So we’ve got a new character to show you. And it’s a Hedgehog. A slightly blue Hedgehog. That’s pure coincidence. And it’s so cute! That’s coming from someone who doesn’t use that term regularly.

But worry not, you won’t be going around smacking the Hedgehogs. That just wouldn’t be nice. Instead, you get to make friends with them. And while you can pet them, we don’t think this will qualify A Giant Problem for Can You Pet The Dog.



The Hedgehogs are the second ally the player will have. Where the Gnomes are your melee units, the Hedgehogs are your range units. And to make it even better, they’re using their own spines as arrows. It may sound painful, but don’t worry they do so willingly and are never harmed in the process.



These little buddies will help you with your defenses. Of course it’s still very much going to be on you to clear the enemies and make sure your little friends don’t get hurt. But the placement of them will help alleviate some of the pressure. And like just about everything else in A Giant Problem, you’ll be able to get hands on with the Hedgehogs and use them as a very spikey weapon. If that’s your thing.



We’re not quite sure why you would. They’re just so cute, that any giant, no matter how ferocious will want to just curl up in a corner and just stroke their little chins. Which has led some on the Critical Charm team to suggest a mode where you get to just lie on the ground while Hedgehogs curl up and snooze on you. Sadly we don’t have a pun for that mode.



More important than a pun, is the name of the Hedgehogs. Internally we’ve had some debate about them. One side wants to call them pixies, as they’re inspired by the Pixie drawn by Brian Froud in the book Faeries. So we’re going to turn to you to answer what their name should be. We’ll put up a poll on Twitter and you can decide what we call them. You can find the poll here.



In the pictures above you get a look at Minna’s process for creating the Hedgehog. 3D character creation is complex, especially for VR when the player can see objects from all angles. It means there can’t be any oversights. Which for a short while meant the Hedgehog didn’t have a butt. That’s now remedied thanks to Minna’s diligent work. And if you’re wondering, she works in Blender to create the models. Hopefully in the future we can get her to provide some of her tips and tricks for Blender, modeling, texturing and animating characters for VR.

Until then you can wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam! And be sure to share it with your friends, family, and enemies who are also interested in VR. There’s no reason to deny them such fun!

One of the first things we had to decide in creating A Giant Problem was how big you, as the player, are. The easy answer is big. But it’s more complicated than that, because it’s a matter of how big. It may seem trivial to say bigger than big, and larger than large. Yet it still doesn’t answer the question of how gigantic should the player be in comparison to the rest of the world.

For one, we’re dealing with two very different worlds and how the player feels in each of them. Everyone has a sense of how big their bodies are and how they move in the real world. We’re trying to replicate the movement as much as possible in A Giant Problem, but the size is a different issue, because we’re putting you in the form of a giant. So your hands are larger, unless you’re someone with particularly sizable appendages.



Hands are the first thing that let you know as a player you’re working at a different scale than in real life. Not only do they look and feel bigger, but there’s a certain clumsiness to them. Which stems from the lack of finesse in VR, and that works in our favor as giants aren’t perceived as graceful creatures. Not that they can’t be, we’d love to make a game where you’re an extremely large ballerina. That’s just not this game.

Though that may be the sequel - A Giant Problem Tutu. Or A Giant Problem: On Pointe. Or A Giant Problem: High Barre. And even A Giant Problem: Second Position.

The lack of grace works in our favor. Figuring out an appropriate scale doesn’t. In part because everyone has a different idea of what a giant is. Or really how big one is. Even the mythologies of the world have giants being of different sizes. They go anywhere from a couple meters tall to tens if not hundreds of meters tall. For us, we decide to go on the shorter end, because of all the additional difficulties that arise the bigger a player gets.

Basically the bigger you become, the smaller enemies become, to make you feel like a giant. And small enemies are hard to hit. They’re hard to hit whether you’ve got a sword, club, rock or even a gun. No there are no guns in A Giant Problem. But the logic applies. Also weapon differentiation becomes extremely difficult when there’s a size difference. How is a sword behaving any differently than a club or a spear when you’re trying to smack something small - it doesn’t.

Get too big and then you can also start to feel less powerful if you can’t kill enemies quickly. Think of it like smushing bugs. We’re so much bigger than, most of, them. Don’t look up anything from Australia. Seriously, avoid all Australian insects and arachnids. So we expect and want them to die in a single hit. If any enemy or a bug doesn’t die in a single hit then we don’t feel powerful. And feeling powerful is part of being a giant.

The other issue that comes with items or creatures being so much smaller than you in VR, is how you interact with them. You’re going to want to pick them up. It’s fun. It’s part of being a giant. What isn’t fun is always bending down or looking down. It’s taxing on your lower back, and even worse for your neck if you’re staring at your feet with the weight of a VR headset straining you. So we have a simple solution - we call it Reach.

It basically makes you a Jedi. So you can pull objects to your hand from some distance away. It’s got a limited range, and once players start using it they generally stop bending over all together. This has the bonus affect of getting players to look forward more, rather than down. It improves the playability immensely even if it doesn’t immediately scream “giant” at you. That in turn makes the game more fun, and players capable of playing for longer sessions.

So that’s a little design break down for the game. We’ll have more on it in the future. For now, be sure to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam if you haven’t already!

Match Up The XR Event is an annual SLUSH pre-event in Helsinki, focusing on AR/VR industry, technologies and solutions. The event is held now for the third time and it will host 400+ attendees from all over the world. The Event is free of charge – tickets available now! This year the main organizer is  brand new Helsinki XR Center together with Metropolia UAS & FIVR – Finnish Virtual Reality Association.

Guess who happens to be based at HXRC and is a member of FIVR? That’s right Critical Charm! So we’ll be at Match Up in all our glory. A Giant Problem will be there too! So it’s the perfect time to come demo our work and see all the advances we’ve made. We may also live stream the event again. But we’ll let you know more closer to the date.

• Companies interested in new solutions in VR/AR solutions
  
• Companies looking for new partners and new talents
  
• AR/VR teams and startups seeking new customers
  
• Industry experts
  
• Academics
  
• Students

During the evening attendees will meet top VR/AR companies and startups. Forefront corporations tell how they have already utilized XR in their projects and keynote speakers will share their industry expertise and outlook of future XR development and technologies. And yes, there’s food and drinks!


As part of the evening program, we’re arranging a matchmaking session. You can have 20 minute 1 to 1 meetings with other participants. Attending a matchmaking event is a quick and easy way to meet new potential cooperation partners. High speed meetings are perfect for first impressions and new contacts. This is your chance to make a first impression that lasts!


16:00 – 21:00 Demos and Exhibition / Mingling, food and drinks
17:00 – 18:00 Welcome to Match Up!
18:00 – 20:00 Keynotes – Live stream with XR industry leader(s) & Fireside Chat
18:00 – 20:00 XR Match Up – 1 to 1 Meetings

Registration is now open click here. The event is free of charge, however, you need to register to get your event badge from the entrance. For the whole evening program and one-to-one meetings (matchmaking).

Alright, that’s seriously enough. We’ve clearly committed a number of offenses…

And we can’t stop. Or maybe we just don’t want to.

But that’s just because we’re excited for our latest feature update, and that’s a point system! A la your favorite RPG games. That’s right! Whether it’s Destiny, Borderlands, Diablo or any number of other games with numbers flying through the air! We now have that too!



This announcement may leave you wondering - what’s the big deal? Numbers, smumbers. Everyone’s got numbers. And yes everyone’s got numbers. But no one has numbers like us. That’s probably factually false. Instead a way to look at it is, we’re just doing good game design.

And numbers are part of it. The numbers displayed in A Giant Problem, aren’t damage. Rather they’re the points the player receives for hitting or killing enemies. The sum of which is displayed to the player throughout the game and at the end of a level. It’s a simple arcade aspect, yet one well worth leaning into for what it does for the overall feel of the game.



Numbers, as they often are in any games, serve two purposes. One - they let the player know how they’re doing. And two - they serve as encouragement to do better. For A Giant Problem, that means encouraging the player to do something more than just smashing the oncoming horde of goblins. It could be throwing them, swatting them aside, tossing a fireball at them, etc. Experimentation is rewarded. It’s part of the design of the game, and the numbers flying through the air help highlight that.

They’re also very pretty.



Pretty aside, we won’t say right now how the points and the scores tie in to the rest of the game. Just know that they will. More on that in a future update.

For now, if you haven’t already, be sure to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam. And subscribe to our newsletter on our website to stay up-to-date on all that’s happening with A Giant Problem and us at Critical Charm.

It’s on newsstands now and available online for free from a variety of sources, just head over to the Wireframe website to get all the details.

It may seem odd for us, a VR game development team, to be included both in a magazine that is ostensibly for Raspberry Pi, but also in such illustrious company as Shahid Kamal Ahmad from Ultimatum Games and Shane McCafferty from Rocketship Park. But the article is about distributed development.

The Critical Charm team generally works from the office. That’s not required though. Everyone can and does work from home when they want or need to. It’s made for a pretty relaxed production overall. It helps that we’re constantly refining our production methods and trying to be as communicative as possible.

Communication is everything in production, especially in something as complex as game development. Only solo developers can afford to not talk to anyone or everyone. But then it begs the question - how will they gain an audience? That’s a question for another blog post. For us, communication is key. It’s what makes remote working a possibility.

Of course we’re right on track with the rest of Finland in this regard. Just take a look at the impact the Working Hours Act is going to have on Finland. So we’re not doing anything special. We’re just trying to build a company that recognize the reality of the people who work for it. What helps is Greg having a child and Minna have a dog. In both cases they have hard outs everyday, as they have someone else they have to take care of. So it swiftly helps create a culture and an expectation within Critical Charm about what’s important - family.

Our Chief Happiness Officer won’t allow us to crunch either, but neither will our production methods and planning. While VR game development may be quite resource heavy, we do benefit from our small size, as it means all the programmers can take a VR kit home. It’s small things like that which make life easier. Along with the phenomenal internet Finland has.

If you want to read more about distributed development, then be sure to check out the latest issue of Wireframe! And if you want to stay up-to-date on our production methods be sure to signup for our newsletter on our website. Also, don’t forget to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam!

Someone at Oculus clearly thinks we’re doing something right. And that’s why we’ve been nominated to be highlighted by the Oculus Indie Spotlight at Devcom, before Gamescom. It’s an honor and we’re proud to be included in such remarkable company. The other two companies nominated include Pixel Toys and Neat Corporation. Be sure to go check out there games!

We’re a young company, just over a year old at this point, and A Giant Problem has been our main focus for the past six months. So to be recognized for what we’ve created and what our intentions are, is fantastic. That recognition is something we’re not going to squander.

While we want to be more explicit about our plans for both A Giant Problem and the company, we have to keep quiet for the moment. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more blog posts, more live streams, and more interviews with the team. We intend to do all of that and more. Maybe we’ll even start a discord server.

For now, content yourself with the knowledge that Critical Charm is hard at work bring you the best version of A Giant Problem. So to stay up-to-date on the game be sure to wishlist it on Steam!

You know Chuck Jones from the classic look of Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, and other wonderful animated works. His work is so synonymous with cartoons that you might not even realize you’ve been watching it. It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t seen something of his.

For us it was undoubtedly a part of our childhoods, how could it not be when we saw the name Chuck Jones associated with so much. Sure there have been other incarnations of Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny and friends, and now even two other takes on the Grinch. But there is something about those cartoons that is extremely applicable to game development, especially VR game development.

Maurice Noble is best known for his with Chuck Jones. It’s the flat, cartoonish backgrounds of these works that is one of the inspirations for the skyboxes. He really pioneered this style in American animation. There is a fantastic episode of 99% Invisible if you want to learn more about him and his work. His work can be seen on the left, below.




Thomas Romain, is the other inspiration for the art style of A Giant Problem. Best known for his work Ōban Star-Racers and the one for which many of the shapes of clouds and landscapes are a direct influence. As a parent what he does with his kids is also astounding and something some the team aspire to do in terms of sharing our love of creating. His work can be seen on the right, above.

Backgrounds or the skyboxes in our case may go unremarked upon. But they are integral to allowing the player to imagine more about the world. Even in a passing glance, a skybox can evoke something in the player’s imagination. They offer the opportunity for more, while never specifying what that is. And that ability to allow people to add to the story or universe, to play in the theater of the mind is one of the most powerful things we can do in storytelling.

Those skyboxes of course are supported by, and supplement, the low-poly style we’ve gone for with the environments. It has its benefits when it comes to running on lower power systems. But more importantly it helps make the game immersive. Which is key in a VR title like A Giant Problem. Minna’s chosen style does wonders for that.

Minna, has without a doubt, brought her own sensibilities and flavors to A Giant Problem and its art style. It’s incorporated the best of Noble and Romain, yet is still distinct.



Animation is a large part of VR. And when you’re playing a giant turns out you need the other actors to emote like they’re working in a theater. Meaning subtly goes out the window. Any character needs to have their actions and emotions readable from a distance. Much in the manner that Chuck Jones made his characters supremely expressive through their movements. Where most games aim for a cinematic feel, close-ups a technique common to cinema and TV are not necessarily what will work in a game like A Giant Problem.

Minna has taken this into account. And so as we progress through the development of the game, she’s ensuring that each character has a set of unique animations that convey the intent, emotions and personality of them. Something that’s even more important when you’re putting hordes of enemies onto a map for the player to encounter. If you think this troll is something, just wait she has some truly astounding designs we’ve yet to share.

There’s a great episode of Every Frame A Painting about Chuck Jones’ work. We highly recommend you watch it, as it’ll give you a new appreciation for what he’s done. And if you want to see more of our Art Director Minna’s work then head over to Art Station. And if you want to stay up-to-date on our work be sure to sign up for our newsletter below. Don’t forget to wishlist A Giant Problem either!

A blog is all well and good but in today’s high-tech and hip environment of game development, you need video. And what better thing to video than us… playing games. Mostly it’ll be our game, A Giant Problem. But occasionally we’ll play other games as well. When we do we’ll discuss the games, and perhaps do a design breakdown to see what we can learn from those games. Or maybe we’ll just have fun and hopefully you will along with us.

Playing games isn’t the only thing we have planned for the live streams. We’re hoping to show Minna’s art and animation processes, Jaakko and Patrick’s coding prowess and problem solving skills, and even Marjo’s abilities wielding her spear. Greg may even run an RPG for the team from time to time. And of course we plan on having regular Q&As with the team about their work, the game, and even what it’s like in Finland.

We’ll stream to Twitch, so either click the link or search for Critical Charm, and be sure to follow or subscribe to our channel. If Twitch isn’t your thing, don’t worry we have you covered. Our entire library of streams will be made available on YouTube. The first episode is already available!



The plan is for us to stream weekly on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, and all times will be GMT+3 since we are in Helsinki, Finland. But we’ll be sure to put out a tweet about it announcing the upcoming stream. So if you don’t follow us on Twitter, ask yourself why not.

If you have questions or suggestions for us be sure to send them in using the Contact page. Or hit us up on any of our social media channels, and don’t forget to use the hashtag #AGiantProblem. And you can subscribe to our newsletter below to stay up-to-date on all that’s going on with us. If you haven’t already, be sure to wishlist A Giant Problem on Steam!

Trolls are an iconic fantasy race. We see them in everything from Tolkien’s works to Dungeon and Dragons, and of course every work that’s influenced by them. Trolls in all these cases tend to be hulking brutes with more strength than intelligence. And we figured why knock a good thing, especially when their concept is so good at knocking over things. Or in the case of A Giant Problem - walls.

The difficulty in actually designing a troll comes in making them recognizably trolls. If you compare all the trolls in pop culture there is no one set idea of their appearance. Some trolls have hair, some are tall, others short, some resemble the environment, and still others have bright colors.



If we look to mythology then it gets even more confusing, because the further back you go the less definite the idea of a troll becomes. During some periods the word troll is used to describe any magical creature. That encompasses what we know today as gnomes, dwarves, and elves. If we look at modern Swedish, then the word troll can be translated as troll, goblin, hobgoblin, or ogre. And forms of the word troll are even used today to describe humans - trollkarl translates from Swedish to English as wizard, magician, warlock and all of their synonyms.

So what’s a troll to us? From a game design perspective, it’s a tank. Trolls are characters that are quite strong, hearty, focused, yet slow. They’re the perfect battering ram. If players are tasked with defending the village and its walls, then the troll makes for the perfect high priority target. Of course they’ll be balanced against some other enemies, but more on those in a future update.

Game design, especially character design, needs to take into account more than just the role a particular enemy plays. Given A Giant Problem is a VR game, every enemy needs to be readily identifiable. And not just from their silhouette. Most first person games have you looking at other characters in a straight-on view, but as you play a giant your view of enemies shifts to being closer to an isometric one. This means the troll has to be identifiable from more angles.



The easiest way to do that is scale. Trolls are some of the largest enemies you’ll face in the game, but of course you’re still bigger. We’re hoping to show you how big soon. Until then be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on A Giant Problem, and don’t forget to wishlist our game on Steam!

In the past few months we've overhauled the look of the game. So what you see now, in the screenshots section, is the style for the game. It's more cartoonish and low-poly and we're quite pleased with it. We find it very reminiscent of Chuck Jones' work if you remember the old Looney Tunes show with Bugs Bunny, etc.

This look does a number of things for us, asides from providing a more unified style that's coherent throughout. It also communicates better where the player can move. And movement in VR is about setting clear expectations. So now the player can walk anywhere, though they cannot climb. But that's a tradeoff we think is worth it to help players avoid motion sickness.

The cartooniness also ties in better with the low-level of violence. There isn't blood or guts, but as a giant you are throwing around goblins and trolls. So making them go poof and disappear when they're hurt ties in nicely with the art style.

We're also developing the game with the Oculus Quest in mind. As we're a small team that means we have to be very conscious of our resources both in game and in the real world. So a move to this art style helps us with both of those concerns.

In addition, while we want this game to be as good and as challenging as possible for our players. We also want it to be inviting to players of all ages and backgrounds. And we feel this style does that, without compromising gameplay. So if you're trying to convince your family that VR is the way to go, hopefully A Giant Problem will convince them.

Be sure to wishlist the game to stay up-to-date about its development, and visit our website to sign up for the mailing list. There you'll get exclusive news and details about the team, the game, and our work.