Pokemon meets WarioWare in this Game Boy-inspired RPG: Petal Runner needs to be on your wishlist

An unabashed love letter to the days of the Game Boy Color, Petal Runner—the debut game by Nano Park Studios—immediately caught my eye months ago when I saw its highly detailed, retro-inspired pixel art. Amazingly, I got the chance to sit down with the small team behind this game (just two developers, a programmer, and a pixel artist) at Summer Game Fest over the weekend and explore their wholesome game about delivering HanaPets.

Pokémon meets WarioWare in this gorgeous pixel art RPG, Petal Runner

First, let’s take a moment to ire the incredible pixel art that went into Petal Runner. This is the handiwork of one half of the studio, Creative Director Brandon James Greer, a pixel artist with a large following on YouTube. Petal Runner features a distinctive color palette, characterized by a predominance of pinks, violets, and greens. This limited selection of colors gives the game its retro look, yet it still introduces a modern standard that I wasn’t expecting. For example, when I first hopped onto the motorcycle, the game’s primary means of traversal, I couldn’t believe how smooth it felt.

In the classic games that Petal Runner emulates, I expect to be able to move only in the four cardinal directions, essentially snapped to an invisible grid. That wasn’t the case when I was walking around, but I expected the motorcycle to feel at least a little clunky, like riding a bicycle in an old Pokémon game. But I was blown away by how the vehicle moved. I could turn smoothly in any direction, and the sprite turned gradually as I drove, rather than snapping from one image to another. Greer explained that he had painstakingly crafted sixteen different sprites for the motorcycle, which gave it a level of smoothness I’ve never seen in a pixel art game. He even pointed out that the front wheel and handlebar will twist slightly as I tilt the joystick on the controller. This game is a labor of love, and it shows.

This was the final demo I played at Summer Game Fest, and all weekend long, I had heard people talking about Petal Runner. Several people individually called it a combination of Pokémon and WarioWare, and it is safe to say that this is quite accurate. Petal Runner doesn’t feature any creature battles, as you might expect from a creature collector RPG. Your job is to deliver HanaPets, which involves compiling Leap Cells, essentially high-tech batteries that run on flowers and house the latest version of HanaPet technology.

Whenever you compile a Leap Cell, you are launched into a series of mini-games, or as the Nano Park Studios team calls them, “micro-games.” This is where the WarioWare-style gameplay comes in. These micro-games are simple, but rarely explained, and often have a short time limit. A few examples I encountered during my demo experience included washing a puppy, timing a spoon to fit into a giraffe’s mouth, avoiding asteroids as a UFO pilot, and guiding someone in a parachute to land safely. The team explained to me that while they plan to include a huge variety of micro-games, certain pets tend to be associated with specific games that fit with their aesthetic or personality. This way it’s not entirely random, and you can practice and improve if you have trouble compiling a challenging pet.

Petal Runner is clearly going for a friendly and wholesome vibe. During the demo, when a blob of goo jumps out of a trash heap, the protagonist’s response isn’t to leap into battle. Instead, they recognize that this goo has a Leap Cell stuck inside them and helps compile it, which returns the HanaPet to its normal state. The next mission was to deliver a shark-like HanaPet to a family of surfers. The dialogue throughout the game was clever and full of goofy jokes, and I couldn’t help but notice the clever details in the sprites. The surfer father had a white patch of sunscreen on his nose.

Despite Petal Runner’s bright and friendly exterior, something more sinister is happening in the background. The demo I played didn’t get into the details, but two scientists seemed to be up to something in a cut scene about activating “security pets.” The protagonist’s partner, through all of this, a Generation 1 HanaPet, could also be in danger. The powerful corporation behind the HanaPet phenomenon is all about progress, and Generation 2 is already well underway. What will happen to the ten-year-old classic pets?

I wish I could play more Petal Runner, but unlike some of the other great indie games I got to play at Summer Game Fest, there is no public demo available. They also have not confirmed a 2025 release date. As impatient as I might be to jump into this game, I do understand that this is a two-person team. They’ve already shown they are willing to go the extra mile for polish and quality, so I suppose I can be a little more patient. You can wishlist Petal Runner now on Steam to show your for this talented development duo.

• oldschool / retro
• indie games
• Summer Game Fest