Petal Runner brings the charm of Game Boy pocket monsters without the battles

In the crowded and noisy 'headquarters' of Summer Game Fest Play Days, dozens of developers — big and small — have booths set up to present their upcoming games to the attendees congregating in Los Angeles over this past weekend. Petal Runner manages to stand out among the sea of demos, with its vibrant color palette and nostalgic retro pixel-art visual style.

Cali and their fox-like HanaPet Kira have recently passed their Petal Runner Orientation, beginning an adventure to work as couriers to deliver pets around the globe. Armed with a bicycle and a backpack, the duo set off to share the wonderful companionship that HanaPets can bring.

As someone who grew up in the '90s, Petal Runner certainly sets off that nostalgia sense. Simple pixel art, blocky text letters, and buzzy sound effects establish a game that would feel at home on a Game Boy cartridge. With four primary colors in its warm color palette and superb pixel animation, Petal Runner visually hits the right notes in evoking simpler times long past.

Founded by artist Brandon James "BJGpixel" Greer and programmer Danny Guo, Nano Park Studios desired to create a game hearkening back to the best of the Game Boy era, and the inspirations are obvious at first sight. Anyone who has played the earliest Pokemon titles will see a resemblance, but that's not the only influence on display. HanaPets are housed in Tamagotchi-like devices called Leashes (complete with appropriate pixel art), and these appear prominently within the game's user interface. Also, all the HanaPets can seemingly speak as well, perhaps leaning a little more into Digimon-like interactions between human and pet.

During my short demo at Summer Game Fest, I had to deliver a new HanaPet to a surfboarding father in a local town. On my way there, I could talk with townspeople, collect information on HanaPets (stored in a log called a HanaBase), and complete small side-quests. It is somewhat difficult to grasp how the larger structure of the game might take shape — Petal Runner is described as having an open world — but the moment-to-moment vibes are especially cozy.

Unlike Pokemon, there are no battles in Petal Runner. As you deliver HanaPets to new owners, you'll instead engage in various WarioWare-like minigames to complete the transaction. These come in a variety of flavors, such as moving the analog stick left-and-right to land a paratrooper onto a landing pad, or timing a button press to land a spoon inside the mouth of a giraffe. These are not challenging mini-games; these are the fun, comforting interactions to complete as you progress your mission to bring HanaPets to the world.

I think it's an interesting twist to take the charm and collection aspects of Pokemon, but remove the training & battling components of it. Petal Runner is a slice-of-life adventure, focusing on the relationships of people and pets. According to Greer, "companionship with our pets is a special thing we want to capture in Petal Runner."

A lingering concern I have regards the larger narrative in Petal Runner. My time in the demo showed some foreboding scenes of a building mystery underneath the light-hearted premise. The game's store description states that Petal Runner is "a wholesome slice-of-life story about growing up and letting go." I only hope the narrative direction the game takes isn't quite as self-evident as it appears to be at first blush. Also, some of the dialogue seemed more corny than charming, but it's difficult to thoroughly judge the writing in such a short demo.

I'm still eager to see Nano Park Studio's twist on a nostalgic style as Petal Runner is set to release in 2026 for PC (Steam).