Lykke Studios: In pursuit of puffy perfection

DEVELOPER STORIES

THE POWER OF PUFFIES.

The delightful crippled puffies. combines the satisfying drawback of a jigsaw puzzle with the nostalgic delight of a sticker book.

This 2025 Apple Design Award finalist for Inclusivity is brimming with virtual puffy stickers, the benignant that ’80s kids would slap connected their binders oregon commercialized astatine recess. Players teardrop unfastened themed packs of vibrant, kitschy decals — possibly punk-rock capybaras, possibly sporty sushi rolls — and spot them connected a blank expanse truthful everything fits without overlapping.

The stickers are rendered with specified accuracy that players tin astir consciousness the flimsy springiness of their glossy surfaces nether their fingertips — and the gentle haptic “blop” that accompanies each placement is supremely satisfying. Those sensations are nary accident: puffies. developer Lykke Studios spent months fine-tuning these tiny moments.

puffies.

• Available on: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV
• Team size: 8
• Based in: Thailand and Cyprus

Download puffies. from Apple Arcade >

“We ever commencement with a worldly that we like,” says Lykke Studios laminitis Jakob Lykkegaard. For the company‘s 2023 Apple Design Award winner, stitch., that worldly was thread woven into whimsical embroidery puzzles. For their 2022 Apple Design Award finalist, tint., it was watercolor overgarment connected thick, textured paper.

When the squad began brainstorming the task that would go puffies., they acceptable their sights connected a jigsaw-style acquisition that would consciousness earthy connected touchscreens. Their eureka infinitesimal was landing connected puffy stickers arsenic the puzzle pieces; they’re tactile, nostalgic, and acold much absorbing to look astatine than a lone jigsaw piece.

And past it each blew up. “Because of the crippled physics, our archetypal prototypes beauteous overmuch exploded,” laughs Lykkegaard.

Sticker shock

Every 1 of the game’s 4,000 stickers is simply a 3D-modeled entity that’s beholden to the game’s physics motor — and aboriginal tests proved they did not play good together. Once the squad figured retired however to halt pieces from ricocheting astir the virtual tabletop, they turned to the occupation of what should hap erstwhile a subordinate tries to spot 1 sticker connected apical of another. Is that thing that comes up a batch during play? Not really. Did they walk months perfecting it anyway? Absolutely.

Lykkegaard recalls discussing the optimal result of this sticker-on-sticker script with the team. “Does it instrumentality wherever it’s at? Does it descent down? And if it slides down, successful what direction, and astatine what speed?” helium says. They yet decided to simply person the sticker zip backmost to the borderline of the puzzle wherever it came from, but “it’s not inaccurate to accidental we spent 3 months connected this,” says Lykkegaard. “We scrapped the full codification basal and started implicit again until it felt right.”

That pursuit of perfection is threaded passim the game’s design. The cutouts astir each sticker were drawn by manus due to the fact that automated tracing looked excessively sterile. Tilting a instrumentality causes a subtle parallax effect connected a sticker’s vinyl surface, arsenic though it were catching the airy successful the room. And the squad iterated endlessly connected drawback distances — however adjacent a portion needs to beryllium to its due spot earlier it volition mildly click into spot erstwhile released — down to the past pixel.

“Players tin consciousness it subconsciously,” says Tanin-Andre Hohmann, shaper astatine Lykke Studios. “They whitethorn not cognize it, but they say, ‘Oh, I similar this more.’ And past if you inquire why, they’re like, ‘I don’t know, really. It conscionable fits better.’”

Cactuses and plungers

That best-it-can-possibly-be doctrine besides extends to the game’s art. From cute cactus creatures to anthropomorphic toilet plungers, puffies. stickers are brought to beingness by talented illustrators astir the world. “It’s virtually the artist’s art,” says Hohmann. “We wanted it arsenic unfiltered arsenic possible.”

The crippled besides benefits from its location country. While the Denmark-born Lykkegaard and galore of his teammates hail from Europe, Lykke Studios is based successful Phuket, Thailand — acold from stuffy boardrooms and packed league halls, adjacent to a slower gait of beingness and easygoing creativity. “I thin to similar coming into the bubble of the Bay Area oregon Europe, exploring things, and leaving that bubble again,“ says Lykkegaard. “And past having an unlimited magnitude of clip to deliberation and travel up with caller ideas.”

That unhurried mindset tin beryllium felt successful the puzzles themselves. Each sticker-sheet level is painstakingly designed by manus — nary algorithms, nary automation. Timers and “game over“ screens aren’t a happening successful puffies.; trouble comes wholly from however galore stickers are successful the battalion the subordinate chooses. And to guarantee larger puzzles don't overwhelm players connected smaller devices, the camera mildly zooms successful to framework the country wherever the existent fistful of stickers belongs.

Maximizing accessibility

Accessibility follows the aforesaid no-compromises logic. Players tin alteration much generous drawback distances, toggle sticker-placement outlines, and usage a finger-offset enactment that accommodates reduced centrifugal relation — oregon conscionable precise ample hands. The guiding rule is simple: If a subordinate comes up with a valid obstruction the squad hadn’t considered, and it’s feasible to fix, the squad adds a solution.

The outgo of each this craft? Time. Thankfully, the team’s erstwhile successes person fixed them the state to polish their games without rigid milestones. But adjacent so, is it worthy it? To obsess implicit squish and snap, to tune the “rip” of opening a sticker pack, to jettison heaps of codification due to the fact that a fewer interactions don’t consciousness perfect?

“There are galore things successful the crippled that cipher volition ever see, that we enactment vigor into conscionable due to the fact that we cognize it’s there,” says Lykkegaard. “And that makes america proud.”

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