After a few years of silence, YouTuber Chadtronic's own company, Yojoyco Studios, has announced its first video game. It's known as Poglings, and it aims to be a cute pet simulation game that allows players to breed and race the titular creatures found on the Wild Vine Islands. As fans grow their nest of Poglings, they'll encounter some friends along the way as they discover the secrets of what will become their very own island. The main inspiration behind the game are the mechanics found in the Chao Gardens of Sonic Adventure, a rather popular mini-game that Sega itself hasn't used in over twenty years.
Game ZXC spoke with Chadtronic about what fans could expect from his upcoming indie game, as well as the development process between Yojoyco Studios and its partner Right Nice Games. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Let’s start with the history of Poglings. You’ve said on YouTube that the game was originally conceptualized in a book you and your wife made together, correct?
Chadtronic: Correct! My wife and I brainstormed several ideas for a game together. We specifically revisited games we enjoyed from our childhood as a source of inspiration. I had fond memories of playing the Chao Garden portion of the Sonic Adventure games, and my wife really enjoys life simulation games like Animal Crossing. We struck a very happy medium by combining these ideas into a single game concept that became Poglings.
Q: What was it like working with your spouse to make a video game the two of you could enjoy?
Chadtronic: Ideas are much more fun to come up with when you have another person to bounce off of. Some nights we’d talk for hours. I’d take note of the ideas we both really liked. Some were simple, some were complex...Seeing the game slowly come to life has been a really exciting and rewarding experience for both of us.
Q: How did you get involved with Right Nice Games for Poglings? What kind of partnership do you have with the studio?
Chadtronic: I was on the hunt to find someone to help develop the game for quite a while. During my search, Dennis Lofgren, a game designer at Right Nice Games, had reached out to me. Dennis was already familiar with who I was, and it wasn’t long after getting acquainted with Right Nice Games that I knew they were the perfect team to help create Poglings.
My partnership with Right Nice Games is a bit of an untraditional setup. You don’t often see a content creator partner with a professional game studio to make something. It’s uncommon for sure. At the start, I brought them the game concept book and some fun ideas, and together we’ve been able to mold it further and further into something really awesome. The team at Right Nice Games is incredibly talented, and I hope the game’s success means I can continue to work with them for many years.
Q: In what ways have Right Nice Games helped you develop Poglings beyond your original vision?
Chadtronic: In the beginning, I brought them a lot of ideas, some ideas I had very well documented concerning how they should work, and some ideas I just didn’t know how to make a reality in a game. That’s where their talented and amazing brains worked wonders. Working with them has become a really creative collaboration; they themselves have brought forward a lot of ideas that I’ve loved so much. One idea I loved of theirs was putting a Pogling in your backpack, and sort of letting them adventure with you while you go to other places on your island that are outside their 'nest area.' That’s just one example of many ideas they’ve come up with. It's been really fun working with them!
Q: So what are Poglings exactly? What are these little creatures?
Chadtronic: Haha, they aren’t supposed to be anything too specific. Friends and family have told me they look like baby dragons or baby dinosaurs. That is sort of what we were going for when we designed them so mission accomplished!
Q: Poglings is primarily inspired by the Chao Gardens found in the Sonic Adventure games. What are you aiming to take from the Chao Gardens and include in your game?
Chadtronic: The Chao Garden was easily my favorite part of the Adventure games. It was also the only pet monster-themed game besides Pokemon that really captivated me growing up. In Poglings, Chao Garden fans will feel right at home as Poglings come in many shapes and colors, and they have letter-grade rankings assigned to their skills. You can level them up, evolve them, and breed them. Video games have also changed a lot in 20 years, so we’ve implemented a few things differently than how Chao Gardens did, but as a major Chao Garden fan me I promise the best parts you loved about Chao exist in Poglings.
Q: You and your team had to adjust how to implement things differently due to how the Chao Garden mechanics have aged? Can you tell us which ones and talk about that process?
Chadtronic: We’re still actively developing the game so things can always change, but one example I suppose I could share is item consumption time. In the Chao Gardens, if you have four or five coconuts you want to feed your Chao, it takes a very long time for them to eat, and they can only eat one at a time. It can be very tedious for the player to sit and wait for the stat increases. We thought the item consumption process should be much quicker, so the player can move on to more exciting things.
So in Poglings, we decided to forgo the waiting time of eating each item one at a time. We currently have it so you can quickly feed an entire stack of items to a pogling, and they’ll instantly get their stat increase from those items. They’ll still visually be eating whatever the first item you handed to them was, though. We couldn’t deprive people of seeing a cute eating animation, of course!
Q: Compared to the way Chao could change based on their alignment and skills, how much variety can fans expect with the Poglings they raise in terms of colors and evolution?
Chadtronic: Between the different alignments, skill types, and colors, there are currently over 400 unique variant outcomes for Poglings, and we’re only just getting started! We have plans for many more in the future!
Q: You also mentioned that Animal Crossing helped shape Poglings. In what way?
Chadtronic: This is actually a great follow-up question. People from the outside looking in have definitely asked how progression will work for a Chao Garden-inspired game without the Sonic elements. I always really liked the calm, relaxed nature of the Chao Garden and another crowd favorite for games that fall into that same vein is Animal Crossing. You can catch butterflies, go fishing, and tend to your garden... those small but fun and relaxing tasks are very similar to the things you’ll be doing to progress in Poglings. Instead of catching a beetle to donate to the museum like in Animal Crossing, you might be giving it to your pogling to munch on instead, so they can increase their stats!
Q: Are there any other games that helped you and your team flesh out what Poglings has to offer?
Chadtronic: Zelda games have definitely influenced some aspects of Poglings... in what ways in particular I don’t know if I want to spoil that quite yet, haha.
Q: Considering that the main inspiration for Poglings is what would be considered side content to a larger game, what have you and your team done to expand upon the inspirations? What makes Poglings into a full game?
Chadtronic: Like mentioned before, inspiration and aspects from Animal Crossing really helped shape how you progress in Poglings. However, a lot more work has gone into expanding these ideas beyond what Animal Crossing does with them. Some things we re-invented, some things we did not. But most importantly, our goal was to take what people loved about the original ‘side content’ like you mentioned and enhance that concept with a world that feels more complete with its own story. Poglings has its own lore and unique cast of characters that we’re really excited for players to discover and meet.
Q: So just how expansive are the Wild Vine Islands? How much is there to explore?
Chadtronic: To quickly describe it, the Wild Vine Islands are a chain of islands the Poglings inhabit. The game sets you on your own adventure where one of the islands becomes your own. Your island will have a lot of detailed areas you can explore, like your nest, the beach, a cave, and so on. A lot of the characters you meet will set up camp and live on your island. There’s also an entire area solely dedicated to racing Poglings which, in size, is bigger than your island!
Q: Was the name "Poglings" from the old Pogs toys from the ’90s? Or was it from the pog meme that’s surfaced in recent years?
Chadtronic: Most people seem to think it has something to do with one of those two things, and understandably so, but it’s a bit sillier than that, actually. When I was younger, I thought one of the most fun words was 'polliwog,' which is a term for a tadpole. I also always thought the process of a tadpole turning into something so different from its beginning form was so cool, which also ties into the theme of Poglings. So ‘Pogling’ is basically a play on the word ‘polliwog.'
Q: Poglings is adapting Sonic Adventure’s Chao Racing mechanics, but not Chao Karate. Is there a reason for this?
Chadtronic: For now, we’re focused on racing since that’s the crowd favorite, but in the future, we absolutely want to add other kinds of fun competitive games for Poglings to participate in.
Q: You’ve been revealing tons of information about the game on its official Twitter, @Poglings. How much information can future players expect from these Twitter updates?
Chadtronic: I try to reveal something every day about the game. With that said, I’m also still withholding quite a lot. I’m trying to save a lot of surprises for our Kickstarter reveal trailer which will be launching very soon this spring! If fans follow our Kickstarter page found on the game's website and Twitter, they'll be notified the day we launch!
Q: Is there anything else about Poglings that you’d like to talk about, but we didn’t touch on?
Chadtronic: It’s still a little far away, but I’m really looking forward to getting this game in players' hands. I know firsthand this is a game a particular audience has been craving for a really long time, and I can’t wait to watch everyone sink hundreds of hours into it. Thanks in advance to anyone who ends up backing our Kickstarter, I know we’ll have a lot of awesome rewards for backers including beta access. Also, wish listing Poglings on Steam is a big help, so don't forget to do that too, if you're interested!
Poglings is currently in development for PC and Nintendo Switch.
