It’s onerous to face out at BitSummit, Kyoto’s yearly indie video games competition, particularly on the third flooring the place the Nintendo Indie World and Sony cubicles dominate a lot of the actual property. However regardless of taking over a tiny slice of house and operating on a single monitor with little adornment, Petal Runner stood out greater than most with its vibrant pastel pixel graphics.
At a look, the quaint little cities and character sprites appear like they had been pulled straight out of EarthBound or Pokémon Purple & Blue. It’s clear to see the place developer Nano Park Studios drew inspiration from. As such, the gameplay appears prefer it would possibly lean into creature-collecting or turn-based fight as you go about cataloguing little critters known as HanaPets; nonetheless, this isn’t the case.
The core gameplay is to scrub up and ship HanaPets to houses and companies slightly than battle with them, as lead author Lauren Crown defined as I sat right down to play by way of the demo. They’re for companionship the identical means pets are in actual life, and it’s your job to put in them into individuals’s houses.
“It is a world the place there aren’t any pure animals,” Crown stated. “All the animals you see are these digital pets.”
From what I noticed within the demo, there are two sorts of HanaPets: Gen 1, that are all however extinct apart from Kira, the little white fox pal of the primary character Cali. The primary technology mirrors real-life Tamagochi, as seen whenever you check out Kira’s standing within the menu. Then again, Gen 2 HanaPets reside in Leap Cells that are a bit extra biologically based mostly, as these comprise flowers that present the HanaPet with energy.
There’s loads of HanaPets to search out. Within the demo’s opening moments, I got here throughout slightly mouse known as Checkers that was searching for ‘snax’ and a snake-like dragon creature known as Root Zero that helped me escape from a lab after I cleaned up its Leap Cell. Extra frequent HanaPets like Checkers have a number of completely different variations whereas Root Zero is a little more ‘legendary,’ if you’ll, and due to this fact distinctive.
Once more, I battled towards none of those critters. Nano Park Studios leans into this, together with humorous however meaningless little stats like their ranges of cuteness and fluff in every HanaPet’s description and — Crown assured me — included just a few tongue-in-cheek jokes concerning the absurdity of battling pets all through the journey.
You continue to do gather them and add them to an encyclopedia, and this isn’t a recreation with out strife. The opening moments see you and your pink-haired buddy Dahlia stealing an android sensor to assist out her robotic buddy. Whenever you handle to nab stated half, a ‘corrupted’ HanaPet makes an look, which triggers a number of minigames to clear so as to cleanse it.
These minigames take a web page out of Undertale’s graphically easy battle screens and include fast, five-or-so-second challenges that wouldn’t be misplaced in a WarioWare title, although they’re a lot much less weird.
Right here, you’re cleansing slightly canine by transferring the left joystick up and down as quick as doable, mashing ‘A’ for a chubby cat to eat its bowl of meals, and — my least favorite, as a result of I messed it up so many instances — enjoying ping pong as slightly mouse, strafing to the left and proper.
Crown confirmed that there are seven whole minigames within the demo, however couldn’t inform me what number of there have been within the full recreation. “As for the entire record, we’re engaged on making it so long as we are able to earlier than launch. So I don’t know precisely what number of, however we’re doing our greatest.”
Once I cleared all the corrupted HanaPet’s minigames with out failing too many instances, it was then cleansed, revealing the aforementioned Root Zero critter that then helped us escape from the lab with the android sensor in hand. From there, I separated from Dahlia and acquired a nasty telephone name about late deliveries, so it was again to work with Kira the HanaPet in tow.
Hopping on slightly bike, I drove round a beautiful city known as North Valley searching for a close-by mall with the HanaPet store inside, speaking to and registering just a few completely different HanaPets alongside the way in which. Right here, the place the primary story progresses, so too does a sidequest that Crown identified. A boy named Percy stormed off to chase down a wierd HanaPet, and Kira and I made a decision to assist him out.
“I’m notably keen on this sidequest as a result of the pet you’re chasing began as a bizarre joke after we had been making an attempt to regulate the sprite of one other HanaPet and it went all wonky,” Crown stated. “I used to be shocked when our artist created an actual sprite for it.”
Crown and the workforce then turned this messed-up HanaPet — known as The Boy — right into a sidequest that ties into the narrative’s themes. As Percy, Kira, and I tracked it by way of the attractive little city, residents exclaimed they noticed the ugliest little creature operating about. We adopted it to slightly shady spot within the woods the place it was glitching out and, as you’d anticipate, I accomplished just a few minigames to repair it up.
However this time round The Boy didn’t flip into one thing extra visually pleasing. As an alternative, Percy determined to check it additional, ending the hunt and highlighting a story thread operating all through the demo and presumably the total recreation: What was occurring to the HanaPets? First, the Gen 1 HanaPets are practically extinct. Root Zero was lined in goop and needed to be rescued. And now this wonky, glitched-out creature raised much more questions.
“Petal Runner actually is primarily story-based,” Crown elaborated. “It’s about Cali and Kira and that relationship you could have along with your childhood pet that grew up with you and the way essential that’s.”
Percy and The Boy’s questline additionally appears like it should discover these relationships between individuals and their pets, as Percy first perceives The Boy as an instructional quandary to resolve however — doubtlessly — turns into one thing way more significant and private to him.
As a lifelong canine proprietor myself, I started to fret somebody would possibly begin chopping onions close by as I performed. Whereas I didn’t get a very good sense of the general plot, the demo was packed filled with endearing, lighthearted dialogue that I sensed may flip to melancholic and heartbreaking at any second.
The little white fox Kira typically stole the present together with his portrait subsequent to his dialogue field, because it featured cute and expressive animations. Residents on the town bickered with one another and one snarky boy challenged me to scrub a Leap Cell faster than he may. HanaPets themselves (they’ll discuss, clearly) requested after ‘snax’ and protested when Kira obtained their title improper. As such, I couldn’t assist however discuss to everybody I bumped into as I explored Petal Runner’s gorgeously rendered world.
Crown assures me there are separate areas with completely different color palettes. I can’t wait to see them.
However I’ll have to attend some time – not less than to play it on a Nintendo Change. There’s an identical demo to the one I performed on Steam and a deliberate launch date in 2026, however a launch on a Nintendo console continues to be unconfirmed. However very similar to each different small developer I spoke to at BitSummit, the Change is an eventual objective.
Regardless, Petal Runner’s attractive artwork course and endearing characters stole the present this 12 months regardless of the small quantity of actual property it commanded, and I can’t wait to play extra.
A couple of decade in the past, Lowell moved to Japan for a 12 months or two however continues to be there, elevating a Shiba Inu named Zelda together with his spouse whereas lacking entry to good burritos. He additionally has a love/hate relationship with Japanese role-playing video games.
