Hi everyone,

In this note, I want to talk less about feelings, and more about making Apopia. The look. The tools. The decisions and execution behind what you see on screen.

From the beginning, I knew one thing:

I wanted Apopia to feel like the kind of world you remember from childhood… but I know we may not grow up at the same era. So when deciding the style, I don’t want it to just represent a particular era – not just 80s, or 90s, or 2000s. I grew up through all kinds of eras and styles, and I love them all. So instead of taking a single reference, I blended the cartoons of all these eras together with my own illustration style: Round shapes, simple expressions, bold colors, plus small details that feel a bit nostalgic no matter when you grew up.

The idea was:

If you’re a kid now – it should feel fun and inviting.

If you’re an adult – it should remind you of something warm and familiar, even if you can’t name exactly what.

On top of that, we made some choices that were… not very “efficient,” but very us:

Every character is unique.

We don’t reuse any NPCS. Every single one of them are unique.

Every bunny, non-rabbits, guard, villager – even background characters – is drawn one by one, with their own shape, outfit, and personality.

It’s a lot of work, but it makes the world feel like a real place, not a template. We went big on animation in key scenes.

Apopia is not an “action game,” but in some very action oriented moments, we wanted the feeling to EXPLODE on screen.

So instead of simple fades or static poses, we used high energy, frame by frame animation – closer to anime or old hand drawn shows, than the simple animations that you usually see in indie games similar to our scale.

It took time, but we wanted those moments to feel special.

We built it as a true adventure.

We’re using Unity with a tool called Adventure Creator, which helped us create the system, dialogues, choices, and interactions more efficiently. That gave us more time to focus on what matters most to us:

the art, the expressions, the timing of scenes, and the tiny details that make each area feel alive.

Sometimes that meant redrawing the same background again and again.

Sometimes it meant fine tunning colors, or redrawing lines, or reanimating the motions, just to match the emotion of a scene better.

We tried many different executions along the way.

Some ideas looked good, but didn’t feel right.

We scrapped them and tried again.

Now, looking at the game as it is, I feel excited to finally show you this world we’ve been shaping for so long – a place that looks light and playful on the surface, but is built with a lot of care underneath.

In the next diary, I’ll talk about something more “under the sugarcoat”: how we used that mind reading mechanic and Dark Worlds to turn this cute adventure into something more personal and surprising.

Thank you for reading, and for letting us share how Apopia is made.

Yours,

Onon

Director, Apopia