The game offers a poignant look into childhood memories and local school life while also addressing deeper emotional themes. — Photos: Spacepup Entertainment
In the heart of Malaysia’s growing indie game scene, Spacepup Entertainment is making a title that takes players back to some of the most carefree days of their lives: their school days.
One Perfect Day is an immersive, time-loop journey centred around the life of a Malaysian student, rich with cultural nuances and nostalgic charm. The game offers a poignant look into childhood memories and local school life while also addressing deeper emotional themes.
At the helm of this unique project are producer Lim Yung Sing and game designer Chin Min Yee, whose passion for storytelling and Malaysian culture shines through every pixel, puzzle, and heartstring the game pulls.
“We wanted to create something that could transport players back to those days when life felt simpler,” says Yung, as he is fondly known in the business.
The premise of One Perfect Day is both simple and profound. It tells the emotional story of Andy, a Malaysian man in a coma, who finds himself reliving a single, perfect day spent with his best friend, Xiang Yang. This is no ordinary day, however.
Trapped in a time loop, Andy must repeatedly navigate a day from his school life, facing his deepest regrets and guilt head-on. As players guide him through this dream-like scenario, they explore themes of friendship, guilt and the complicated process of forgiveness.
Imagine a game that takes you back to your school days, where every friendship, challenge and memory holds the key to moving forward in life. — This visual is human-created, AI-aided.
Through meaningful choices and interactive gameplay, players uncover Andy’s emotional struggles and help him mend broken memories, all while solving puzzles. As Andy progresses through this surreal time loop, it becomes clear that this day is more than just a dream.
“It’s his subconscious mind trying to force him to confront the grief and guilt that have weighed him down for years,” Yung says. “To wake up and escape the loop, Andy must finally come to terms with his past and forgive himself.”
How it all began
Interestingly, it was Chin, an intern, who created this story-driven game for her university project. Yung shares: “Min Yee’s alma mater, Aswara, always inspires students towards creating local story content, and Min Yee’s final project centred around local customs. That led me to think about the possibility of incorporating more local content in our games.
“I had been getting into the ‘isekai’ genre comics such as Re:Zero, where the protagonist has the ability to go back in time. So for Min Yee’s internship, I tasked her with creating a game that involved local school life, with a twist; the main character has to relive a day over and over until he finds a way to escape the loop.”
One of the game’s strongest appeals lies in its authentic representation of Malaysian school life.
For Chin, the idea behind the game stemmed from her own desire to capture the fleeting sense of freedom that school days offered. “I think the clincher was that I’ve grown up and now have to work to survive!” she offers.
Yung, who provided guidance during Min Yee’s internship at Spacepup, shares a similar sentiment, noting that the game’s concept blossomed from the idea of school as a “carefree” time in life – one that many adults wistfully dream of returning to.
One of the game’s strongest appeals lies in its authentic representation of Malaysian school life. From the recognisable school uniforms – the white shirts and blue pinafores or baju kurung – to the local quirks of Malaysian schools, such as murals of the Rukun Negara and the hustle and bustle of the school canteen, every detail has been carefully crafted to reflect the lived experience of Malaysian students.
The developers also drew from their personal experiences growing up in the 1990s and 2000s, incorporating beloved memories like trading card games, pop culture magazines and even the mysterious spooky rumours that haunted most school toilets!
The game’s characters, from the artsy student to the overachiever and the canteen seller who remembers everyone’s name, serve as the backbone of the game’s puzzles and narrative.
“We wanted the characters to feel like the types of people you’d find in any Malaysian school,” Yung explains. The game’s characters, from the artsy student to the overachiever and the canteen seller who remembers everyone’s name, serve as the backbone of the game’s puzzles and narrative.
Each personality presents a unique obstacle or interaction that protagonist Andy must overcome, making the gameplay both challenging and relatable. Yung says: “To be honest, the puzzles just wrote themselves since it was easy to see how each of these personalities could get in the way of Andy’s objectives. Characters are what make stories, after all. Once we had the characters, the story and puzzles just fell in place.”
However, designing the time-loop mechanic itself was not as easy. Yung had long wanted to explore the idea of time loops in a game, but initial iterations proved tricky.
“We started off by making the game ‘reset’ completely each time the player completed a cycle, but found this to be problematic,” he says. “It was very challenging, and we wrote ourselves into a hole many times, considering the layers of storytelling that we had to juggle while ensuring the puzzle challenges were intuitive and fit with the player’s own motivations!”
Spacepup’s (from left) Yung, Chang, and Chin are dedicated to crafting rich stories through gameplay, bringing heart and authenticity to their games.
So, they developed a more dynamic system where changes made in one loop create ripple effects, altering parts of the next loop. This approach not only kept the gameplay engaging but also resonated with the game’s theme of revisiting and attempting to change the past.
Homegrown features
Beyond the puzzles, One Perfect Day weaves Malaysian culture deeply into its mechanics. Whether it’s mixing together unconventional food combinations – a nod to Malaysia’s eclectic culinary scene – or featuring nostalgic classroom games like origami fortune tellers, the game is a love letter to local life.
Even the dialogue is written in “Manglish”, Malaysia’s distinctive blend of Malay and English, adding an authentic voice to the characters’ interactions. “All grammar and sentences that seem to contain spelling mistakes are intentional,” Yung adds cheekily.
Creating a balance between the familiar, everyday elements of school life and the fantastical time-loop mechanic, however, proved to be another one of the game’s tough challenges.
Both Yung and Chin highlight the difficulty of balancing the relatable aspects of school life – homework, friendships, and after-school activities – with the darker themes the game also touches on, such as bullying and the pressures faced by students.
Gamers had the chance to experience One Perfect Day at the KL Level Up event in September. — Photos: Spacepup Entertainment
Careful thought was given to avoid promoting negative behaviours, with some early puzzle ideas even being scrapped due to concerns about the message they could send.
“Game writing tends to be a lot harder than screenwriting because of how the writer has to consider not just the characters but the player as well,” Yung explains. “We also had to be on the constant lookout for our own biases; we really wanted to present the message behind One Perfect Day in a way that was as neutral as possible.”
Making its presence felt
Since its debut at the KL Level Up event in September, One Perfect Day has garnered positive feedback, earning a special nomination in the Best Storytelling category for the SEA Games Awards in conjunction with Level Up KL 2024.
Both Yung and Chin highlight the difficulty of balancing the relatable aspects of school life – homework, friendships, and after-school activities – with the darker themes the game also touches on, such as bullying and the pressures faced by students.
For Spacepup Entertainment, this recognition is validation for all the hard work it has poured into crafting a game that promises not only to entertain but resonate emotionally with its players.
Founded by Yung in 2013, Spacepup has always focused on telling rich stories through gameplay. As a small indie studio, the team – comprised of Yung, Chin, programmer Chang Yow En and composer Song Dick Lee – prides itself on creating games with heart and authenticity.
“I am the producer and founder of Spacepup Entertainment,” says Yung. “But really, we’re a small indie games studio, so regardless of my title, I do a bit of everything. Spacepup was founded on the principle of wanting to make games that told rich stories accompanied by great gameplay. I first joined the game industry under a local game studio that wanted to build MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) and subsequently social network games. When that studio hit financial problems and closed down, I decided to wing it on my own, founding my own studio and working towards the games I really wanted to make.”
Yung, 42, did his schooling at Sri Cempaka and then took a Computing degree at Asia Pacific University (APIIT at the time) and also a diploma at The One Academy.
“I thought that education would prepare me for the world of making games. I was completely wrong! Running a game studio is closer to running a business. It took years of blunders and hard-earned lessons to help me understand how to be a better businessperson and leader. All of these experiences helped shape the game studio that Spacepup is today.”
Since its inception, Spacepup (www.gospacepups.com) has made a couple of endless runner games, a horror VR experience and a horror game that’s on Steam called The 9th Gate, as well as an esports mobile game called Archwar: Heroes And Demons.
Yung says that although they haven’t received any grants for One Perfect Day, they have received grants for past projects as well as some client servicing work.
“The team is willing to go lean and that really helps,” he shares. “I also do workshops and training, as well as teach on the side. Currently I am a part-time UX/UI lecturer with The One Academy/Digipen for their games course collaboration.”
Beyond the puzzles, One Perfect Day weaves Malaysian culture deeply into its mechanics.
He adds that they have yet to obtain a publisher for the games, but some parties have expressed interest in the past. “The game wasn’t ready for them at the time because we were still figuring a lot of things out. Now that our direction is clear and what’s left is mostly the content, we’re definitely going to reach out more.”
Spacepup has been working on One Perfect Day since 2022 and is aiming for a release in 2025, but as with any game development, Yung says anything can happen.
For now, the game remains a testament to Spacepup’s vision, blending nostalgic school memories with a compelling, time-bending narrative that should strike a chord with anyone who’s ever longed to return to simpler times.
For Malaysian gamers and beyond, it promises to offer a relatable journey through the joys and tribulations of school life, celebrating the past while reminding us that, perhaps, there’s no such thing as “one perfect day”. Keep your eyes peeled for the game’s launch!
LevelUp is moving to Fridays from next month. Next up: Get ready to head back to class again! In the Nov 15 issue, we’re diving deeper into the world of school-themed games. Stay tuned for more stories, insights and interviews from the developers behind these games!
