It’s exhausting to face out at BitSummit, Kyoto’s yearly indie video games pageant, particularly on the third flooring the place the Nintendo Indie World and Sony cubicles dominate a lot of the true property. However regardless of taking on a tiny slice of area 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 seem like they had been pulled straight out of EarthBound or Pokémon Pink & Blue. It’s clear to see the place developer Nano Park Studios drew inspiration from. As such, the gameplay seems prefer it may lean into creature-collecting or turn-based fight as you go about cataloguing little critters known as HanaPets; nevertheless, this isn’t the case.
The core gameplay is to scrub up and ship HanaPets to houses and companies somewhat than battle with them, as lead author Lauren Crown defined as I sat all the way 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 folks’s houses.
“This can be a world the place there aren’t any pure animals,” Crown stated. “The entire 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 other than Kira, the little white fox pal of the principle character Cali. The primary technology mirrors real-life Tamagochi, as seen whenever you inspect Kira’s standing within the menu. Alternatively, Gen 2 HanaPets reside in Leap Cells that are a bit extra biologically primarily based, 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 just a little mouse known as Checkers that was in search of ‘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 totally different variations whereas Root Zero is a little more ‘legendary,’ if you’ll, and due to this fact distinctive.
Once more, I battled in opposition to 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 in regards to 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 pal Dahlia stealing an android sensor to assist out her robotic pal. If you handle to nab stated half, a ‘corrupted’ HanaPet makes an look, which triggers a number of minigames to clear with the intention to cleanse it.
These minigames take a web page out of Undertale’s graphically easy battle screens and encompass 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 just a little canine by transferring the left joystick up and down as quick as potential, 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 — taking part in ping pong as just a little mouse, strafing to the left and proper.
Crown confirmed that there are seven complete 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 will earlier than launch. So I don’t know precisely what number of, however we’re doing our greatest.”
After I cleared the entire 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 cellphone name about late deliveries, so it was again to work with Kira the HanaPet in tow.
Hopping on just a little bike, I drove round a beautiful city known as North Valley in search of a close-by mall with the HanaPet store inside, speaking to and registering just a few totally different HanaPets alongside the way in which. Right here, the place the principle story progresses, so too does a sidequest that Crown identified. A boy named Percy stormed off to chase down an odd 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 attempting 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 staff 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 beautiful little city, residents exclaimed they noticed the ugliest little creature operating about. We adopted it to just a little 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 a substitute, Percy determined to check it additional, ending the search and highlighting a story thread operating all through the demo and presumably the complete recreation: What was taking place to the HanaPets? First, the Gen 1 HanaPets are almost extinct. Root Zero was coated 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’ve along with your childhood pet that grew up with you and the way essential that’s.”
Percy and The Boy’s questline additionally seems like it is going to discover these relationships between folks and their pets, as Percy first perceives The Boy as a tutorial 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 may 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 stuffed 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 lovable 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 will discuss, clearly) requested after ‘snax’ and protested when Kira received their title incorrect. 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 totally different color palettes. I can’t wait to see them.
However I’ll have to attend some time – no 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 purpose.
Regardless, Petal Runner’s beautiful artwork path and endearing characters stole the present this yr 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 yr 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.
