Paperbot

Drawn before it was digital

Paperbot started on paper. Characters, environments and interface ideas were drawn by hand, then edited, textured and animated for the game. The irregular quality of the original drawings stayed visible on screen rather than being cleaned away.

The project was developed in 2016 and later expanded into 3D character studies and a wider robotic-city concept. Neither of those replaced the original silhouette.

A complete runner-shooter loop

The playable game combined continuous movement, shooting, enemies, hazards and stage-specific navigation. La Nave, Cubierta and Descenso each used space differently, and objectives, difficulty levels and records gave every run a reason to exist beyond survival.

Mechanics, content and interface were built as one system. Character statistics, inventory, equipment, workshop upgrades, rewards and mystery boxes tied a single run to longer-term progression.

A connected mobile game

Paperbot also carried the services expected around an Android title: Google Play achievements, rankings and cloud saving. Events and additional content extended it past the initial release.

The game is available on Google Play.

A social layer for physical places

Wysh began with one product question: what changes when a conversation belongs to a place? The mobile client let people read and publish messages at street level, with the map working as part of the interaction rather than as a separate utility.

I built the complete prototype in 2017, from the Unity/C# client and its visual behaviour to the PHP API underneath it.

A complete social product

The idea grew into the systems a social network actually needs: an activity feed, public profiles, friendship requests, direct chat, comments and shared content. Each was shaped to reinforce the location layer instead of competing with it.

Owning both client and server meant the interaction model and the architecture were designed against each other, not in sequence.

Dandelions across the world

Dandelions were messages designed to travel. Someone could release one, see where it had come from, and let the distance become part of what it said.

During public distribution the prototype was used across several continents, with dandelions arriving from places including India, Canada and New Zealand. The product is now retired and no longer available in an app store.

A studio sized to keep the whole product in view.

The work started in 2016 with complete products rather than pieces of them. A game that needed art, gameplay code, an economy and connected services. A social prototype that needed a mobile client, a backend and a reason for people to open it twice. In both cases the interesting problems sat between the disciplines, not inside any one of them.

That has not changed. The studio takes on work where product, interface, engineering and craft have to be decided together, and where a handover between four specialists would lose more than it gains.

Four rules that survive contact.

One pair of hands, start to finish

The person who designs a decision writes the code for it and maintains it afterwards. Nothing gets thrown over a wall, so nothing gets specified in a way that only survives a slide.

Build in the real medium, early

Interfaces behave. A static comp cannot tell you whether a transition reads, whether a list stays legible at real density, or whether an interaction survives a slow connection. The working version answers first.

Systems over screens

A product is a set of rules that keeps holding once the happy path is gone. Progression, state, permissions and failure are designed with the same care as the first screen.

Ship what can be maintained

Complexity is a cost paid every month after launch. The version that survives is usually the smaller one that someone can still reason about a year later.

Four disciplines, one decision.

Product

Framing, scope, feature architecture, progression and economy systems.

Interaction design

Interface systems, motion and state, responsive and accessible behaviour.

Engineering

Application and game clients, APIs and services, real-time and 3D interfaces.

Visual direction

Identity systems, illustration, technical art and the craft layer on top of the build.

What this is not.

Not an agency, and not a team you can scale on demand. Work runs one engagement at a time, which is the reason it can be owned end to end and the reason availability is limited.

The published work is honest about its state. Paperbot is available on Google Play and Wysh is retired; both are shown as they are. They are here because the decisions inside them are still the clearest evidence of how this practice works.

Start a conversation

Software and product, built as one system.

Products owned end to end.

Three movements, run in order.

A practice, not a pipeline.

One signal out.