The Nibblins: Story Time
HI folks! We're SO EXCITED to finally start posting some of our development content. Nibblity continues to be a super adorable and exciting project to develop and we want to share more of the process with you all. So let's jump in.
Today's Topic: The Nibblins an Origin Story!
It wasn’t all just snack and cuddles from the start. Nibblity today is home to 40 individual hungry awesome characters. However during the late months of 2018 we were heads down trying to craft what these characters were going to actually be, and we went through a TON of different ideas. Our target for the characters were that they needed to be: adorable, relatable to lots of people, and something we could continue to build on. We are in love with urban vinyl toys and we wanted the texture and material of the characters to tap into that sense of being real and soft--since they were going to share your physical world, we wanted you to feel like could reach out and grab them. We also were trying to define and tackle a concept we called "grit" which led us down some really fun and interesting directions, designing everything from Bone Ghosts and Chibi-Yetis to Forest Creatures.
So let's flash back to late 2018 when the characters were called "Chibis" and we could high-five and eat in restaurants together! 🙌
Jellied Slugs!
Smaller, wetter and groovy too. The Jelly slugs were a crew of adorable little goo piles that had more bite than you might've guessed. Designing them was a good exercise in getting various flavors of cute out of characters who were all basically just blobs. Their designs started to get close to that "so darn cute you want to put them in your pocket" vibe we were looking for.
Bone Ghosts
Our brainstorming process became a weeks-long deep dive into different kinds of cute: sweet-cute, sad-cute, goofy-cute… and of course, creepy-cute! That last one is best seen in the bone ghosts - specters who manifested around old bones in order to stay physically anchored in our world. They weren't all doom and gloom, though - these goofy ghosts were full of life and would've made great friends for anyone able to get past their… *ahem*, startling corporeal form. Sometimes we still get flashbacks of those teeth…
Wild Wanderers
The magic of nature and folktale coziness wove together in this round of character designs. Taking on a more natural theme let us try capturing our pocket-sized cuteness with earthy color palettes, all wrapped in warm wool, coarse fur, and fluffy moss. The result was a tiny tale of travelers and beasts wandering craggy mountain paths, delving into sunlit grottos, and trekking across dusty plains… we didn't keep imagining their adventures but who's to say they're not still off foraging for sticks and berries somewhere.
Stellar Squids & Space Cadets
Throughout our brainstorming we used core questions like "Where do the little critters come from?" to drive design ideas. Inevitably, an answer we had for that question was, "SPACE". That resulted in adorable astronauts fixing toy-sized spaceships and mysterious creatures fit to float around a deep sea of stars and planets. While we didn't end up diving deeper into a sci-fi world, we had fun thinking of the special technologies that allowed them to thrive on earth in cosmically cute ways.
The Space Whale
Out of our cosmic origin story ideation came one of our most glorious designs, the space whale! This massive mystical beast hailing from the unknowable void is/was/might be the source of the entire Nibblin race. Roaming the space-skies teaming with life, but always on the move. A galactic spaceship of chill vibes and swimming cuteness.
…but FOOD!
But then inspiration struck as we started to look towards our tummies and the grumbly noises they kept making. Soon we were off to the races coming up with crazy combos of cuteness (the three “C’s”). Baby Donut Caterpillar became Donut Ferret and Jawbreaker Bear is now our beloved Jawbreaker Ram! We have so many amazing characters in the game today, but we’ve brainstormed so many MORE! Can’t wait for to see them, stay hungry out there 🤘
