Hello candy hunters!

This is the first post diving into the GAME DESIGN behind Leaflup's Candy Hunt. Silliness isn't usually considered a main piece of creating a game but I wanted it to be front and center in LCH! Let's talk about how, and why!

Why?

The story in the game can actually be quite dark at times. It touches on subjects like humanity, finding yourself, and accepting harsh truths. It revolves around video game characters becoming partially sentient and needing to adjust to all of a sudden having their own thoughts and feelings. I have always loved when childrens cartoons touch on darker subjects while still keeping the show very silly and I feel this approach works perfectly for a game like this. Especially when you look at my other projects which are all very upbeat and silly. 

What Silliness Allows

A main project of mine like Gelli Fields revolves around the Continaa universe, a world I've been building for nearly 10 years. The lore is very rigid and things can be silly, yes but everything in a game or piece of content needs to align with the lore. In Leaflup's Candy Hunt the game is a game in the literal sense. Each character is aware they are in a game and they don't align to the lore of the game they are from. A character might be rude and evil while visually looking like the most adorable gelli. The silliness factor allows me to break any expectation the player has and also break free from any "rules" the game has set up about the world itself.

How this idea transformed the game into something new

At first the game was going to be lightly silly but mostly serious but then I came up with the idea of a sign company that is super rich and uses their massive amounts of money to place random not even needed signs all over the world. This was when my approach to the game changed entirely and I opened the door to the possibility of ANYTHING happening.

What you can expect

Talking trees, pointless rooms, quests that the character could've easily done themselves,  strange glitched out slime creatures that only say BEEMPLE, and much much more!

Happy hunting,

-Fairlii