Don't Stop, Girlypop! News

[h3]It’s time for the second installment of our music-focused…

✨Dev Storytime✨

…where we meet the composers behind Don’t Stop, Girlypop!’s soundtrack!!!

In the second interview, we’re meeting with the dazzling duo Sarah Wolfe and Xavier Dunn ❤[/h3]

Before we get into the interview though, I should probably give a brief intro on how I first met Sarah! I first met Sarah at SXSW and I even have archival footage of it! It was during the opening party for SXSW, which was themed around a game called Mystiques: Haunted Antiques. Sarah was DJing for the event and playing songs she’d made for the game’s soundtrack. I loved it so much!!!

Later down the line, it turned out the first composer we worked with on the Don’t Stop, Girlypop! soundtrack, Candice, wasn’t able to continue because of a personal project album she was working on, so then I remembered that Sarah had made this beautiful heavy dance pop track for Mystiques: Haunted Antiques where she just kept yelling the word “mystiques” in the chorus. It was a dance club pop type of song, which is exactly what I wanted for Don’t Stop, Girlypop! I reached out to Sarah on Instagram in around January 2025 and asked if she’d be available to compose some tracks for Don’t Stop, Girlypop! and the rest is history!

Xavier Dunn & Sarah Wolfe.

[h3]When did you both first know that you wanted to pursue a career in music?[/h3]

Sarah: My mom was a visual artist and she was always doing lots of print making and life drawing, so I grew up in a really creative house. I started learning piano and guitar around about the age of 7 or 8, and singing lessons from 12. After school I was tossing up between graphic design and music and ended up studying music, and now I work full time as a digital content creator and a musician so I got the best of both worlds!

Xavier: My mom and dad are both music teachers so growing up in a house of music was normal for me and my 4 brothers. I knew I wasn't bad at music so I decided to pursue that!

[h3]Did you study music at university or college? Or are you self-taught?[/h3]

Sarah: I studied music at the Australian Institute of Music and stayed there for about one and a half years, but dropped out because I was offered a job in music journalism. I decided to leave because I felt like a degree in Singing wouldn’t help me from a career perspective and, like a lot of young people, I had a bit of a quarter life crisis about how I would survive and make money! I started doing music journalism instead, alongside content creation for music websites.

Xavier: I studied a Bachelor of Performance at the School of Music at ANU in Double Bass and through that I was composing music for string quartets and orchestras. After Uni, I taught myself how to produce via Youtube so I could record more than just my string arrangements!



[h3]If it’s not too much trouble, please could you describe what your careers have been like so far.[/h3]

Sarah: In a nutshell, it’s been a Hannah Montana type of situation, only a lot less glamorous! I had the work stuff, doing music journalism and I was also working for indie music labels in Australia, because I wanted to learn as much about the industry as possible. Then I also started putting out my own music during the time that I was working for indie music labels. Working in music and making music became a bit much after a while, so I decided to shift into my other great love alongside making music, which is video games, so then I started my career in the games industry!

I started out working for League of Geeks as a digital content creator in 2023, doing community management and content creation for a space management sim called Jumplight Odyssey and another game called Solium Infernum, which is a strategy game set in Hell where you and all of your friends are demons. That was really the catalyst that made me want to combine my love for gaming with my love for making music. I was editing the trailer for the release of Solium Infernum and we wanted to try something different that would make it stand out, so I volunteered to write a song for the trailer called Eternal Nights. When I was writing the track, I got even more immersed in the lore of the game, and crafting the track and lyrics for something so unlike what I had done before was an incredible experience! That was really the beginning of my career as a composer in the games industry.

I would also like to give a huge shout out to Michael Allen, the incredible composer behind the soundtracks for both Jumplight Odyssey and Solium Infernum!

Xavier: I couch surfed for most of my 20’s with friends as I became a better producer and songwriter. I then met Jack River and we became friends as I co-wrote and produced her first album, which won an ARIA for best Album and was nominated for best Engineer! I have since been awarded 2 Platinum and 10 Gold Records from tracks I have written and produced for artists all around the world.

[h3]What challenges do you face as musicians?[/h3]

Sarah: For me personally, I have a chronic disability called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and had to have brain surgery in 2023 for a connected (pun-intended) condition, so being a disabled musician is a unique situation that definitely comes with its own challenges. That, combined with having a full-time job, often means my biggest challenge is finding time, keeping my energy up, and paying doctors bills! I wouldn't trade it for the world though, I'm grateful for the way my experiences have been able to shape me and my music.

Xavier: Learning to prioritise what you will put your time and energy into and learning how to say no to opportunities that may seem good but would burn you out.

[h3]What would you say has been your greatest achievement as musicians to date? What are you most proud of?[/h3]

Sarah: That’s a good question! I guess there are the achievements on paper and then there are the ones that are more personal. The personal one for me was the first time someone made fan art for me. You have no idea how touched I was that someone would spend so much of their spare time on creating something just for me.

I recently got to feature on a track by the incredible 3% called ‘Running Through My Head’, which we played at the Sydney Opera House recently for Vivid in Sydney! I also got to perform Eternal Nights for the SXSW Sydney games opening night event and the SXSW Sydney Game Awards, which was extremely cool! And of COURSE getting asked to write for Don’t Stop, Girlypop! It has honestly been a dream come true to work with Jane and the team.

Xavier: The greatest achievement for myself has been that I can wake up everyday and make music for myself and others for a living!

Sarah performing with 3% at the Sydney Opera House.

[h3]What types of games do you like to play in your free time?[/h3]

Sarah: I play a huge mix of games (cliche answer sorry), but I really love survival games like Grounded and all the classic cosy bangers like Stardew Valley of course. Baldur’s Gate is another standout for me. I also LOVE indie titles. My favourite game of all time is Spiritfarer! Oh and my OG fav since I was a kid, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos.

Xavier: I'm also playing Nightreign at the moment. A great time to be a gamer I’d say!

Sarah & Xavier: We also play loads of co-op games together! Recently we dabbled in the early access of RuneScape: Dragonwilds for a while, smashed out heaps of Elden Ring with the co-op mod, and we just finished Split Fiction.

[h3]Have you ever worked on a game’s soundtrack before?[/h3]

Sarah: If you can count Eternal Nights for Solium Infernum, then I would say I did a tiny bit of that one! All credit to Michael Allen for that amazing soundtrack though. In terms of game soundtracks specifically though, Xav and I are also working on the soundtrack for a game called Mystiques: Haunted Antiques. It’s an antiquing meets haunted house meets exploration game!

[h3]What artists, TV shows, movies, or other media do you draw inspiration from when making music for Don’t Stop, Girlypop!?[/h3]

Sarah: Hell yeah! This was the question I was waiting for! I’ve got a huge list for this. Anything hyper-pop, Charli XCX, SOPHIE, etc. I DJ a bit and I only play hyper-pop or pop girls. In terms of pop but not hyper-pop (if that makes sense?), there’s Britney Spears, Kim Petras, Robyn, PinkPantheress, Sugababes, Doja Cat, and Carly Rae Jepson.

When it comes to visual media, I drew inspiration from all sorts of stuff, like Sailor Moon, Winx, Shirley Barber's wonderful fairy books, and the Barbie animated movies (specifically the Nutcracker and Swan Lake). I know it might sound weird but, when I’m writing music for Don’t Stop, Girlypop!, I also like to look at photos of cute animals, particularly baby bunnies!

Barbie in the Nutcracker.

[h3]What has been the best part of working on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! so far?[/h3]

Sarah: All of it! I absolutely love hyper-pop, so getting to explore all of the sounds and nuances within the genre has been super satisfying. Getting to work with Jane as well has been incredible. She’s so passionate and hard-working, and the game freaking rules, so I’m always super happy when I create a song that Jane really loves. I’m just so happy I get to contribute to this work of art!

On a more specific note, figuring out the layers of the tracks has been really fun and interesting. Every track has multiple different versions, such as Combat 1, Combat 2, the Chill version, so it’s very different from making music for marketing or for an album.

Xavier: On a personal note, one of the best parts for me has been getting to work with Sarah in the studio again.

[h3]If you want to check out Sarah and Xavier’s work, you can follow them on Spotify by clicking the links below:

Sarah Wolfe

Spotify Instagram



Xavier Dunn

Spotify Instagram[/h3]



To finish up, I just want to say how much I’ve loved working with Sarah and Xavier. Sarah just takes all of my crazy ideas and runs with them, even working with things like knife sounds and gun sounds! I usually start sitting for a while and thinking of ideas, then coming to them with the ideas for lyrics, beats, switch-ups, points in the song I want to hit, etc. I come up with the instrumental, the vibe, a bunch of references for those instrumentals, lyrical themes, a few keywords that should be included, and then I send them off and Sarah and Xavier make magic!

Like my process with Candice, we start with the ambient version, which leads to the pop version, which can then transfer into the industrial version (more hardcore hyper-pop), and then they’re all mixed together to form the final version. I really love having these super cute pop songs going into hardcore industrial sounds! As Sarah mentioned, creating multiple versions means they can be blended together in different ways so that they transfer seamlessly into one another while you’re playing the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610650/Dont_Stop_Girlypop/

I give feedback throughout the process, but normally my feedback is just “can we make this more intense.” I want to start with that conventional pop and then really smack people over the head hard with the industrial music, the “horrible noise” as some people like to put it! Getting the beautiful pop is important, but getting the bang clash noise pop in there too is just as important to me. Another big priority for me is getting the lyrical content right, because so many game soundtracks don’t have lyrics and it sucks!!! I want to have lyrics that will stick in peoples’ heads. The songs just have this magical quality that they wouldn’t have without lyrics.

Sarah and Xavier are both working on a crazy song at the moment that involves a BPM switch, where the brief I gave them was just “start as Sabrina Carpenter and Britney Spears and then double the BPM.”

Most importantly, my mom and Sarah’s mom both love the soundtrack, so that’s what really matters, right???

I hope you enjoyed the second instalment of our dev storytime on the music of Don’t Stop, Girlypop! If you missed it, don’t forget to check out the first instalment, where we met with composer Candice Susnjar ❤

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2610650/view/532106822836815610

[h3]Click the buttons below to join our Discord and follow us on social media for the latest updates on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! ❤[/h3]

[h3]Can’t get our soundtrack out of your head?

We know you can’t 💅[/h3]

As a special treat this month, we’re going to be doing not one but TWO…

✨Dev Storytimes✨

…where we meet the composers behind Don’t Stop, Girlypop!’s soundtrack!!!

In this first interview, we’re meeting with Candice Susnjar ❤

Before we get into the interview though, I’ll give a quick introduction on how I met Candice, because it was super random! There’s this belief in Perth, the city in Western Australia where Funny Fintan Softworks is based, that you always meet Perth people when you’re not in Perth, and that’s exactly how it happened. Candice and I are Perth people, but we met in San Francisco!

We were both at GDC when we first met and then we met up again at an event in Perth called Tokyo Alley. I asked Candice what type of music she made, she told me she mainly did orchestral, and then I asked her if she could do pop music. Candice said she wanted to give it a try and sent me over a demo track, which ended up being the start of the song Paint the Town Red in the Don’t Stop, Girlypop! soundtrack. After the demo track, we decided to work together!

Candice Susnjar.

When did you first know that you wanted to pursue a career in music?

Candice: I knew early on in life, when I was about 15 years old. I decided I wanted to pursue music around that time and become a guitarist. Then I started composing music and realised that was what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life!

Did you study music at university or college? Or are you self-taught?

Candice: I went to the Western Australian Academy for Performing Arts and studied jazz guitar. My major was in Performing and Arrangement. My studies definitely helped me when it came to writing for large ensembles and orchestral instruments, not so much pop music. It gave me a really good grounding in melody and harmony though!

The Western Australian Academy for Performing Arts.

If it’s not too much trouble, please could you describe what your career has been like so far.

Candice: After I graduated from the Western Australian Academy for Performing Arts, I started singing and song-writing. I was doing a lot of gigs and just really working on my voice. My guitar was good but my voice…not so much! I decided to move to Melbourne so I could get my confidence up when it came to performing.

It was actually only about 4 years ago that I decided I wanted to start making music for film, TV, and games. I write and produce my own music, which has been my main focus. Writing for Don’t Stop, Girlypop! has been such a pleasure. In my time, I’ve also had the opportunity to write for the Perth Symphony Orchestra, for 2 short films, and for various orchestral compositions. My ultimate dream is to write for a feature film or game soundtrack for with a full orchestra and conduct it at Abbey Road or Air Studios!

What challenges do you face as a composer?

Candice: I love so many different styles of music, so pinpointing who I am as a composer can be difficult. I’ve got the jazz background, plus classical, plus singing, plus guitar, plus a strong love for pop music. How do I mix all of those passions together and explain who I am to the world? It’s a tough challenge!

On top of that, finding work as a composer and maintaining regular work has also been challenging. It’s always really hard to find the next job, particularly when I’m looking for jobs I believe in or that resonate with me. Getting consistent work as a composer is very difficult.

What would you say has been your greatest achievement as a composer to date? What are you most proud of?

Candice: I’d say it’s the album I’m recording at the moment! I’m combining my love of jazz, pop, classical, guitar, and singing all into my own album. It means I’ve been able to pull together all of the skills I’ve learnt from composing for games, TV, and film, from my pop influences, and from my experience writing for string quartets. It feels like I’m finally starting to nail down my unique style. I’m hoping I can give my new style a name!



Have you ever worked on a game’s soundtrack before?

Candice: Don’t Stop, Girlypop! has actually been the first game I’ve worked on! I’m super thankful and excited to be part of the project. It’s really pushed me outside of my comfort zone, because most of my background up until this point had been more orchestral, singer-songwriter, jazz, and soundscapes. Composing pop music and producing a pop track has been challenging! I’ve learnt so much and having Jane’s guidance has been invaluable, since she knew exactly what she wanted for the soundtrack. I learnt so much about sounds and where to go with my voice. I’ll be taking a lot of these learnings and this whole experience forward into my future compositions!

What artists, TV shows, movies, or other media do you draw inspiration from when making music for Don’t Stop, Girlypop!?

Candice: When I first discussed the soundtrack with Jane, she provided me with a playlist of a bunch of artists, mostly from the Y2K era. There was Chase Icon, PinkPantheress, a bit of Doja Cat, Charli xcx, Von Dutch, SOPHIE etc. I pulled a lot of ideas and sounds from these artists, such as the industrial sounds from SOPHIE (not something I’d ever done before, but it was really fun!) and then the soft vocals from artists like PinkPantheress.

What has been the best part of working on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! so far?

Candice: Working with Jane, 100%. She knew exactly what she wanted and she’s really professional, so working with her has been such a pleasure. I also love the music and the aesthetic of the game. Composing for the soundtrack has really pushed me outside of my comfort zone and forced me to move into new genres, which has been amazing!

[h3]If you want to follow Candice’s work you can follow her on Instagram, Spotify, and on her website.[/h3]



To finish up with, I just wanted to say how insanely thankful I am for all of the work that Candice has done on the Don’t Stop, Girlypop! soundtrack. Whenever we worked together on a track, I would first list a bunch of tracks and then give her a brief based on what vibe I wanted to lean into, what instruments we should focus on, what type of style I wanted, when the industrial part of the track should kick in, and how I wanted the vocals to be.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610650/Dont_Stop_Girlypop/

Candice was the real guinea pig though when it came to our process! We had to figure out together how we were going to do the blending for each track. For context, we start out by creating an ambient version, which leads to the pop version, which can then transfer into the industrial version (more hardcore hyper-pop), and then they’re all mixed together to form the final version. Creating multiple versions means they can be blended together in different ways so that they transfer seamlessly into one another while you’re playing the game.

We didn’t start out with this process though and we basically had to figure out together how to write music that fit the structure of the game! That’s also the reason why Candice has the only track in the whole game that has a Combat 4 version.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this interview, girlypops! And don't forget to check out the second part with composers Sarah Wolfe and Xavier Dunn ❤

https://steamcommunity.com/games/2610650/announcements/detail/624430710732620758

[h3]Click the buttons below to join our Discord and follow us on social media for the latest updates on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! ❤[/h3]

[h3]Sometimes great things come in short packages, girlypops!!!

We’re excited to let you all know that Don’t Stop, Girlypop! has been selected to feature in the Short Games Showcase, presented by Ogre Pixel![/h3]



The Short Games Showcase is an event designed to celebrate short video games. These are games that offer a complete and satisfying experience within 1 to 4 hours of gameplay, which makes them perfect for players who are looking for something concise and impactful. After all, we’re all busy bees, so sometimes we just need something short and sweet 🐝

Don’t Stop, Girlypop! is a Y2K arena movement shooter that is entirely based on speed! The faster you move, the more damage you deal and the more you heal. We’ve made speed a core part of our gameplay and have even included an unique wave-hopping mechanic, a combination of a classic bunny hop with a modern slam, dash, and double jump that lets you maximise your speed and precision.

Since speed is such a key feature in our game, it was always our destiny to be a short, punchy, and impactful movement shooter, which is why we’re a perfect fit for the Short Games Showcase ❣️

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610650/Dont_Stop_Girlypop/

[h3]Still not sure what Don’t Stop, Girlypop! is all about?

Then check out our gameplay trailer below :3[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Click the buttons below to join our Discord and follow us on social media for the latest updates ❤[/h3]

[h3]Let’s get stylish, girlypops!!!

It’s Jane, the lead developer at Funny Fintan Softworks, and I’m back for another installment of…

✨Dev Storytime✨

In this update, I want to talk about the inspiration behind the unique Y2K style in Don’t Stop, Girlypop![/h3]



The first thing you’re probably all wondering is, why make a movement shooter with a Y2K style?

As I mentioned in the previous dev storytime, I’m a huge fan of games like ULTRAKILL, TURBO OVERKILL, and DOOM Eternal, but they’re all grimdark and gritty. From an aesthetic perspective, we’re in hell, we’re in a dark fantasy castle, we’re in a cyberpunk dystopia. They’re all beautiful in their own right, but there’s just this common set of aesthetics that seem to dominate in FPS games and especially arena shooters. It’s a lot of browns, blacks, reds, etc.

When I was in Melbourne 2 years ago trying to pitch our game to publishers, I kept getting knocked back because it was “just another sci-fi shooter.” When you’re in the indie space, being able to stand out is crucial, so you need a hook that really screams in peoples’ faces. I was on an escalator talking to our marketing consultant Michal over the phone when I had this revelation. What if the enemies EXPLODED into pink blood?

I prototyped it straight away and it looked AWESOME. I discovered that having the enemies explode into love hearts and pink blood was just as satisfying as seeing them explode in gibs and regular blood. I decided that I wanted aesthetically to lean much more into using a lot of color and particularly a lot of pink, which is not a palette that’s used a lot in FPS games. It’s a very maximalist aesthetic. That’s really where the Y2K style started.



In terms of other games, Bratz: Rock Angelz was a huge inspiration for us, particularly when it came to the dress-up mini-game. Outside of gaming though, I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from music. I was obsessed with Britney Spears, so her style and music have had a major influence on the game. PinkPanthress as well has been a huge inspiration. The music video for her song “Nice to Meet You” has all of these crazy VFX effects in it, which reminded me a lot of those old school Microsoft screensavers. A lot of her music videos are like a romanticised version of the Y2K era, which is the same style we’re shooting for in Don’t Stop, Girlypop!

Growing up in Australia, I was also heavily influenced by a kid’s TV channel called ABC3. In terms of style, ABC3’s visuals were like a combination of pop art with clip art. Think of like the 2010s line art and clip art. If you want to get technical, I guess the style we’re going for is a mixture of Frutiger Metro and Fruitger Aero.

When you wave-hop in the game, there are these filigree lines that grow around the edges of the screen, which was inspired by the Frutiger styles. There’s also a section with a boom box where big fat music notes visually appear and pulse with the music, which also follows this style.

I’d like to add here that I think Windows Vista is beautiful and nobody is gonna change my mind on that!!!



Speaking of pop stars, the character of Adiuvo (your guide who speaks to you via the flip phone) is inspired by Magdalena Bay. Mica’s look and make-up in the music video for “Image” is where I got the idea for Adiuvo. I also love the deliberately sort of DIY-looking greenscreen visuals in that music video. Like the PinkPanthress videos, it has this old school Microsoft Windows feel to it.

The faeries in Don’t Stop, Girlypop!, who provide you with new fabrics and accessories for your guns, were mainly inspired by the 3D Tinkerbell movie. For me, that’s always what I imagine whenever I think of faeries!



Speaking of fabrics, we obviously wanted to include the fabrics that we felt were staples of the Y2K era. Obviously the first one was denim, thanks to that iconic image of Britney and Justin in ALL denim at the VMAs. The flannel was thrown in for the country/lumberjack flair. It’s one of my favorite fabrics to use on the fluffy parts at the bottom of the arms. Another style I really like is that sort of PinkPanthress’s TKMaxx crossed with grandma-core aesthetic. There’s this one fabric in the game that’s purple and has this flower pattern embedded in it. For me, that screams Y2K grandma-core.



For the tech in the game, like the flip phone, my process is usually to start off with a bunch of reference images, try to rip them off, do a bad job of ripping them off, and end up with a completely different thing!

For example, I used a very average flip phone as my first point of reference, but I wanted it to have that transparent see-through plastic look that was really popular in the 2010s. Think like the iMacG3 or the old Rock Candy controllers. I love that plastic see-through look! I don’t think there was ever actually a flip phone with transparent plastic like that, but I guess now there is in Don’t Stop, Girlypop! The weirdest part is I’ve never even opened a flip phone before. My first phone was an iPhone 4!

In fact, I get a lot of people asking me why I wanted to lean into a Y2K style when I wasn’t even around for most of that era. For me though, it’s like a very romanticised version of the Y2K era. It’s all of these things I barely have memories of that become so much more magical and meaningful to me precisely because my memories are so faint. When I see an iPod Nano or an iPod Shuffle, I get this like magical feeling. There are so many things we don’t have anymore because our phones or computers do it all for us, it’s all digital. I love collecting DVDs and discs, and generally just having physical things.

I wanted to take a very non-commital approach to the era though, because for example the flip phone has videos, which isn’t realistic. It’s more like one big nostalgic dream of the Y2K era. It’s not just about the aesthetic style either. I’ve always been fascinated by technology, so a large part of the game is also this element of imagining what technology could be like from the perspective of a child growing up in the Y2K era.





One of the best parts of having this style is that it attracts all of these gamers who wouldn’t normally play an FPS game. When we’re at events, we have people come over and try the game out because they think the game looks cute, and then they’re like, “Wait, WTF is this?” It’s been a really interesting experience trying to onboard these players and have them see that it’s fun. A lot of gamers seem to have this idea in their heads that they shouldn’t play FPS games because they’re bad at them or they can’t aim, but they see the style of our game and they really want to play it. It’s all about convincing them that you don’t need to be good at FPS games to enjoy playing them.

I know what it feels like to be tricked into playing genres that you don’t normally play. I really don’t like horror or being scared, but Alan Wake 2 drew me in so much with other aspects I wanted to explore that I was willing to play a genre I normally avoid. I’m hoping I can bridge that gap as well with gamers who find FPS games off-putting.

At the end of the day though, I’m mainly making a game that I wanted to play and sometimes I think it’s good to just really lean into your niche. I’d love to bring more people into the FPS genre, but the real motivation behind Don’t Stop, Girlypop! is that I’m just making the game that I’ve always wanted to make.



That’s all for now, girlypops!!!

Don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for our next dev storytime in August though, where we’ll be chatting with the incredible composers working on the soundtrack for Don’t Stop, Girlypop!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610650/Dont_Stop_Girlypop/

[h3]Click the buttons below to join our Discord and follow us on social media for the latest updates on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! ❤[/h3]

[h3]Are you ready for part 2 of the girlypop journey?

I’m Jane, the lead developer at Funny Fintan Softworks, and this is…

✨Dev Storytime✨

Following on from our post last week, we’ll be continuing the girlypop story! In this second part, I’ll be talking a bit more about the games that inspired Don’t Stop, Girlypop![/h3]



Our inspiration story begins when I was about 10 years old and I was at a store called EB Games, which is like the Australian version of Gamestop. They used to have these consoles in-store that you could play on and I’d go there to play the demo for Star Wars: Battlefront on the Xbox One. I was blown away by the “real life graphics” and decided I needed an Xbox One.

I traded in my New 3DS XL and a bunch of other stuff to get an Xbox One SX, but then tragedy struck! I didn’t have enough credit left to buy Star Wars: Battlefront! I was walking around the store trying to find another game I could buy and then my friend pointed out a game that “looked kind of like Star Wars.” That game was Destiny. Since that day, I’ve probably sunk over 2,000 hours into that game. I’ve played the first game, all of the expansions, Destiny 2, and all of the expansions for that. It became the initial inspiration for the artistic direction for the landscapes and buildings in Don’t Stop, Girlypop! In particular, a lot of inspiration came from Dreaming City, which is from Destiny 2: Forsaken.



In terms of the gameplay though, my first major inspiration was Quake 3. In high school, we had these PCs that all had Quake 3, Halo Combat Evolved, and Minecraft on them. Whenever the teachers weren’t looking, my friends and I would just play Quake 3, although the one at our school was this weird open source version of the game called OpenArena. It was the first time I’d played a shooter on PC instead of console and I couldn’t get over how good the raw PC game mouse aim was. The arena shooting in Don’t Stop, Girlypop! was definitely inspired by Quake 3 and then after that Half Life 2 played a major role, with the gravity gun serving as the inspiration for our magic wand.



Back in 2020, the game was initially going to be a Battlefield-style shooter, but then I went to a friend’s house and experienced DOOM Eternal for the first time. It was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life!!! I loved how they’d taken the arena shooter and brought it into the modern day.

After that, I ended up playing ULTRAKILL, which was another huge inspiration. I felt like ULTRAKILL took a lot of the ideas and mechanics from DOOM Eternal and pushed them even harder. The alt-fires in ULTRAKILL in particular were mind-blowing for me, especially the coin flip alt-fire. I loved the idea that an alt-fire could be something so creative and different, rather than just being a more powerful version of the default fire.



When it comes to the girlypop style, that all started back when I was at GDC last year and I came across Bratz: Rock Angelz. I stood on the show floor and played that game for hours. Back in the day, I used to play a lot of flash games on a website called Friv. There were millions of dress-up games on that website that I loved playing. Bratz: Rock Angelz reminded me of those dress-up games, but if they had a real budget. That then became the inspiration behind the girlypop style and in particular the dress-up mini-game in Don’t Stop, Girlypop!



This may seem like a weird one to everyone reading, but I bet you wouldn’t have guessed that Alan Wake 2 was also a major inspiration!

That game totally changed my perspective on video games and made me fall in love with gaming all over again. It was the first time I’d seen a game lean so hard into the concept of video games as an art form, taking elements from other art forms like music, writing, film, TV, and theatre and embedding them into the game itself. Alan Wake 2 really explored all of the different types of art forms that comprised video games individually and I wanted to do that in Don’t Stop, Girlypop! as well. There are a bunch of vignettes throughout Don’t Stop, Girlypop!, along with music videos and weird boss fights. All of these ideas came from Alan Wake 2.



It’s a big melting pot of inspirations that have all come together to make something totally unique!

I love games like ULTRAKILL, TURBO OVERKILL, and DOOM Eternal, but they’re all grimdark and gritty. Aesthetically, when it comes to most shooters, we’re always in hell or in a castle or a cyberpunk dystopia. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all beautiful looking, but there’s this common set of aesthetics within the FPS genre and particularly in arena shooters. When I first started pitching our game to publishers, I kept getting knocked back because we were “just another sci-fi shooter.” We needed to find a way to stand out. I was in an escalator talking to our PR & marketing consultant Michal and I had this revelation. What if our enemies exploded into PINK BLOOD???

I prototyped it straight away and it looked AWESOME! An FPS game is sort of like an advanced button pusher, so you need to make the button pushing as satisfying as possible. Having the enemies explode in love hearts and pink blood was just as satisfying as seeing them explode into gibs and red blood. The whole world started to form around enemies exploding into love hearts and that’s where the aesthetic began.

We really wanted to lean into a lot of colour and a lot of pink, which is not a palette that is used a lot in FPS games. It’s a very maximalist aesthetic. We get a lot of comments from people saying “this looks like slop” or “this looks like vomit,” but we’ve learned to just respond with “if it’s not for you, it’s not for you.”

That’s also where the idea of songs with lyrics came in. It all started when I was re-playing DOOM Eternal. I love the DOOM Eternal soundtrack but, the second time around, I muted the game, played with my own music, and loved it. I decided then and there that I wanted Don’t Stop, Girlypop! to have songs with lyrics.



From a gameplay perspective, I wanted to bring arena shooters even more into the modern day, so unintentional but integral mechanics like bunny-hopping have been transformed into something intentional that we call wave-hopping. I wanted to add such a huge feature of the arena shooter genre and make it an official mechanic! In original arena shooters, you were never really required to move (but it was the most fun way to play the game), so I wanted to bring movement to the forefront in Don’t Stop, Girlypop! and I’ve solidified that intention with the wave-hopping mechanic.

In terms of the Y2K aesthetic, it’s really more related to nostalgia for me than an actual recreation of the Y2K era. I love the idea of tactile technology, so like chunky mobile phones, DVDs, CDs, etc. I’ll talk about the Y2K inspirations more in our next dev storytime though, so keep an eye out for that!

I hope you’ve enjoyed our first dev storytime and I can’t wait to share more with you soon!!!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610650/Dont_Stop_Girlypop/

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