26 Mar Momonga Monday: Six Things You Did Not Know About Momonga

Momonga Pinball Adventures has been around for almost 1,5 years now. Over the course of this period there have been many little silly things in the development process. For this Momonga Monday I have gathered six fun facts about the game:

1. The prototype was crazy and fun

The very first concept of Momonga Pinball Adventures was called Pinball Forever. A never-ending pinball game we made. It looks like this:

Before deciding which game to make, everybody was allowed to come up with ideas. We aimed for a hundred concepts. We then made 10 design documents, and the best 3 were turned into a prototype. Pinball Forever was done by Yorick and Dominikos, and the testers loved it. Later we dropped the infinite theme and switched to a level based game.

2. Momo Used To Be A Radish

Our hero, Momo, was originally named Dash. But only after we changed him from a generic furball to radish did we go to the flying squirrel.  (Check out more about the creative process behind Momo here).

This is what he used to look like, back when we still had a Pinball Forever title in mind:

Then we flipped it a bit and Tom came up with some… alternative… alternatives. In this universe, Momo was a radish, battling enemies like pickles and broccoli.

3. The early physics were slooow

The physics were tough to get right. In the early days, this is what the game looked like:

Not bad, but certainly not a killer app…

4. All levels are secretly named after superheroes.

There are levels named Hulk, Superman, Catwoman and Aquaman for instance. There’s a reason for this. At first all levels were simply numbered. Then level 1 became level 3, level 5 became level 2 and so on. So nobody knew which was which anymore. To solve this we renamed them to something completely unrelated. We had to settle on a generic ID. And the only logical choice would be Superheroes.

To keep production organized we use this high-tech construction:

5. A momonga’s cuteness is off the charts!

These furry animals are probably the cutest creatures alive:

Some more facts about this nocturnal Japanese Flying Squirrel:

A momonga’s body is 14 to 20 cm long and its tail length is 10 to 14 cm. It weighs around 150 to 220 grams. It is much smaller than the Japanese giant flying squirrel which can reach 1500 grams. Its back is covered with grey brown hair, and its belly is white. It has large eyes and a flattened tail.

It inhabits sub-alpine forests in Japan. It is nocturnal, and during the day it rests in holes in trees. It eats seeds, fruit, tree leaves, buds and bark. It can leap from tree to tree using the gliding membranes under their arms. With these gliding membranes it can fly distances of up to 160 meters! Quite impressive considering its size.

6. There are hardly any Momongas in pop culture

You would think that the momonga would pop up everywhere today. But there is surprisingly little series and games that feature the squirrel:

There is a Pokémon named Emolga:

There is a Yu-Gi-Oh! character called Nimble Momonga, and in Avatar The Last Airbender, Aang has a flying lemur as a pet called Momo.

So that’s very little indeed, but perhaps we missed something?

See you next Monday! 🙂

Peter & Derk