Manky Run
A side-scrolling runner where the world is the antagonist. Concept, art and code were all ours, which is the only reason the timing and the paintings agree with each other.
The brief
An original runner that could sit next to store-featured titles without a store-featured budget. The hook had to be readable in the first three seconds of a gameplay clip, because the art was also the marketing.
How it was built
The chase loop was written and tuned in grey-box before a single asset was painted — if the timing does not work in boxes, no amount of environment art rescues it. Once it did, we layered hand-painted parallax, designed characters silhouette-first, and added a lighting pass whose only job is keeping the player readable against a busy background.
What it left behind
A shipped title on both stores, an art style people still ask about, and a reusable runner framework that cut the prototype phase on later projects roughly in half.
