The Ukrainian video game development team Yellow Fish Arts is working on a cozy and picturesque 2D point & click adventure, Missi in the style of watercolor drawings. dev.ua spoke with artist Yevgeny Movlev about how the project came about, the use of AI in video game development, and working in blackouts.
The Ukrainian video game development team Yellow Fish Arts is working on a cozy and picturesque 2D point & click adventure, Missi in the style of watercolor drawings. dev.ua spoke with artist Yevgeny Movlev about how the project came about, the use of AI in video game development, and working in blackouts.
«The idea for the game appeared 7 years ago as a somewhat personal project for my daughter. Mice were everywhere in the house: dozens of plush or knitted toys, books, clothes with mice on them, and much more. The first sketches appeared at the same time, but at that time the drawing skills were sorely lacking to create a truly interesting world,» said Yevgeny.
In 2023, he went through a lot of creative searching and decided to approach the game creation again. The developer was impressed by GRIS’s sensitive artwork, its watercolor style, and incredible music.
«Previously, similar feelings were caused by Child of Light from Ubisoft and the Tukoni demo, which I enjoyed playing earlier. As for the genre, I saw successful cases of Ukrainian indie games Shapik, Boxville, and inspiring masterpieces from Amanita Design,» says Yevgeny.
Currently, four specialists are working on Missi: an animator, two developers, and a game designer. Two Ukrainian composers were also involved in the development, who created «simply fabulous classical melodies» for the levels.
«Missi is a debut game, and its development is not going as smoothly as we would like. In general, studying the stories of other indie teams, we can say that the first game is like walking through a field with a rake. Having no experience in game development, a mistake was made at the very beginning: a lot of art was created without interacting with programmers. There were reasons for this, but thus the start of development was postponed for a year. Then we had to redo a lot when the developers introduced us in detail to the engine and sprite preparation,» said Yevgeny Movlev.
Missi is developed on the Unity engine. It was chosen because of its popularity to simplify the search for new people for the team. However, it still wasn’t without difficulties. According to Yevgeny, people with different experiences came to the project, so Yellow Fish Arts had to change the architecture twice, essentially starting to write code from scratch.
One of Missi’s features is the use of classic stop-motion animation.
«I think bone animation is simpler, but it has a lot of limitations. I really wanted everything to look like illustrations from children’s books that had come to life, although this is quite a lot of work. More than 2,000 frames have already been drawn for the game, which will then be assembled on the engine. In general, we misjudged the amount of work from the very beginning. And if they say that we need to multiply the planned time by three, then for debut projects, we probably need to allocate five times more time than planned,» the developer believes.
According to Yevgeny Movlev, AI in game development is quite popular now, but Yellow Fish Arts didn’t have a good time with the new tools.
«Unfortunately or fortunately, artificial intelligence is unable to reproduce many things. It gets ridiculous when, for example, it is unable to draw a gear exactly or animate the simplest drawing,» says Yevgeny.
The developer of Missi added that AI is sometimes used to create references when it can’t find suitable art on Pinterest, or to roughly sketch out ideas in the GPT chat.
In the gameplay, the developers tried to move away from the classic search for objects, especially the so-called «pixel hunting.» This mechanic was simplified as much as possible by changing the cursor on active objects. The main thing in Missi is a picturesque world, unusual characters and puzzles.
«We had to play and rewatch a couple dozen games, studying the basic mechanics. There are also channels with solving real puzzles made of wood or metal. This helped us fill the game with various puzzles, which we hope are interesting and original,» said Yevgeny Movlev.
One of the important elements is the book of recipes and memories, which the main character Missy takes on a journey from the very beginning of the game. On its pages, the player can see pictures with past adventures of the mouse and her son. They also contain hidden clues to solving puzzles, and the player must independently understand what will help him with the mystery on the stage. The developers say that they did not want to make the puzzles too complicated, but warn that their imagination may have «gone too far» several times and some puzzles still need to be tested.
There is no nonlinearity in the game — Yevgeny compares it to a children’s book, which gives the reader a complete magical story. At the same time, the game hides several tasks for obtaining achievements that the player may miss during the first playthrough. Therefore, the developers have provided the opportunity to replay individual levels to collect a full collection of awards.
Missi is not tied to any folklore and is more likely pure fantasy and fairy tale. However, the developers found it difficult to resist adding a few secrets with references to Ukrainian state symbols, and attentive players will be able to see them. There will also be no Russian in the game — Yevgeny notes that this is mostly a symbolic gesture, since there is practically no text in Missi and everything is conveyed through visuals and interaction.
«It’s generally impossible to develop a game in Ukraine right now and be disconnected from reality. For example, this winter we lost almost three months of development due to a power outage. One of the developers is in Odessa, and sometimes the light appeared for no more than two hours a day,» notes Yevgeny Movlev.
According to him, team members work or study, so it is difficult for them to find the strength and time in such conditions.
«The constant shelling of cities and news about the deaths of Ukrainians are incredibly depressing. Working on a cozy game gives you a chance to get distracted, but it doesn’t always work. There are a lot of indie developers in Ukraine, and it’s really cool that they continue to create games even during the war,» the artist believes.
Yevgeny Movlev says that despite the fact that the release date of Missi is scheduled for 2026, the developers are trying to be realistic.
«We will be happy if the release takes place in 2027. Today we are very close to releasing a demo that will show the first two levels of the game. The graphic part of the entire game is almost finished, but there is still a lot of work to be done on creating the code and transferring the art to the engine,» the developer shared.
After release, Yellow Fish Arts plans to focus on releasing the game on other platforms and potentially creating an artbook. The team also has many ideas for future games, but they are not yet fully formed.
«There is a desire to create small games, and everything fictional seems too large-scale. So for now we have focused on the story about the white mouse Missy, which we hope future players will like,» said Yevgeny.
