CROSSING
CROSSING
CROSSING
MICHAEL KIRBY
ASTRONIMO
I began my work on Astronimo as a Junior UI Artist, creating menus, icons, UX flows, and typography that fit the game’s chunky, sci-fi, sticker-inspired aesthetic. After establishing a strong visual foundation, I transitioned from the art department into the design team as a Junior Game Designer. In this role, I worked on gameplay features and mechanics while designing mini-moons, challenges, puzzles, and traversal across Zaroth IV, the game’s icy second world. This blend of UI artistry and game design allowed me to contribute to Astronimo’s style, playability, and sense of exploration from multiple angles.
CHALLENGE DESIGNS FOR ZAROTH IV
For the Zaroth IV segment of Astronimo, I took on a broad range of level and challenge design responsibilities that helped define the planet’s unique gameplay identity. I worked extensively on shaping the terrain, layouts, and traversal routes to create a sense of discovery and momentum as players explored the alien environment. My role involved designing and refining platforming challenges, environmental puzzles, and cooperative interactions so they felt intuitive, rewarding, and well-paced within the game’s physics driven sandbox. I iterated on obstacle setups, player flow, and moment-to-moment challenge beats to ensure each sequence offered clarity while still encouraging creative problem solving and teamwork.
Throughout the process, I focused on striking the right balance between structure and freedom, crafting encounters and spaces that supported player experimentation without compromising progression. These combined efforts helped give Zaroth IV a cohesive rhythm and a distinct gameplay personality within the wider Astronimo experience.
Below are some examples of my work.
MAKING MINI MOONS
I took full ownership of the design and creation of all four Mini Moons in Astronimo, them being: Ore Moon, Pyro Moon, Oasis Moon, and Yule Moon. Each one was crafted with its own distinct theme, gameplay purpose, and creative identity. Ore Moon was designed as a high-reward mining playground, built around satisfying contraptions that let players drill, grind, break, and tunnel through terrain to collect large amounts of gold ore. I focused heavily on creating machinery that felt tactile and enjoyable to operate, encouraging players to experiment and push the limits of the physics system.
Pyro Moon, positioned closer to the sun, presented a more dangerous landing challenge with its lava-based environment. To spark player creativity, I introduced unique contraptions, most notably the gondola-style “lava boat” to demonstrate that contraption design could go far beyond simple wheels, inspiring players to think inventively about traversal in extreme conditions.
Oasis Moon delivered a bite-sized version of the traditional Astronimo experience, guiding players from point A to point B through exploration, light platforming, and incremental ore and reward pickups. Yule Moon, released later as a festive mini-moon, followed a similar structure but embraced a holiday theme, using the smaller scale to create cozy, themed traversal moments.
My process for each Mini Moon began with rough paper layouts and early sketches of world structure, planned contraptions, and challenge beats. From there, I rapidly built the levels in the custom engine, iterating frequently based on QA insights and playtesting to fine-tune pacing, clarity, and player engagement. Together, these Mini Moons formed a diverse set of compact, creative worlds that expanded the game’s sandbox with fresh mechanics, themes, and play styles. I wrote Steam blog posts about the detailed steps I took to create challenges and Mini Moons for the, The Festive Making of Yule Moon and Community Moons.
Below are some examples of my work.
UI ART WORK
When I started on this project I was a UI Artist and worked on many of the UI elements for the game and helped work on the UX wireframes for how the menus would work in particular for the Workshops that would be pivotal for Players to use and navigate to create their contraptions. Using my experience that I gained while working on OlliOlli World I was able to help create Instructional buttons for Xbox, PlayStation and Keyboard, in addition to creating some stylish iconography.
With some experimentation of UI art styles and looking at the kind of plastic toy style of the 3D art we came to apply a sticker art aesthetic to the icons in game. Which you see in the final game and works well with the vibrant colours.
One of the biggest UI challenges on this project was creating a whole new Font called Hypergiant, which needed to also contain European characters for localisation.
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Below are some UI asset examples I worked on.
​Below are some examples of my UI work in game.
ABOUT THE GAME
Astronimo is a sandbox, space exploring and platformer game, with gameplay mechanics focused on cooperative play, creativity and challenge/puzzle solving. This game aims to be the most fun you can have in outer space. While mining for resources in the vast reaches of the Solar Map, four Hypergiant Inc employees crash-land on a small planet and become hopelessly stranded. In the hopes of reuniting with their fleet, you must help them to cover every inch of the planetary surface, gather all manner of resources to solve puzzles in unique and creative ways, then build a shuttle and fuel it to launch back into space.
Astronimo takes platforming and customisation to the interstellar medium and beyond with its quirky campaign. Or take things a step further with customisation that stretches the bounds of your imagination with Community Moon.
Press the button above to be taken to the game's page.