Meet the Popmate

7 November 2026

Every player in Popmates is a balloon, and the balloon is called a Popmate. This post covers how it came together over days 1 to 3, plus the walking test from day 7.

Small on purpose

The game is drawn on a 480 by 270 pixel canvas, so a Popmate is tiny: its body is 21 pixels wide and 25 tall, and with its string it is 38 pixels tall. That size was a rule from the start: a Popmate has to read clearly at its real size, not only when zoomed in. Here is the reference sheet, enlarged:

A reference sheet on a dark background: a large coral balloon close up at four times its size; a row of five balloons labelled Coral, Sky, Mint, Sun and Lilac; a row of five coral balloons labelled Happy, Joy, Wow, Wink and Game; and the five balloons standing on grass with name tags — The reference sheet from the art test. The row on grass shows the real game size, before enlarging.

Five colours, five moods

There are five colours, coral, sky, mint, sun and lilac, and five moods, happy, joy, wow, wink and game (game is its game face). Every colour is the same drawing with a different set of colours swapped in, so all 25 combinations come from one design:

A small sprite sheet of balloon faces: every combination of five colours and five expressions, packed in rows, plus the string on its own — The game sheet, enlarged: every colour with every mood.

In the plan, the five colours are free for everyone, and your mood is the face your Popmate wears when it is idle. Emotes and moments in a match will swap the face for a second. The face is deliberately simple: round eyes with a glint, a small smile and blush marks. There is no room for glasses or anything else on the face, which turned out to matter later, when planning the cosmetics.

The string and the bob

There is only one drawing of a Popmate, facing you. It never turns to show its side or back. Instead it shows movement with a flip when it changes direction, a gentle bob and a little squash, with its string trailing below. The string is a separate piece, so that later it can be swapped for a fancier one.

The first walk

On day 7 a Popmate took its first steps:

A coral balloon with the name tag Bloop floating over a paved square in a meadow, with a pond, dirt paths, a wooden signpost, bushes, rocks and green and pink trees — The walking test: a Popmate on a test map, steered with the arrow keys or WASD.

You steer with the arrow keys or WASD, in eight directions. The balloon slides along water and the map's edge instead of getting stuck, bobs as it goes, and does a one-pixel squash when it settles. The camera follows it. Automated tests check it at 1080p, at 1440p, at two ultrawide sizes and at a laptop size, so the pixels stay square on all of them.

It is a test map, not a real island, and you walk alone: other players, and the server that would show them to you, are still to come. But it is the first time a Popmate goes where you tell it to, and it is very pleased about it.