A Giant Problem News

It’s on newsstands now and available online for free from a variety of sources, just head over to the Wireframe website to get all the details.

It may seem odd for us, a VR game development team, to be included both in a magazine that is ostensibly for Raspberry Pi, but also in such illustrious company as Shahid Kamal Ahmad from Ultimatum Games and Shane McCafferty from Rocketship Park. But the article is about distributed development.

The Critical Charm team generally works from the office. That’s not required though. Everyone can and does work from home when they want or need to. It’s made for a pretty relaxed production overall. It helps that we’re constantly refining our production methods and trying to be as communicative as possible.

Communication is everything in production, especially in something as complex as game development. Only solo developers can afford to not talk to anyone or everyone. But then it begs the question - how will they gain an audience? That’s a question for another blog post. For us, communication is key. It’s what makes remote working a possibility.

Of course we’re right on track with the rest of Finland in this regard. Just take a look at the impact the Working Hours Act is going to have on Finland. So we’re not doing anything special. We’re just trying to build a company that recognize the reality of the people who work for it. What helps is Greg having a child and Minna have a dog. In both cases they have hard outs everyday, as they have someone else they have to take care of. So it swiftly helps create a culture and an expectation within Critical Charm about what’s important - family.

Our Chief Happiness Officer won’t allow us to crunch either, but neither will our production methods and planning. While VR game development may be quite resource heavy, we do benefit from our small size, as it means all the programmers can take a VR kit home. It’s small things like that which make life easier. Along with the phenomenal internet Finland has.

If you want to read more about distributed development, then be sure to check out the latest issue of Wireframe! And if you want to stay up-to-date on our production methods be sure to signup for our newsletter on our website. Also, don’t forget to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam!

Someone at Oculus clearly thinks we’re doing something right. And that’s why we’ve been nominated to be highlighted by the Oculus Indie Spotlight at Devcom, before Gamescom. It’s an honor and we’re proud to be included in such remarkable company. The other two companies nominated include Pixel Toys and Neat Corporation. Be sure to go check out there games!

We’re a young company, just over a year old at this point, and A Giant Problem has been our main focus for the past six months. So to be recognized for what we’ve created and what our intentions are, is fantastic. That recognition is something we’re not going to squander.

While we want to be more explicit about our plans for both A Giant Problem and the company, we have to keep quiet for the moment. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more blog posts, more live streams, and more interviews with the team. We intend to do all of that and more. Maybe we’ll even start a discord server.

For now, content yourself with the knowledge that Critical Charm is hard at work bring you the best version of A Giant Problem. So to stay up-to-date on the game be sure to wishlist it on Steam!

You know Chuck Jones from the classic look of Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, and other wonderful animated works. His work is so synonymous with cartoons that you might not even realize you’ve been watching it. It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t seen something of his.

For us it was undoubtedly a part of our childhoods, how could it not be when we saw the name Chuck Jones associated with so much. Sure there have been other incarnations of Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny and friends, and now even two other takes on the Grinch. But there is something about those cartoons that is extremely applicable to game development, especially VR game development.

Maurice Noble is best known for his with Chuck Jones. It’s the flat, cartoonish backgrounds of these works that is one of the inspirations for the skyboxes. He really pioneered this style in American animation. There is a fantastic episode of 99% Invisible if you want to learn more about him and his work. His work can be seen on the left, below.



Thomas Romain, is the other inspiration for the art style of A Giant Problem. Best known for his work Ōban Star-Racers and the one for which many of the shapes of clouds and landscapes are a direct influence. As a parent what he does with his kids is also astounding and something some the team aspire to do in terms of sharing our love of creating. His work can be seen on the right, above.

Backgrounds or the skyboxes in our case may go unremarked upon. But they are integral to allowing the player to imagine more about the world. Even in a passing glance, a skybox can evoke something in the player’s imagination. They offer the opportunity for more, while never specifying what that is. And that ability to allow people to add to the story or universe, to play in the theater of the mind is one of the most powerful things we can do in storytelling.


Those skyboxes of course are supported by, and supplement, the low-poly style we’ve gone for with the environments. It has its benefits when it comes to running on lower power systems. But more importantly it helps make the game immersive. Which is key in a VR title like A Giant Problem. Minna’s chosen style does wonders for that.

Minna, has without a doubt, brought her own sensibilities and flavors to A Giant Problem and its art style. It’s incorporated the best of Noble and Romain, yet is still distinct.



Animation is a large part of VR. And when you’re playing a giant turns out you need the other actors to emote like they’re working in a theater. Meaning subtly goes out the window. Any character needs to have their actions and emotions readable from a distance. Much in the manner that Chuck Jones made his characters supremely expressive through their movements. Where most games aim for a cinematic feel, close-ups a technique common to cinema and TV are not necessarily what will work in a game like A Giant Problem.

Minna has taken this into account. And so as we progress through the development of the game, she’s ensuring that each character has a set of unique animations that convey the intent, emotions and personality of them. Something that’s even more important when you’re putting hordes of enemies onto a map for the player to encounter. If you think this troll is something, just wait she has some truly astounding designs we’ve yet to share.


There’s a great episode of Every Frame A Painting about Chuck Jones’ work. We highly recommend you watch it, as it’ll give you a new appreciation for what he’s done. And if you want to see more of our Art Director Minna’s work then head over to Art Station. And if you want to stay up-to-date on our work be sure to sign up for our newsletter below. Don’t forget to wishlist A Giant Problem either!

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A blog is all well and good but in today’s high-tech and hip environment of game development, you need video. And what better thing to video than us… playing games. Mostly it’ll be our game, A Giant Problem. But occasionally we’ll play other games as well. When we do we’ll discuss the games, and perhaps do a design breakdown to see what we can learn from those games. Or maybe we’ll just have fun and hopefully you will along with us.

Playing games isn’t the only thing we have planned for the live streams. We’re hoping to show Minna’s art and animation processes, Jaakko and Patrick’s coding prowess and problem solving skills, and even Marjo’s abilities wielding her spear. Greg may even run an RPG for the team from time to time. And of course we plan on having regular Q&As with the team about their work, the game, and even what it’s like in Finland.

We’ll stream to Twitch, so either click the link or search for Critical Charm, and be sure to follow or subscribe to our channel. If Twitch isn’t your thing, don’t worry we have you covered. Our entire library of streams will be made available on YouTube. The first episode is already available!

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The plan is for us to stream weekly on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, and all times will be GMT+3 since we are in Helsinki, Finland. But we’ll be sure to put out a tweet about it announcing the upcoming stream. So if you don’t follow us on Twitter, ask yourself why not.

If you have questions or suggestions for us be sure to send them in using the Contact page. Or hit us up on any of our social media channels, and don’t forget to use the hashtag #AGiantProblem. And you can subscribe to our newsletter below to stay up-to-date on all that’s going on with us. If you haven’t already, be sure to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam!

Trolls are an iconic fantasy race. We see them in everything from Tolkien’s works to Dungeon and Dragons, and of course every work that’s influenced by them. Trolls in all these cases tend to be hulking brutes with more strength than intelligence. And we figured why knock a good thing, especially when their concept is so good at knocking over things. Or in the case of A Giant Problem - walls.

The difficulty in actually designing a troll comes in making them recognizably trolls. If you compare all the trolls in pop culture there is no one set idea of their appearance. Some trolls have hair, some are tall, others short, some resemble the environment, and still others have bright colors.



If we look to mythology then it gets even more confusing, because the further back you go the less definite the idea of a troll becomes. During some periods the word troll is used to describe any magical creature. That encompasses what we know today as gnomes, dwarves, and elves. If we look at modern Swedish, then the word troll can be translated as troll, goblin, hobgoblin, or ogre. And forms of the word troll are even used today to describe humans - trollkarl translates from Swedish to English as wizard, magician, warlock and all of their synonyms.

So what’s a troll to us? From a game design perspective, it’s a tank. Trolls are characters that are quite strong, hearty, focused, yet slow. They’re the perfect battering ram. If players are tasked with defending the village and its walls, then the troll makes for the perfect high priority target. Of course they’ll be balanced against some other enemies, but more on those in a future update.

Game design, especially character design, needs to take into account more than just the role a particular enemy plays. Given A Giant Problem is a VR game, every enemy needs to be readily identifiable. And not just from their silhouette. Most first person games have you looking at other characters in a straight-on view, but as you play a giant your view of enemies shifts to being closer to an isometric one. This means the troll has to be identifiable from more angles.



The easiest way to do that is scale. Trolls are some of the largest enemies you’ll face in the game, but of course you’re still bigger. We’re hoping to show you how big soon. Until then be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on A Giant Problem, and don’t forget to wishlist our game on Steam!