Inky Blinky Bob: A Horror Game with a Hot Air Ballon and Failed Experiments
Eldelic Games talked about the Inky Blinky Bob video game, explaining how the idea started, how they created the hot air balloon with a vibrant but unsettling style, and how they managed to make it work in the game.
Introduction
Funny story, we randomly met at GameExpo in 2024, we went for a beer, and just said, "Let's make something." We aren't strictly just horror fans, we love all genres and have played everything from 90s Sega Megadrive classics like Altered Beast and Splatterhouse, to MAME32 arcades, all the way to Battlefield 5.
So why this game? We noticed how big horror games are for streamers, they're a massive part of modern indie culture. We simply looked at each other and said, "Let's make the best streamable game." That way, we won't even have to play it ourselves. We can just sit back and watch other people scream and laugh.
Inky Blinky Bob
Inky Blinky Bob is a fever dream of a journey. You're trapped in a world where the laws of nature have been replaced by the giant, flying demon octopus. Your only lifeline? A weaponized hot air balloon. The story follows your desperate attempt to navigate this surreal landscape while uncovering why the world turned into a psychedelic nightmare.
This game is for players who find traditional horror a bit too "one-note." If you love the tension but crave the absurdity of a cult-classic cartoon, you'll feel at home. Expect the unexpected. One moment you're fighting for your life, and the next, you're caught in a situation so bizarre you'll have to pause just to process what you're seeing.
The Style of the Game
We intentionally steered away from the "generic dark horror" aesthetic. We wanted a world that felt vibrant yet threatening, which led us to develop custom shaders in Unreal Engine, specifically our colorful sky system that we're incredibly proud of.
As a small team of three designers, we had to be smart with our 14-month timeline. We used a hybrid approach. We'd take base assets and rework the geometry and textures to fit our world. To ensure everything felt cohesive, we built a master shader that unifies every object in the game.
Our toolkit was a mix of industry standards and indie scrappiness: Unreal Engine 5, Blender, Substance 3D Painter, PhotoPea ( it's free!), and FL Studio for the soundscape.
Challenges
Bringing Inky to life was our biggest technical hurdle. Because the model is massive and frequently gets right in the player's face, we couldn't cut corners on polygon count or bone structure. We actually threw out 3 or 4 complete iterations of the design before we found that perfect "sweet spot" between a terrifying horror entity and a catchy mascot.
The movement was another beast entirely. We experimented with procedural IK and FK, but it always felt limited for a multi-tentacled demon. We ended up hand-animating the core movements to give Inky that unsettling, deliberate weight that makes him so threatening.
Our main pillars were Unpredictability and Visual Cohesion. Technically, making a flying octopus "work" in a 3D space with complex collision and optimization was a nightmare. Between the bone hierarchies and the collider logic for a weaponized balloon, there were many days where things just felt like a beautiful mess.
However, that moment when it all finally "clicked", when you saw the silhouette of the octopus looming over the horizon against our custom sky, was an overwhelming feeling of "we actually did it".
Advice for Beginners
Respect the scope. Inky Blinky Bob was supposed to be a 6-month project. We built islands that felt too empty, so we added content, then more content... and suddenly our 1-hour game turned into a 5-hour odyssey. Also, be careful with "plug-and-play" frameworks.
We burned two months trying to force our vision into prefabricated AI logic before realizing it's often faster to write custom code from scratch if your game is truly unique. Lastly, don't underestimate the "boring" stuff. Marketing, Steam page optimization, and legal paperwork are 30% of the job. If you don't execute that layer properly, the best game in the world could fail.
Surprises During Development
The biggest surprise was how the "Weaponized Hot Air Balloon" evolved. Originally, it was just a simple transportation tool, but during testing, we realized that flying through a horror landscape created a unique kind of vulnerability.
You're high up, but you're slow. That tension changed the entire game. It forced us to rethink our air combat and the way Inky stalks the player. What started as a "vehicle" became the heart of the game.
Conclusion
Steam Next Fest was a wild ride. Despite the noise of thousands of submissions, the player feedback was pure gold for us. It was a reality check that every indie dev needs. Based directly on demo feedback, we pushed out over 20 updates, ranging from tightening the ground/air combat feel to total UX overhauls and performance optimizations. It turned our "finished" game into a "polished" game.
In a small team, the lines between roles get blurry fast. Our designers and devs are good at their specific crafts, but everything else, the website, the Steam SEO, trailer editing, and the other 53 "non-dev" tasks, usually landed on my desk.
They've started calling me "The Doc" because I'm the one constantly stitching the different parts of the project together to make sure the heart keeps beating. It's exhausting, but it's the only way to ensure the final result matches the original vision we had over that first beer.
