Icons, Sound, and Feel Tuning
Studio Update 03
February 2026
Lately we’ve been focused on the unglamorous parts that make everything better: clarity, responsiveness, and the little feedback moments that help the game feel fair and fun.
The biggest milestone in this stretch was wiring sound into the build. Hearing the first sounds land in real gameplay was genuinely exciting. It instantly made the game feel more alive, and it made it easier for us to judge timing, impact, and overall feel.
We’re also really glad we picked music we genuinely liked. During testing and development, the music can play over and over, and it’s definitely a way to find out if a track is actually pleasant to live with. It’s been a good sign that we still enjoy hearing it after so many repetitions.
Alongside sound, we’ve been doing a lot of tuning that is hard to show in a screenshot but easy to feel when you play. Small tweaks to controls, spacing, and feedback have been making the game more playable and more fun, and they’ve removed a bunch of the frustration we were seeing during tests.
One thing that helped a lot is a little “test lab” we built for ourselves. It’s a controlled sandbox where we can spawn things, isolate a single behavior, and iterate fast without having to play through a full run every time. It sounds simple, but it changes how we work. We can dial in movement curves, timing, acceleration, and responsiveness in a few minutes, and compare versions quickly.
It also gives us a place to geek out on the details. We can try tiny motion adjustments, polish an effect until it reads clearly, and test how visuals and sound land together. And as a bonus, it’s going to make it easier for us to capture and share some fun little videos soon. When we’re tweaking movement or effects, the test lab gives us clean, repeatable setups that are actually nice to watch.
What we’ve been working on
• Icons and UI polish to improve readability at phone size
• More consistent menu and HUD styling so everything feels like it belongs together
• First pass sound implementation and an initial set of in-game sounds and music
• Input and interaction tuning to reduce edge-case frustration and keep things responsive
• Our internal test lab for fast iteration on movement, timing, and FX polish
What’s next
• Keep tightening interactions so the game stays smooth even as things get busier
• Continue sound iteration: timing, volume balance, and the tiny moments that make actions feel satisfying
• More motion and effects tuning, with readability as the main rule
• Background and scene integration, plus continued playtests to catch rough edges early
Follow Along
When we have something worth sharing, we’ll keep posting updates here. We also share short clips on YouTube.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@koalabuhq
Email list: https://www.koalabu.com/join
Thanks for following along. More soon.