Hungry Sky is a Western Australian development team of six. We first met Nick Lowe, Design Director at Hungry Sky, at PAX Aus 2023 and were impressed with the team’s relaxing puzzle-based title, Nekograms.
Nekograms is all about helping cute kitties take naps. Yep, it’s really that adorable. There are 15 unique cats, each with its own name. The sliding-puzzle mechanic lets you move the kitties in one direction and cushions in another. The goal is to move each feline onto comfy pillows to help it take that necessary nap.
The name uses the Japanese word for cats (neko) in a Picross-style game. The idea had been kicking around in Nick’s head for years, going through several iterations before finally launching on mobile devices in 2020. When we last spoke with Nick, the team was already hard at work on a Switch version of the game.
Fast forward 12 months and Nekograms has been released on the Nintendo Switch eShop, just in time for PAX Aus. We’re already working on our review of the game, but in the meantime, we caught up with the team again PAX Aus 2024. This year, we met with Jack Casey, Technical Director, and Ben Hammersley, Audio Director, to talk further about their current projects.
It’s hard work finishing a game. It’s even harder porting it. The team spent time getting Nekograms just right for the Nintendo Switch, including the tricky form factor. Since the original version of the title was played in a portrait orientation on smart devices, everything had to be redesigned for the landscape style of the Switch’s screen. It was a lot of work, with some teething issues along the way, but the team learnt alot and is now better prepared for porting their next game.
The big question is: Now that Nekograms is out in the wild, what’s the team working on now? The next big idea from Hungry Sky is something called Snow Cone. This change of pace swaps cats for penguins, though a strong puzzle element remains at the forefront.
Snow Cone follows Pedro the penguin in a Sokoban-inspired outing. In Sokoban, players move boxes around a warehouse. Snow Cone uses a similar mechanic to roll and stack snow into spheres. The current demo has 26 levels, though the team already has about 40 in mind. They’re aiming for a neat 100 in the final version of the game.
Although Snow Cone won’t be ready for Steam until the second half of 2025, like Nekograms, the team wants to get this onto the Switch, too. We’ll be staying tuned for more information as it develops. You can find out more about Snow Cone on Steam.
Before my farewell with the team, I had to cheekily ask whether they’re already working on their next next big idea? Unsurprisingly, it’s too early to reveal what that title might be, but rest assured, after cats and penguins, anything’s on the table. One tidbit of information we were able to glean is the possibility of a dog-based version of Nekograms. Would this be called Inugrams? how about a combination of dogs and cats in the one puzzle? Now that would be something.
In the meantime, stay tuned for our full review of Nekograms!
View Nekograms on the Nintendo Switch eShop and check out the launch trailer below.
