where the Photoshop Guru takes over. That could be you, in my case it’s Jimmy. If you did your design work well, the making of the actual shiny interface should be a breeze in the park.

Of course, that is not how it works in real life. No matter how well you thought everything through, when it is time to really make the thing there will always be gaps to fill. Stay in close touch with your Photoshop Guru and be prepared to answer some tough questions. Make sure that you allow for creative freedom, and stick to your guns when necessary.

I won’t go into the little details of photoshopping an interface, but I have one tip for designing for mobile games: Work with vectors. We have made the mistake to work in pixels on our previous interface, and when the iPad 3 came out with its fancy retina display, we had to do the whole thing over again.

Here is the new interface for Momonga. Work in progress, mind you! :)

Step 7: Design the interface. About time.

8. Test and iterate

This is the part where you get to do the whole thing over again.

All jokes aside, in this step the programmers take over the show and implement the designs in the game. Of course this will be a breeze and there will be champagne and happy faces. In your dreams. Be prepared to do things over again. Design is a wicked problem: You only know if it works when you have built the darn thing and see it in action. So test your interface, and get back to the drawing board when necessary.

We are currently in the process of a complete redesign of the interface. This hurts: We spent a lot of time designing the old layouts and the visuals were carefully crafted. We spent weeks on it. But it didn’t work. So we have to do it again. This time in vectors for retina, and this time with a better interaction design.

Could I have known that the old design would suck? Maybe. Looking back, it is quite obvious. But then again, we had to see it in the hands of testers to actually know it for sure. And that is simply the way it is.

Step 8: Implement the interface and test it. Go back to the drawing board if necessary. Iterate, iterate, iterate. Small changes can make a big difference.

So here you are: The 8-step guide to interaction design for iOS and Android games. I hope this makes your life a bit easier and your designs a bit better.

PS: If you want to see the results of the screens, check out this follow-up post on the new retina interfaces for Momonga!

So what do you think? Is this the way you work as well? Have some interfaces to show off? Let us know in the comments! And if you have any questions, as always, ask me anything.

Cheers!
Derk

The Momonga

Momo is a momonga, a Japanese Dwarf Flying Squirrel. These little creatures are nocturnal squirrels living in Japan. They have a gliding membrane which is used to float in the air. When this membrane is not used, it is pulled close to the body – this turns them into little fluffballs. Momongas live in trees on mountain slopes, and are insanely cute. They feed on nuts, seeds, leaves and the like. They nest in tree cavities and are rarely seen on the ground.

Above: The momonga, a.k.a. the cutest animal alive.

A little rascal meets the real world

As a young boy, Momo was a little rascal. He loved to play and perform pranks on the elders of the village. His mother’s favourite words were “Momo! Get back here!”. He is an explorer, but is a little naive. He has no experience with the big bad real world out there, and lived happily in his little village.

This ignorance was smashed to pieces when Momo’s village was attacked by Kuton. Kuton’s owls took all of the momongas: In one night, Momo became the only Momonga living in freedom. Momo was rescued by Panda, and has determined to rescue the others. He wants things to get back to normal, even though he has no clue of what he is getting himself into.

Above: The owl attack, and the origin of Momo’s scar, in an early sketch.

Momo is extremely agile. He can float in the air, roll like a ball, and run like no-one else. This nimbleness saved him during the raid. Momo has a radiant blue mark running from his forehead to his tail. This mark is the result of the wound inflicted by general Kuton during the raid. It turned blue after Panda healed it.

Character Design Process

After we dumped the radish and fluffball variants of Momo, we started looking at flying squirrels. In particular, I remembered a picture from CuteOverload with insanely cute little hamster-like creatures sitting in a tree. I did not know its name, so after browsing through 20+ pages, there it was in all its glory: The momonga. We knew that this would be a great hero for our game.

With the general appearance set, Jimmy started design on the other momongas and village. We added cultural elements to the tribe: painted fur, sticks, flags, tents. Momongas are spiritual, gentle creatures who live in harmony with nature.

Among all the momongas, Momo is the hero, and he needs to be recognizable. We kept him as basic as possible, his only real distinction is the radiant blue line on his back:

Finally this translates to the 3D models, and we needed several iterations for that as well:

Above: Early version of Momo in 3D. This model was based on early sketches with a semi-realistic look and feel.

Above: Wireframes of Momo, first and second iteration with Jimmy’s new style.

That wraps up this Monday. Stay tuned for next week – there will be more goodies coming your way!

Cheers :)

- Derk & Peter

Neptune’s Pride is a strategic intergalactic warfare-game you play in your browser. All players are placed in a universe with dozens of stars to conquer. Only one player can win, and there are no fixed alliances. Each gets assigned a few stars and a number of ships and the battle begins. Build carriers to transport your ships and claim stars. You can then develop these stars on three different levels: Economy (earn more money), Industry (build more ships) and Science (develop technology, i.e. build stronger weapons, faster ships etc.). Players receive money every 24 hours.

As each player expands his kingdom and develops his stars he will soon reach the borders of other kingdoms. Your enemies’ kingdoms. At first this will happen accidentally because a fleet travelling from one star to the other takes HOURS (which causes a game to take weeks). And once the jump into hyperspace has been made, there’s no turning back. The journey must be completed to refuel on the destination. So there will be a bit of quarrel first over which star belongs to whom and what the borders exactly are. Once this has been established, strategy starts kicking in. Alliances are forged and epic staredowns commence.

In our server, there were 6 people new to the game (myself among them) and 2 seasoned players (Fabian and Tedo). Guido was so unlucky as to have been placed in the bottom left corner of the universe, under Fabian (who was placed left) and besides Tedo (who was placed at the bottom). He was soon consumed by the two experienced players. The second victim was Tijmen, he feigned to be my ally and attacked me immediately. I struck back with help from Fabian and Derk. He was destroyed.

Then nothing happened for a while. New borders were determined and old staredowns resumed. Meanwhile Fabian was growing stronger because he had consumend most of Guido’s stars and some of Tijmen’s. Derk (top left) and I (center of the universe) did not like the look of that and decided to join forces and attack Fabian. Thus ending my agreement with Fabian not to attack each other. Meanwhile, on the right side of the universe, Tim and Jens were fighting their own battle. Not bothering nor being bothered by anyone. Derk and I fought Fabian and captured some of his stars. At this point, I was the winning player.

This is what the server looked like then. Ignore the color of the stars, look at the circles I expertly drew with paint.These represent our kingdoms at that time.

Tedo = Yellow, Fabian = Blue, Derk = Dark red, I am the brighter red, Tim = purple and Jens = Green.

Then it happened. A conspiracy the likes of which the world has never seen. While I was in full attack on the left side of my kingdom, I noticed some sturring on the right side. Tim’s ships were popping up on our border. Then I saw that he WILLINGLY surrendered some stars to Jens to clear a path to MY stars. My ships were on the other side of my kingdom and it would take days for them to cross. Also, that would leave my left side exposed to Fabian. So, I did the only thing I could do. I sent Tedo money and better weapons (you can send each other technology) and asked him for help. Help to fight of the conspiring aggressors who, I might add, received a lot of advanced technology from Fabian. Tedo replied: “on my way”. I felt a bit safer.

Little did I know, Tedo wasn’t on his way to my attackers. He was JOINING them. He was attacking me as well, with the weapons I sent him! He was in on it. They all were. Fabian, Tedo, Tim and Jens. Only Derk chose not to take part in this conpiracy, which he later regretted because he too wanted a share of my stars as they were being divided. I was torn to pieces, sent what money I had left to Derk for being the only one not attacking me and quit.

I suppose I should have seen it coming. I was in the center of the universe and the only way anybody could get anywhere was THROUGH me. But such betrayal and backstabbery I never expected, nor suspected. But I shall have my revenge. Luck will have it that most of my attackers are avid fans of the Game of Thrones-series. And it just so happens to be that I read the books and therefor know what is going to happen. And I just might tell them… Maybe I’ll spoil it all. They deserved it, right?

Cheers!

- A bittered Peter

P.S. Tedo won the game after making a pact with Fabian. In the end, Fabian and Derk battled it out for second place, with Tedo focusing on the remains of Jens’ empire. Most of my attackers now regret ever attacking me. “We should have attacked Tedo” they say. It’s a little too late for that guys. By the way, do you know who is going to die in Game of Thrones?… >:-)

This old owl general is one of the most cunning owls in the kingdom. He is an exceptional strategist, immensely strong, and hardened from innumerable successful battles during the Great War.

From hero to villain

Kuton has always served the Owl lineage with pride and was a legend in the making. His enemies, the Raven Empire, noticed this too. In the midst of night a small band of elite Raven assasins assaulted Kuton’s home. They injured his wife and took his first-born son.

The general begged the king to organize a rescue party, but the king refused to put more lives at stake. Kuton was torn by this loss, and decided to go alone and rescue his son from the Raven prisons. He left one night, and was never again seen in the Owl Kingdom.

Kuton lead the raid on Momo’s village. He is the one who injured Momo and left him for dead. Kuton left a huge scar on Momo’s back, which turned into a blue, glowing stripe after Panda healed him.

After leaving Momo to die, Kuton proceeded to take the rest of the Momongas and complete his mission. He will be waiting for Momo at the village, determined to capture the last free Momonga.

Character design

Owls are awesome (Must. Not. Say. Owlsome).

The character design of General Kuton was based on 2 owls in particular: The southern white-faced owl, better known as the “transformer owl”, and the Great Grey Owl.

Kuton is an owl with stature and self-respect, and he is not evil by heart or upbringing. The owls in the world of Momonga are honourable and organized creatures. This is why we took a deeper look at the Great Owl – he has a look of wisdom, and his white facial feathers are like the frowned brows of an old man. This suits a veteran general like Kuton perfectly.

We then translated this into the game’s art style:

In Momonga, purple is the color of enemies and things to avoid (like the ball drain and owls). Here we experimented with the coloring:

In the end this was too kind and childlike. We went for a more agressive and twisted Kuton. Note the body armor, helmet and katana. These samurai attributes give Kuton another layer of honour. He is like a fallen warrior, twisted and fighting for his sanity.

And this is the in-game model:

An impression of what Kuton will look like in his environment when facing Momo. This is the face-off in the village, where you have to defeat the general.

Kuton is the last end boss in the game, and he is incredibly tough to beat. We will post some in-game screenshots of him in one of the upcoming Momonga Mondays.

Next week we will look at Momo! Stay tuned :)

Cheers,
Peter & Derk

In the world of Momonga Pinball Adventures, Pandas are special animals in many ways. They are solitary nomads, wise wanderers who only meet their kind to share stories by the bonfire. They live secluded lives, and most animals never get the chance to meet one in person. They can grow very old, and are said to know the location of the Ancient Lore – which contains all of history. Panda has lived for ages as a nomad, only recently settling near the Momonga village.

During the raid on Momo’s village, Panda rushed to help any survivors. He found Momo, unconscious, and took him to his sanctuary. There he healed him. At the start of the game you help Momo get through Panda’s training.

Panda carries a big stick and a messenger bag – this is all he needs to survive. Gossip has it that the bag also contains some strange herbs with a funny smell.

Panda is a friendly old panda who is young at heart, loves dinner, and knows restoration skills like no other. He may be a bit clumsy, but he always has the best intentions.

These sketches are some early drafts of Panda:

From there he started taking the form of a friendly, old and wise panda:

We were looking for the right “vibe” to go with him. He needed to be wise and child-like at the same time, and that is a tricky combination. On the left you can see the design that we went with – no attributes except his stick, bag, glasses and shorts. Later we put more emphasis on his glasses and added more colour to his attributes (see below).

And this is the in-game model for the wise master:

Hope you like it! See you next Monday :-)

- Peter & Derk

Fry is a firefly from a lineage of martial art masters. His father is the head of the Ha Chi Order, and one of the finest firefly warriors. Fry, however, failed to live up to the expectations of his parents: He was defeated by a bunny who he was supposed to chase away as an initiation rite. He left his hometown because of shame.

(Note that the bunny was the legendary aikido warrior Boo, who remains undefeated to this day. Her most famous move is the Graze, in which she seemingly knibbles on grass while overthrowing her enemy without even a breeze of effort.)

After leaving his town, Fry got caught by the owl bandits. They used him as a lightbulb for the owl camp. Bummer.

In the game you save Fry from a lightbulby life, and he becomes your trustworthy sidekick. Fry is heavily conditioned in the firefly school of martial arts, and he goes into a frenzy whenever he hears a ringing bell. This comes in handy when you have to defeat a whole bunch of owls.

Then it became a little more refined. We had the idea to go for a lazy little firefly.

These sketches show some of the coloring schemes we tried out. Real fireflies are red, we played a bit with some tints.

The “final” concept art shows a slightly younger and much more energetic firefly. We dropped the lazy Fry because we felt that it wouldn’t be any fun dragging around a lazy insect. Not much story in that.

And here is the fully rigged in-game model for Fry:

See you next Monday! (And that will probably be a Tuesday again, because of Easter)

- Peter & Derk