From Bad Apples to Senpie

Senpie started life as a love letter to Yoshi on the NES - a fun little game made by GameFreaks (probably to keep the lights on while they were crunching on the original Pokemon).

In Yoshi, you move Mario between vertical stacks of falling enemies. When two matching enemies collide they destroy each other. The best part is the Yoshi egg, which is split into a top and bottom half. When you stack enemies on the bottom half and then a top half drops it clears the whole stack.

The core gameplay is solid and we haven't played anything like it since. So we started Senpie as a prototype to replicate Yoshi but with one twist in mind: a “bad” item — something that couldn’t be matched, and instead spread corruption through the stack. Steam post image

Our original art style was more gross than cute, involving "bad apples" that corrupt other ingredients by puking on them. We were going for something more akin to Rocco's Modern Life. When our prototype was finished we took a step back and realized two things. First, we didn't love the art style. Second, the bad apple wasn't enough to elevate the original design.

We did like our little baker, "Granny" though, and wanted an art direction that fit her. We're big anime heads, and at the time we were watching a lot of anime about people who can see and interact with yokai and the spirit world. What if Granny had a similar connection?

This single idea reshaped everything. Our ingredients became yokai and Granny became a spirit baker. The tone shifted from gross to cute. The world quickly started to come together.

This also led to how we evolved the gameplay, which we'll talk about more in the coming weeks. There's plenty more to show, so be sure to check back next week for more behind the bakery!