Beartopia was a cooperative village-building idle game with pro-immigration themes for Google Daydream (Google’s short-lived mobile-based VR headset), made by Spry Fox. Chickadee was tasked with helping to design the art style, defining the art pipelines, and producing all the in-game artwork. It was an interesting technical challenge in that it not only did we have to wrestle with all the normal issues associated with VR, we had to wrestle with the common technical challenges found with mobile game development. In the end, we attempted to take the highly charming, rounded-boxy style of Alphabear and make it more polygonal. Though virtually no one played this game - the platform was effectively DOA - this remains one of the most interesting games Chickadee has ever been involved in.
Once it was clear that the Daydream wasn’t going to be supported anymore, there was some discussion about if we could redo the art and release on a platform that wasn’t bound by Daydreams strict hardware requirements, but in the end it was determined that it wasn’t feasible.
