Dressing a balloon

7 November 2026

A balloon with a top hat is funnier than a balloon without one. This post covers days 4 and 5, when the plan for cosmetics was rethought and the first draft set was made. Almost all of it is still planned; I will say which parts exist.

Styles and colourways

The plan has four things you can change: your body, a hat, your string and something on your back, such as wings, a cape or a backpack. Each piece is a style, one distinct shape, like a top hat or a baseball cap. Each style comes in two to four chosen colourways: the top hat in red, black or violet, for example.

Two rules keep this honest: two styles must look different in outline, and a new colour is never sold as a new style.

Shopkeepers and sets

In the plan, each island has two or three shopkeepers, and each one sells a themed set of three styles: a hat, a string and a back piece. A shopkeeper wears their own set's hat. The same shopkeepers hand out small errands, and an errand can reward a special colourway that you cannot buy.

You pay with tokens earned by playing. Everything is decorative only; nothing you wear changes how you score.

What got cut, and why

The first cosmetics plan had more in it, and several ideas were dropped on day 4:

Free dyes, where you could recolour any item. Every item started to feel like a recolour of every other one.
Auras and a "Pop Style" reveal effect. Too complicated for what they added.
Face gear, such as glasses. A Popmate's face is tiny, and it only has room for the eyes, a smile and blush marks. Test glasses hid the eyes, and a monocle disappeared at real size.

A first draft set

To test all of this, the first draft set is the Ringmaster's, for Carnival Isle (both working names). It has a top hat in Carnival Red, Midnight and Showtime Violet, and a bunting string (a string with little pennant flags) in Carnival Red, Gold and Showtime Violet. Its back piece does not exist yet, so the set is not finished.

A tall reference sheet of balloons: the bunting string in three colours and the top hat in three colours, each worn by all five balloon colours; the full set on the five moods; the same pieces in greyscale; and a final row of tiny balloons at real game size — The Ringmaster draft sheet: every style in every colourway on every body colour, then in greyscale and at real size.

Every set will get a sheet like this before it ships, to check that each colourway stays visible on every body colour, in colour and in greyscale. This one already shows two weak spots: the bunting is small at real size, and the Midnight hat is almost black in greyscale.

Here are the pieces on the test page, next to the three older test pieces (a wizard hat, a flower crown and a ribbon-bow string), which are kept only for testing:

Rows of balloons in all five colours and five moods: on the left in purple wizard hats with pink ribbon-bow strings, in the middle in flower crowns, and on the right in the Ringmaster top hat with the bunting string — The test page that checks every piece on every colour and mood. The wizard hats, flower crowns and ribbon bows are test pieces, not for sale.

Next, in the plan, come the first back piece and a string with a charm on the end, so strings read better at real size.