Visual Space Odyssey, BARK!

Hello Everyone,

Mission Control here. As promised, this week we want to give you an insight into ProtoCorgi’s visual design. Without further ado, we present: Bullet’s Space Odyssey – Guaranteed to make you nostalgic for a place you’ve never been!


(In space, no one hears you bark!)

Just like the game itself, the retro pixel art style of ProtoCorgi was inspired by old Konami and particularly Treasure games from the SNES and arcade era. They were an important part of our childhood and still define the genre today, so we really wanted to invoke that same feeling. Choosing retro pixel art for ProtoCorgi was an easy choice.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t take advantage of how much more you can do with it today, however!
There is far more room for details and vibrant colours now then there was in the 80s, and we tried to take full advantage of that to make the game as lively and playful as possible. Bullet turned out particularly expressive: Try to spot all his different expressions when you play the Demo!


(Bullet - So done with all these space aliens vs Bullet - Ready for action!)

Even though with ProtoCorgi, we are aiming at a modernized approach to the shoot’em up genre, we definitely didn’t want to lose the retro shmup identity. We really like how the end result looks, but we will leave the final judgement up to you!


Maybe unsurprisingly, Anime was another major source of inspiration for us, which you can see particularly in the design of Bullet and Nixie here in this concept art. The goal was to invoke everything we love and remember so well from our own childhood and to share that appreciation with you.



Nixie already looks a lot like her final design here – the big eyes and lack of nose are pretty common for anime. And look at little Bullet, what a ferocious bark! Such a big shot for such a small guy, that part hasn’t changed much since his conception. If you are now wondering about Bullet’s enemies – no worries, they will take centre stage in a later post.


And now we are at the end of Bullet’s Space Odyssey. Did it awaken your nostalgia? Are you inspired to fire up your old SNES and dig out that first shoot’em up game you ever played? Or maybe you just want to fire up the ProtoCorgi demo and get lost in bright, dangerous outer space!

Whichever it is, we really hope you will like the look of ProtoCorgi once the full game comes out.


Until next week!

*Mission Control, signing off. Over*

[If you have any questions about Bullet’s mission, ask away on our forum or on our Discord channel! We here at Mission Control are always happy to help. For more updates on Bullet, you can also follow our space crew on Twitter and on Facebook.]


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