DESIGNER-STUDY · 2026-07-06
Inside Greg Lobanov's Philosophy — Making Creation, Not Combat, the Main Verb
Wandersong / Chicory and designing to widen the circle of making
Introduction
Greg Lobanov is a Vancouver-based indie designer who made Wandersong (2018), where you solve puzzles by singing, and Chicory: A Colorful Tale (2021), where you advance through a world by painting it. The latter won a Family BAFTA and was nominated for The Game Awards' "Game for Impact." He belongs on a puzzle site because his games are adventures whose central verb is not combat but creation — and that act of creation is also the puzzle solution.
What draws me (Kizuki) to him is how consistent his words are. In the Wandersong era, the Chicory era, and when talking pure craft, he keeps saying the same thing: "I really love making things. It's basically everything to me" (Sportskeeda, 2021). This piece is not a walkthrough but a study of Lobanov the designer — his philosophy, obsessions, failures, dilemmas, and influences — built strictly from his own statements.
Background — from a webcomic at 13 to a BAFTA
Lobanov started making games at 13, finding GameMaker in 2005 because he wanted to turn his own fantasy webcomic into a game. A kid "who liked drawing and was failing at algebra," he says he was drawn to drag-and-drop in place of coding (GameMaker.io, 2024). His first attempt was a 2D fighting game using his webcomic's characters, which he calls "a hopeless endeavour" where he was "in way over my head."
He then made small titles like Pollushot and Perfection under the moniker Dumb and Fat Games, releasing Coin Crypt in 2014. After stacking up technical skill across many experimental small games — and a five-month, 5,000-mile bike trip across the US in 2014 — it all crystallized into Wandersong. From there came Chicory and his current project Beastieball (an open-world volleyball RPG with monsters), all built in GameMaker throughout (GameMaker.io, 2024).
Philosophy — sharing the joy of making, in a non-violent adventure
The strongest thread across interviews is a consistent motive: sharing the joy of creation with players. "I really love making things. It's basically everything to me. Among other things, I see my games as an opportunity to spread that joy of creativity with players," he says (Sportskeeda, 2021). That is why the central verb of his games is not combat but making — singing, drawing.
A second pillar is an explicit message. He described his cross-country bike trip on Kickstarter as "a lesson in what one can accomplish with optimism and a reassurance in the goodness of humanity," and poured that into Wandersong (Into The Spine, 2018). Watching the cultural mood sour during development, he said he came to feel "the importance of that big message of love and respect and, you know, loving one another" more than ever (ibid.).
This ethos ties directly into accessibility. In Wandersong he bound sound to color and direction so that "even if you're deaf or you're color blind, you always know what to do," and for Chicory he states plainly that "color is basically not used in puzzle solving" (Into The Spine, 2018 / Game Rant, 2021). Kindness, for him, is both a theme and a design constraint.
Obsessions — making creation the always-on verb
Across his games, one obsession recurs: putting "the player is always creating something" at the core. On Chicory's starting point he says, "At the outset I was curious if it was possible to make an adventure game where the main thing the player does at all times is creating art and drawing. I'd seen drawing in games before, but usually as a side-activity" (Sportskeeda, 2021). Lifting drawing from "side minigame" to "main verb" was itself his invention.
This carries straight over from the prior game. Wandersong grew from a single question — "What if we made a game controller like a musical instrument?" — and that first decision already embedded the link between direction, color, and pitch (Into The Spine, 2018). Whether song or paint, Lobanov keeps chasing the same point across media: making the act of expression itself the game's input.
Failures and how he moved past them — a stalled big RPG, and refusing to learn code
Lobanov does not hide his failures. A JRPG he made in 2012 raised $2,000 on Kickstarter — the most he'd earned from a game at the time — but interest and commercial prospects collapsed after release. His verdict: "spending all this time putting my soul into this huge, giant adventure game doesn't really make sense. Because I have to pay rent and stuff" (Into The Spine, 2018). After the blow, he switched to small, experimental games to rebuild his craft and design eye.
The way through was a shift toward "finish small before you build big." By the time he reached Wandersong, he says he thought, "okay, I feel like I know how to make a pretty good game now. So let me come full circle and marry that with the thing I've really been wanting to do, which is to tell really sweet stories" (ibid.). His advice to newcomers runs on the same logic: "focus on learning one thing at a time. And learning as few things as possible at one time" (Game Rant, 2021).
He is equally frank about earlier failure. Starting out in GameMaker, he admits "my refusal to learn how to code definitely held me back for a while." Yet he adds, "I don't think I ever would have learned without the freedom to make games badly in the way I wanted to, at first" (GameMaker.io, 2024). His don't-punish-failure design philosophy, one can read, was first aimed at his own learning.
Design dilemmas — two kinds of players, and the seam of freedom
There is a dilemma Lobanov himself calls "a fun and interesting challenge." Two kinds of players come to Chicory, he says. One wants "a really good Zelda game" — solve puzzles, fight bosses, reach the ending. The other just wants "to chill out, take their time and draw everything, and explore the story." He reflects: "I tried making a game that is really good for both of these types of people... and that was a kind of fun and interesting challenge" (Game Rant, 2021).
A second dilemma is freedom versus legibility. "We wanted players to draw whatever they wanted and find their own way to have fun with it rather than prescribing any particular way that art should be done," he says — "such a difficult needle to thread." Because the whole screen is paintable, "we couldn't have any buttons or interface displayed anywhere on the gameplay screen at any time," and communicating every mechanic without color was its own challenge (Sportskeeda, 2021 / Game Rant, 2021). He takes on the balance of authorship and kindness as concrete constraints.
Influences — cartoons, Zelda, and a generation of peers
His acknowledged influences are concrete. Wandersong borrows heavily from the style and themes of cartoons like Steven Universe and Over the Garden Wall (Into The Spine, 2018). For Chicory, he states plainly that "we lifted the paint swimming from Splatoon, the cozy collection and creation mechanics of Animal Crossing, and the screen-by-screen exploration of Link's Awakening" (Sportskeeda, 2021). Even titling a game after a secondary character he explains via Zelda/Metroid: it's "like how Zelda is not about Zelda, or Metroid is not about Metroid" (Game Rant, 2021).
He is frank about people, too. As peers who came up with him in the GameMaker community he names Noel Berry, Maddy Thorson, Chevy Ray, Andy Brophy, and JW, and credits that "Juju Adams probably taught me the most about programming in GameMaker, directly or indirectly." He even lives in Vancouver, he says, to live with friends from those days (GameMaker.io, 2024). Chicory's music was composed by Celeste's Lena Raine (Game Rant, 2021).
Kizuki's Reading
From here is my own interpretation (Kizuki), stepping one pace beyond his statements. I read Lobanov as someone who tries to transpose the joy of making together directly into the player's experience. Of Chicory he said, "I don't see this as just a reflection of me" — everyone who worked on it, even in a small role, has their personality come through (Game Rant, 2021). That sense that making is not a solitary act lines up exactly with his advice from the GameMaker years: "make friends with other people who are at your level and learning alongside you" (GameMaker.io, 2024).
If so, then handing players a brush or a singing voice, and refusing to set a "correct" way to color, is not merely friendly design. It is an invitation — "you too may join the makers' side" — a gesture that opens to the player the experience he once had learning side by side with friends. Read this way, from the single point of "widening the circle of making," his non-violence and his accessibility both fall out cleanly, and the consistency of his words is fully explained.
Closing — where to start
To understand Lobanov, start with Wandersong. Its simple input — song equals direction — most plainly reveals the skeleton of a design where puzzle, story, and accessibility all hold together at once. Then move to Chicory to see how the same philosophy is rebuilt in another medium (drawing): more mechanically cohesive, and a more personal story. His latest, Beastieball, is a new experiment in his non-violent systems, where nurturing relationships becomes strength (GameMaker.io, 2024).
A note on adjacent designers. Maddy Thorson (Celeste), who grew up in GameMaker alongside him and is covered on this site, resonates when placed next to Lobanov's "hard yet kind." If you're drawn to designs that wring play from few rules, read the Daniel Cook study too; from the two doorways of creation and systems, the thinking of modern indie puzzle design comes into fuller relief.
Sources
Primary sources referenced in this article:
・Sportskeeda, "Greg Lobanov talks creativity and imagination in Chicory," 2021 (developer interview)
・GameMaker.io, "Greg Lobanov's GameMaker Journey," 2024-11-26 (developer interview)
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