Petal Runner is a lovingly cozy Game Boy throwback from a two-person Canadian team

Petal Runner is one of the most cozy and wholesome games I’ve played in a while.

In between the chaos of tightly scheduled appointments across LA for Summer Game Fest, I found myself utterly endeared to this Game Boy Color-esque, pixellated coming-of-age game. The lovingly nostalgic aesthetic and Tamagotchi-inspired digital monster collecting mechanic would have been enough to make Petal Runner appealing, but I was most surprised by the fact that Canadian developer Nano Park Studios consists of just two first-time game makers.

Indeed, to produce any game is in itself impressive, but to have your debut title get the backing of a beloved American merchandise maker and publisher like iam8bit, garner more than 20,000 Steam wishlists in your first week and demo your game at an international event like Summer Game Fest is something else entirely. Appropriately enough, though, the team behind such a warm and cozy “slice of life” adventure game has its own humble origin story.

It all started by a chance encounter a few years ago between Brandon James Greer, a Calgary-based pixel artist, and Vancouver-based programmer Danny Guo. Greer had been running a popular YouTube channel focused on his art (it now has over 300,000 subscribers), and this drew the attention of Guo, who had been looking to make his own pixellated game.

“We just sort of met on social media — commenting on each other’s stuff, showing admiration and support. And we found out that we both had this love of similar aesthetics and similar references, favourite movies, and that sort of stuff. And we were always supportive of [each other],” says Greer. “And then eventually, we got to the point where I had a lot of encouragement to pursue making a game with my art, and Danny was just the perfect person to add.”

And yet, it wasn’t until they made that formal meeting over video chat that they realized they were both Canadians. “It’s funny, because I don’t even know throughout all that if we knew, even if each other were from Canada or whatever. It was just sort of this guy that you know online, and it’s like, ‘Oh, wait, he’s from Vancouver, I’m from Calgary!'” says Greer.

“It felt like we were right next to each other,” adds Guo. “[Because] we ran into each other once, just randomly, on Reddit!”

Having built up a strong rapport, the pair knew they wanted to make a game that spoke to their interests, both shared and otherwise. In this case, this meant a marriage between Greer and Guo’s respective loves of animals and motorcycles, as well as a mutual interest in the cyberpunk genre. That was the genesis for Petal Runner, a game in which the teenage Cali becomes a specialized courier known as a “Petal Runner” and rides on his bike with a virtual fox companion to deliver digital high-tech HanaPets in the sun-soaked city of Sapphire Valley.

Interestingly, their shared experience of living in the Rockies also informed some of the design elements of the world itself.

“Some of the bodies of water are probably inspired by the Vancouver area, and the bridges and stuff. We also talked about elevations in malls and how you can enter on one level and walk around and exit another one. ‘How does that work, and how can we represent that in the game?'” says Guo.

“That was another thing to bond over. A couple of malls in Calgary, you enter on the ground floor, then you go up a level, and you exit, and you’re on the ground level because of all the hills in the city,” adds Greer. “[We had] that same experience of being from very elevated towns in the Rockies.”

The Canadian-isms also extend to some of the storytelling. In one scene during the demo, there’s a character named “Dr. Maple,” who Guo confirmed is both a nod to Pokémon‘s tree-themed professors and Nano Park’s native Canada. And it doesn’t stop there. “We write the dialogue for the game also, we write the story, so a lot of the characters, you’ll find ending sentences with ‘eh.’ Some of them maybe apologize too much,” quips Greer.

“And also, for spelling, we’ve got ‘U’ in the words — all that sort of stuff.” adds Guo. “It’s a Canadian RPG!” says Greer.

On top of the comfort and nostalgia of hanging out in malls and other communal areas, Petal Runner‘s sense of coziness also comes from how it handles its core gameplay. It’s easy to imagine how any sort of Pokémon-style “monster collecting” game would involve a form of combat, but Petal Runner, to its immense credit, eschews any of that. Instead, you “calibrate” each HanaPet by pacifying it through little minigames like scrubbing and feeding them.

“I’m pet owner, I have two cats, and so that’s always been a part of the aesthetic that I like to bring into my artwork: having cute animals in it. So that’s the ingredient that was brought into the game,” says Greer. “And it’s like, ‘Okay, we have these cute animals, can we do something that is just honouring and nurturing these cute companions, and we don’t need to battle them? What’s the alternative?’ We can kind of find this mechanic where we’re nurturing them, so a lot of the minigames are little sort of snippets of pet care.”

At the same time, the pair tease that this story will tug on the heartstrings as it explores themes of growing up and letting go. Given the cyberpunk angle and the official Steam description noting that first-gen HanaPets like Kira are facing obsolescence, it’s easy to imagine what sorts of emotional directions the narrative might take.

In the meantime, though, I find myself in awe of Greer and Guo’s journey and how far they’ve come already. In many ways, they perfectly encapsulate the unbelievably creative and talented spirit of Canadian developers who constantly punch above their own weight. Naturally, then, I had to ask: what advice would they give for others in Canada who aspire to make games?

“Find a friend!” Guo quickly responds. “Find someone to share it with, because doing it alone, you could probably do it, but it’s so much more fun to share everything.”

“Yeah, collaborating and bringing those skills together the project — everybody contributing to it with their own individual set of skills and mixing those inspirations,” adds Greer.

Guo also admits that he and Greer were “very serendipitous” with Petal Runner because they initially reached out to iam8bit to inquire about crowdfunding advice, only to be offered support through the company’s publishing label, iam8bit Presents. That said, they want to stress that they’d “spent years honing [their] individual crafts,” which, of course, helped make a game that caught iam8bit’s attention in the first place.

They also encourage people to check out local game development groups, like Alberta Makes Games and Vancouver’s Full Indie, as well as provincial and national funding opportunities like the Canada Media Fund. “It’s really just not being afraid to reach out, thinking that you have no chance,” says Guo.

But above all else, they recommend networking, and stress that it can be done in seemingly unorthodox ways like the one that led them to connect in the first place.

“The internet plays such a big part of it, too,” says Greer. “That’s how we break away from kind of our regional restrictions — that you can share this with the world, with the internet. And the people that love it, love it in all sorts of countries, so they’ll find that aesthetic, and give you encouragement and stuff, and you can link up with people all over.”

This interview has been edited for language and clarity.

Petal Runner will launch sometime in 2026 on PC. You can wishlist the game on Steam.

Image credit: Nano Park Studios/iam8bit