Within the crowded and noisy ‘headquarters’ of Summer season Sport Fest Play Days, dozens of builders — large and small — have cubicles set as much as current their upcoming video games to the attendees congregating in Los Angeles over this previous weekend. Petal Runner manages to face out among the many sea of demos, with its vibrant colour palette and nostalgic retro pixel-art visible fashion.
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Cali and their fox-like HanaPet Kira have lately handed their Petal Runner Orientation, starting an journey to work as couriers to ship pets across the globe. Armed with a bicycle and a backpack, the duo set off to share the fantastic companionship that HanaPets can deliver.
As somebody who grew up within the ’90s, Petal Runner actually units off that nostalgia sense. Easy pixel artwork, blocky textual content letters, and buzzy sound results set up a sport that will really feel at residence on a Sport Boy cartridge. With 4 major colours in its heat colour palette and very good pixel animation, Petal Runner visually hits the suitable notes in evoking easier occasions gone.
Based by artist Brandon James “BJGpixel” Greer and programmer Danny Guo, Nano Park Studios desired to create a sport hearkening again to the very best of the Sport Boy period, and the inspirations are apparent at first sight. Anybody who has performed the earliest Pokemon titles will see a resemblance, however that is not the one affect on show. HanaPets are housed in Tamagotchi-like gadgets known as Leashes (full with acceptable pixel artwork) these seem prominently throughout the sport’s person interface. Additionally, all of the HanaPets can seemingly communicate as properly, maybe leaning slightly extra into Digimon-like interactions between human and pet.
Throughout my quick demo at Summer season Sport Fest, I needed to ship a brand new HanaPet to a surfboarding father in an area city. On my approach there, I might speak with townspeople, gather info on HanaPets (saved in a log known as a HanaBase), and full small side-quests. It’s considerably tough to understand how the bigger construction of the sport would possibly take form — Petal Runner is described as having an open world — however the moment-to-moment vibes are particularly cozy.
Not like Pokemon, there are not any battles in Petal Runner. As you ship HanaPets to new homeowners, you will as an alternative interact in varied WarioWare-like minigames to finish the transaction. These are available quite a lot of flavors, reminiscent of transferring the analog stick left-and-right to land a paratrooper onto a touchdown pad, or timing a button press to land a spoon contained in the mouth of a giraffe. These should not difficult mini-games; these are the enjoyable, comforting interactions to finish as you progress your mission to deliver HanaPets to the world.
I feel it is an fascinating twist to take the allure and assortment facets of Pokemon, however take away the coaching & battling parts of it. Petal Runner is a slice-of-life journey, specializing in the relationships of individuals and pets. In keeping with Greer, “companionship with our pets is a particular factor we need to seize in Petal Runner.”
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A lingering concern I’ve regards the bigger narrative in Petal Runner. My time within the demo confirmed some foreboding scenes of a constructing thriller beneath the light-hearted premise. The sport’s retailer description states that Petal Runner is “a healthful slice-of-life story about rising up and letting go.” I solely hope the narrative course the sport takes is not fairly as self-evident because it seems to be at first blush. Additionally, a number of the dialogue appeared extra corny than charming, however it’s tough to totally decide the writing in such a brief demo.
I am nonetheless desirous to see Nano Park Studio’s twist on a nostalgic fashion as Petal Runner is about to launch in 2026 for PC (Steam).