Meet the mascot (and why it lost its helmet)

Every studio needs a face. Ours is a slightly surprised triangle with very big eyes. Here is where it came from.

A games label needs its own name

Slonge Games is the games label of slonge solutions. The parent company's mark is a rounded triangle drawn as one swooping line that runs from blue through gold into orange. It is calm and professional, which is right for a software company and a little quiet for a studio whose first game is a horde of skeletons.

We wanted the games label to feel related at a glance, with the same shape and the same colours, but louder. So we kept the triangle and asked what it would look like if it were playing instead of working.

Four directions, one winner

We explored four routes, all built from the same triangle:

• The play button. The triangle turned on its side, glossy, with the swoosh as a highlight. Clear, but it says "video app" before it says "games".
• The mascot. The same triangle with eyes, a grin, two hands and two feet. Blue on one side, orange on the other, exactly where the parent mark changes colour.
• The gem. A faceted crystal: the kind of thing you collect in a game.
• The coin. The gem set into a gold coin: rewarding, but close to a hundred other game logos.

The mascot won easily. It is the only one that can do things: wave, jump, look curious, react. On a small studio website and inside the games themselves, a character that moves beats a symbol that sits still.

One mascot, many costumes

We plan to make several games, and they will look nothing alike. So instead of designing a new character for each one, the mascot dresses up.

• Bonestorm Survivors: a knight's helmet with a red plume, a glowing sword and a few bones flying around.
• The tower defense game: a hard hat and a hammer, standing on its own little tower with a cannon.
• The crowd runner: a headband, running shoes and a crowd of tiny copies of itself.
• The frozen-city game: a fur hat, a long scarf and a lantern for the long winter.

On our home page these costumes turn into a level-select screen. Bonestorm Survivors is the open stage, and the other three appear as dark silhouettes with "???" over them, like locked levels in a game, until they are ready to show.

Why it lost its helmet

Our new studio intro, which comes to Bonestorm Survivors in an upcoming build, is four seconds long. The mascot marches in, in full knight costume, sword raised. A skeleton charges in after it, and the mascot decides that discretion is the better part of valour. It runs, the helmet flies off, and the skeleton chases it off screen. When the "Slonge Games" logo appears, the only thing left behind is the helmet, lying on the floor next to it.

It is a four-second joke, but it says what we want the studio to feel like: friendly, a bit silly, and always one skeleton away from trouble.

How we make it

The mascot's look was explored and refined with AI-assisted image and animation tools, then cut, cleaned up and put together by hand. The waving and jumping mascot on our home page and the studio intros both come from that process. The games themselves are built in Unity with hand-assembled 3D art, and we are looking for a 3D artist to make more of it.

Want to see the knight version in action? Join the Bonestorm Survivors beta and keep an eye on the helmet when the new intro lands.