Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-08-30. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post
From the labs…
Pip the Dinosaur is paper-origami looking dinosaur that has to stop the dastardly plans of Mr. Blank who threatens to reset the planet. This fun gamelab experiment tilts into artistic design. The game is inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog. I like to think of this as Sonic’s ancestor from millions of years ago.
The story hook is this. My Blank’s M.E.T.E.O.R. doomsday weapon threatens Pip and his entire world. A celestial warlord has decided there’s far too many dinosaur-like creatures in the universe and hatched a plot to reset the planet with the ultimate of ultimate weapons: M.E.T.E.O.R. Pip and team raced against the clock to save their home, their planet and ultimately defeat the villain.
The art style is a paper-origami meets sophisticated victorian era tooling. The art style dips away from other experiments I’ve done to try and embrace a singular art aesthetic. This allowed for certain fun liberties: when Pip jumps up, he’s wadded up into a paper ball, and then unfolds when he lands.
And it opens up so many unique paper ideas with stage design that you can’t quite get away with in other artistic modes. Plus, I feel it just feels fun to see.
The game opens up with it’s official title “Folded Thunder” where the player can choose to start the run, a stage, or modify settings. The image is vibrant and just in-motion “enough” to be interesting.
One unexpected stumble on this project is the boss mechanics. While the bosses are unique and interesting, there’s a fine art to designing a boss encounter that is fun and functional. It is worth pointing out that you can’t spell functional without fun. I’ll have a follow-on update once I work thru a few more mechanical issues around the boss fights. Here’s an early gameplay video to get a sense of how this experiment runs. You may notice the rings glow relative to the player speed. It’s using that bloom effect post-processing tricks I learned with the other titles, only now it’s connected to user behavior in the game.
Until next time!
Connected work
- Folded Thunder: Meet Pip, learn the movement system, and tour all four finished paper worlds.
- Play Folded Thunder: Build speed, curl into a paper ball, and stop M.E.T.E.O.R. in the complete browser game.
- Touring more of Pip the Dinosaur: Continue into the movement tuning, boss machines, and paper-and-brass art direction.