Fluffy Match

Embark on a playful journey in this pet-themed tile matching game

Fluffy Match was created to test how effectively we could re-theme our existing title, Tidal Tile, with a concept that had broader player appeal. We believed that a pet-focused theme could be a much stronger driver of engagement. Who can resist a game full of adorable animals?

The project quickly became a team wide effort, with colleagues contributing photos of their own pets to be transformed into icons and artwork. This added a fun, personal touch to the experience and helped shape the game's charm. Visually, the direction leaned heavily into the warmth, softness, and playful energy that people naturally associate with their favourite furry companions, creating a light hearted and inviting experience from the very first screen.

Contributions

Art Direction
UI & UX
Unity Implementation
Animation
Outsource Management
Team Management

Breathing life into a very special kitty

With so many members of the team having their pets featured throughout the game, it felt only fair that my cat Sumi, made an appearance too. Using ChatGPT's image generation tools as a starting point, I transformed her fluffy likeness into the character players see happily snoozing on the lobby screen.

To bring the character into the game, I created a turnaround that served as a guide for the 3D artists helping us build and animate her. It was a fun opportunity to turn a real pet into a game character, while also adding a little extra personality to Fluffy Match.

Design System Tweaks

As with every project, I wanted to ensure we had a scalable design system in place before launch. This process was a little different from previous games because Fluffy Match began life as a re-skin of Tidal Tile. Rather than starting from scratch, I adapted the existing design system adjusting some parameters to create a foundation that better suited the new pet focused direction.

Because Fluffy Match relied much more heavily on illustration and character art I also refined the workflow between Photoshop and Figma to better support high fidelity assets. This helped ensure the UI felt cohesive alongside the artwork, maintaining a consistent level of polish throughout the game.

Adorable Animation

Although we were working within the constraints of Tidal Tile’s existing Unity project, I wanted to bring as much personality as possible to the experience through animation. Rather than focusing on large structural changes, I looked for opportunities to add charm to the characters and moment to moment interactions.

One example was the Undo powerup. In Tidal Tile this is represented by a simple tile fly animation. For Fluffy Match, we reimagined it as the cat playfully batting the tiles back onto the board with her paw. Small touches like this helped turn functional game actions into character moments adding warmth and personality throughout the experience. These little animations went a long way in making the game feel more alive and reinforcing its playful pet identity.