Hello, and welcome to The Squish! This is the first installment of a blog series we’re starting, highlighting the behind the scenes work of the games we’re making. My name is Cole, and our first installment is going to go over my work as the designer on Mitobit, and how we turned our game from the short concept it was to the project it's going to be!
Brackey's 2024 Game Jam
Mitobit started our submission to the Brackeys 2024 game jam (playable here! https://gabeq.itch.io/mitobit). We were tasked with making a game within a week, with the theme of “calm before the storm”. Thinking back to the old kid show plot point of a main character taking care of a pet that gets out of hand, we thought we could double dip on the nostalgia it gave us and frame it as a virtual pet style arcade game. Here are a few samples of my design notes at the time being translated into the final game:
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The core of the game didn't change much from early concept to execution. The only major changes were cutting the early idea for the laser pointer, and making the methods to satiate each need slightly more unique.
Originally, the game was called Kurōnshu, roughly "clone species" in Japanese, a play on Tamagotchi meaning "egg watch". In the end, we decided making the name in a language we didn't know was unwise, so we did the word mash -- mitosis and rabbit -- in English.
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Steam Considerations
The game ended up doing very well in the game jam, and we were all proud of it, so it was an easy candidate for a proper release when we were considering our first studio title. Our only problem was structure – although we felt the concept was strong, we would need actual content formed around it for a proper game. To emphasise the arcade gameplay of the original, we broke the game into levels, each unlockable by getting a high enough score in the prior levels. Breaking the game into unique levels also gave us a structured avenue to inject new gameplay concepts into the experience.
Our workflow was simple after that – there would be a preset stretch of time where the team created as many “toys” for me to play with as possible (new bits of content I could use to define new levels), and I would tease out as many unique/interesting challenges and combinations of those toys as possible. 
One easy example is the level "Drying Off". Often in this game, it's beneficial to cover the floor in a surplus of food, so you can focus on the other Mitobit needs until their supply depletes. Food falls through grates, which I used in this level to limit where you could surplus food. Now, if you wanted to, you'd have to identify where would be least likely to get your pet soaked by puddles in their pathing to the food, feed them directly instead of surplussing, or simply deal with drying your Mitobit off constantly.
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Species Reveal!
That said, we've done a lot of talking about how we made Mitobit, and not very much on what they are. At the end of each blog post, we'll show off one new species of Mitobit and their different quirks. Since this is the first volume, let's take a look at the most basic one.
This is the default Mitobit, your brand new digital pet and best friend! Same as the very first version of the game, they’ll be satisfied as long as you can keep them fed, clean and dry with the tools at your disposal. Over time, though, these little slimeballs will split apart into multiple versions of themselves, all of which you’re going to need to keep happy and healthy in order to get a high score!
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Conclusion
That's all for this episode of The Squish! Thank you so much for reading, keeping up with this project means the world to all of us. We'll continue posting these little behind the scenes vignettes of all of our works as the game progresses, so if you enjoyed this and haven't wishlisted yet, it's the best way to see these as they come out!
Until next time,
~ Team Jelly Games