Poglings aims to be the game that fans have been asking for, a return of the Chao Garden from Sonic games, for the last twenty years. Despite Sonic Team saying that the pet-raising mechanics would be brought back with enough support from fans, the feature hasn't returned once. Now, YouTuber Chadtronic has decided to take his memories of the Chao Garden and his wife's love of Animal Crossing to make an entirely new game.
However, as much as a Chao Garden-inspired indie game sounds like a dream come true for some Sonic fans, there's one tricky part to adapting a feature to an entirely different game. The Chao Garden was a small piece of what made the widely cherished Sonic Adventure titles, and it would be completely up to Chadtronic and his team at Right Nice Games to fill in the blanks. Luckily, the two collaborators knew this when development began.
Poglings Proves that Several Heads are Better Than One
The pet-raising simulator Poglings was conceptualized by Chadtronic and his wife. The two created a "bible" of sorts that acted as the original pitch for the game that detailed exactly how the world and its titular creatures worked. Right away, Chadtronic told Game Rant that he and his wife found a "happy medium" by adding Animal Crossing elements amidst the Chao Garden-like world and gameplay to make a title that they both could enjoy together.
From there, Chadtronic and his company, Yojoyco Studios, looked for a team to help make Poglings a reality. After roughly a year of looking around, Game and UI/UX Designer Dennis Lofgren, from Right Nice Games, got in touch with the YouTuber about his pitch. According to Chadtronic, once he got acquainted with Lofgren and his team, he knew that Right Nice Games were the perfect studio to help collaborate on Poglings' development.
"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."
How Poglings Expands and Moves Ahead of Its Inspirations
As a result of Yojoyco Studios and Right Nice Games discussing and working on the game in tandem, plenty of ideas have been brought forward to make Poglings into a more full experience for players on Nintendo Switch and Steam. On the Wild Vine Islands, players will have an entire island to explore to find treasures, bugs, fish, and fruit to help with the growth of their Pogling nest, with an entire cast of characters to befriend along the way.
Chadtronic tells Game Rant that the world of Poglings has its own lore and stories to give the game its own sense of adventure while fans put hundreds of hours into breeding their dragon-dinosaur creatures. Several improvements have also been added to streamline the new game compared to the way the systems that inspired it have aged. Pogling stats, for instance, will be easier to raise compared to the lengthy process Sonic Adventure's Chao had years prior.
"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!"
Fans who are interested in the world of Poglings can expect frequent updates on the game's official social media pages leading up to the Kickstarter campaign which plans to launch this spring. These updates include what to expect when caring for Poglings, what characters await on the Wild Vine Islands, and a few sneak peeks into the Pogling evolution system. Even with these updates, Chadtronic promises there will still be plenty of surprises when the game arrives.
There's still a wait between now and when this new indie game releases. While previous announcements about the game's progress have said it's "75% finished," it was with the disclaimer that it was a "rough guess." Yojoyco Studios and Right Nice Games are still at the stage of development where almost everything shown is subject to change and improvement, so those who want to play the game as soon as possible should keep an eye out for the Kickstarter campaign's launch.
Poglings is currently in development for PC and Nintendo Switch.