From a Hybrid-Casual Hit to an Indie PC Title: The Story of My Little Universe

(The original article was published on PocketGamer.Biz).

From Mobile Vision to a Multi-Platform Dream

“We always knew My Little Universe had the soul of a multi-platform game,” says Davis Toliasvili, CEO of Estoty Riga. “Even in early development, the team would flip the screen from portrait to landscape inside Unity — and suddenly the terrain, the planet, the camera — everything clicked. It just looked right.”

The game had been live for over 18 months and was still seeing around a million monthly active users. But the idea of giving it a second life on Steam and Nintendo Switch kept resurfacing — especially among the devs, many of whom are passionate PC gamers themselves.

“Almost everyone on the team dreamed of seeing their name in Steam credits one day,” Toliasvili admits.

Rebuilding the Engine, Rethinking the Experience

Estoty and SayGames set an ambitious goal: to create a demo version in three months, and ship the full game in just six.

“At first we assumed we’d build on the existing mobile codebase,” says Davis Toliasvili. “But within two weeks, it became clear that the architecture was too tangled — patches, hotfixes, features layered over time. We scrapped it and rewrote everything from scratch.”

The team welcomed the clean slate. “It was a relief, honestly — a chance to write better code, the kind we could maintain and build on,” he adds. While some visuals and level structure were reused, the underlying systems were completely new.

One key challenge was player expectation. My Little Universe had an active community of 140,000 fans on Discord alone. Many of them would likely migrate from mobile — so the PC demo had to strike a delicate balance: familiar enough to feel like home, different enough to feel worth the upgrade.

To bridge that gap, Estoty built a fully original demo planet — not just a teaser, but a standalone experience. “We hated the idea that some games make Demo's out of their full games, by giving players a chance to play the first chapter. Instead, we wanted to make a demo planet that showcases what the game will have to offer to the player,” Toliasvili explains. “So we took assets from later stages — like a boss from planet four — and remixed them to create something fresh.”

The demo was completely stripped of elements directly tied to mobile monetization. Timers were reduced to a comfortable gameplay level, and resources were distributed more evenly across the map. And perhaps most importantly, hybrid-casual simplicity was replaced with light challenge: subtle friction in every core mechanic, designed to engage PC players from the very first click.

By the time Steam Next Fest arrived, the demo offered two full hours of original gameplay — a reimagined start to a game that millions already knew, now with new depth, new polish, and new purpose.

Polishing the Experience for PC and Console

After the Steam Next Fest demo, the focus shifted to preparing the full version. The schedule was especially tight due to Nintendo’s strict approval process, which is far more demanding than Steam’s. The first major deadline came in early July 2023, when the team had to submit the initial build for Nintendo’s review — and there was no room for failed submissions or reworks, as everything had to pass certification on the first attempt.

The user interface was a major hurdle. On mobile, the entire interaction model was built around taps. Now, controls needed to work seamlessly on keyboards, gamepads, and across a variety of devices. Using Unity’s Input System, the team mapped inputs more efficiently — but it didn’t stop there. They added custom icons, fallback systems for disconnected controllers, and new indicators to support different playstyles.

Nintendo provided developers with meticulous guidelines. Steam, on the other hand, gave complete freedom. Estoty decided to unify the logic across both platforms — simplifying wherever possible. “The hardest part,” Toliasvili recalls, “was choosing a solution that worked everywhere without shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Combat also had to evolve. The team introduced super strikes for each tool, rebalanced bosses with area-based damage and level-gated difficulty, and created a new booster card system — letting players customize their approach with powerful effects. “With the right cards, you could complete the entire game using just one tool,” Toliasvili notes. “And even freeze enemies in place.”

And then there were the Easter eggs. On every planet, a shark lurks near the edges, ready to attack players who fall off platforms. But you can fish and there is always a chance that you could catch the shark and swim safely. “It’s one of those small details only a few players ever discover,” he smiles.

One of the headline features on PC and console was local co-op for four players — but delivering it wasn’t easy. Alongside four independent camera views and four times the object count, the team had initially hoped to include real-time lighting and shadows. The dream was to have suns orbiting planets, casting dynamic light as day turned to night — a beautiful effect. But due to Nintendo Switch’s technical limitations, it never came to fruition.

“Reality hit quickly,” Toliasvili admits. “We capped the frame rate at 30 FPS and cut the lighting system altogether. It was the only way to keep the experience smooth on a handheld.”

Hackathon Energy, Heartfelt Finish

Shipping My Little Universe to six platforms in just eight months was nothing short of a marathon — and for most of it, it felt like a six-month-long hackathon. One developer would log bugs late at night so another could fix them early in the morning. Ideas flew fast. Experiments turned into features. Compared to the structured routines of mobile development, it was chaos — but the good kind. “Everyone was driven by the same goal — to see My Little Universe on multiple platforms,” Toliasvili says. “The motivation was insane. People stayed late, picked up extra tasks. That energy carried us through.”

As the final builds neared submission, tasks wrapped up one by one. A 3D artist became available, and someone on the team joked: “What if we modeled the whole crew?” The idea stuck. The level designer, already done with his part, started building. That’s how the credits ended up not as a scrolling text box — but as a fully playable planet, dedicated to everyone who made the journey possible.

“It was a way to say thank you — to ourselves, to each other, to the project,” says Toliasvili.

Not everything went perfectly. Nintendo’s review didn’t pass on the first try — a typo in the contact email and a minor technical issue set things back slightly. But apart from that, the submissions were smooth. And the game was finally live, everywhere the team had dreamed of seeing it.

“The partnership with SayGames was very smooth,” Davis recalls. “We had set tight mutual deadlines and kept almost monthly updates: on our side about development progress, and on the publishing side about marketing plans — from materials and influencers to upcoming events. That clarity allowed us to focus entirely on building the game and staying on schedule, while SayGames took care of everything else.”

Today, the game is available on all major platforms: Android, iOS, PC (Steam), Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. Estoty continues to support the mobile version with regular updates, while engaging an active and growing community — almost 140,000 members on Discord and over 9,000 on Reddit.

The PC and console launch brought encouraging results. In the first month, close to 50% of Steam wishlists converted into purchases — significantly above average. My Little Universe reached #75 in Steam’s Top Sellers, appeared in the New & Trending section, and placed #5 among indie titles by concurrent players during its first week, as noted in GameDiscoverCo’s newsletter.

On Nintendo Switch, the game ranked #211 overall in the US and #16 among new releases, marking a confident step into the console space.