2025’s Most Colorful Cartoon Caper & Its TMNT, Tom & Jerry Roots

Summary

• Nanuka: Secret of the Shattering Moon
  introduces a fun hand-to-hand combat system & a world inspired by the Sicilian landscape.
• Protagonist Nanuka is a clumsy martial artist, offering a fresh take on platformers.
• Developers evolved from
  Full Void
  to create a more lighthearted game that leans into its cartoon elements.

Nanuka: Secret of the Shattering Moon is an upcoming fantasy platformer that mixes hand-to-hand combat and environmental puzzles. It’s the second game from indie developer OutOfTheBit, which previously released the dystopian puzzler Full Void last year. Players assume the role of clumsy protagonist Nanuka, a teenage girl with a purple belt in martial arts, as she attempts to save the world from an impending disaster.

This new title is quite different from 2023’s Full Void, introducing a brighter color palette, cartoon-style aesthetic, and a new combat system. The world itself is inspired by the Sicilian landscape, and there will be a myriad of different environments for players to traverse as they battle enemies and make new allies along their heroic quest. The first developer diary for the game can be found below as an exclusive Screen Rant premiere, highlighting the evolution and inspirations behind Nanuka.

Screen Rant interviewed Ali Motisi, Lead Developer and Director, and Pixel Artists and Animators Tom Cullen and Leo Halwart to discuss the inspirations behind Nanuka: Secret of the Shattering Moon, evolving from their time on Full Void, and what players can expect from the platformer.

Diving Into Nanuka: Secret Of The Shattering Moon

Exploring The Game’s Characters & Diverse Environments

Screen Rant: First I would love to hear just a little bit more about the game’s main protagonist. I know she’s a purple belt in karate, but what’s her background look like besides that?

Leo Halwart: Ali and Rosalia [Trupiano] both have a lot of experience in karate, which is what kind of inspired us to make her go in that direction as well. They also know the moves so we can just ask them for reference, and they can tell us if what we animate looks right or not, which we think just makes it a lot more interesting and lifelike. Other than that, her origin is kind of inspired by Sicily.

Ali Motisi: We tried lots and lots of stuff at the beginning of the project. We knew we wanted to have a young teenager girl protagonist and then we tried different things. The initial idea, I think she was a bit like a warrior, a bit like we describe in the Dev Diary, with a sword and a shield. And we tried in the game, we didn’t feel quite right. Then one day Tom did the drawing – looks pretty much what we got now. and I really, really liked the drawing.
Then we transformed that into a young martial artist, because we didn’t like the idea of using a sword and a shield, we liked more hand-to-hand combat in the game
.

The answer I guess will be iteration. So we iterated on it a lot and we stumbled upon this design that Tom did, because he tried lots of things. It was this teenage girl, a bit clumsy, and it really clicked with us. We put her in the game and everything fell into place. It made sense. She knows martial arts, but as you know in martial arts, if you’re a purple belt, you know the moves, but you’re not as experienced. You’re a bit clumsy.

She knows how to do stuff, but she’s not experienced, she’s not wise, she’s not a black belt, and therefore she makes mistakes
, which makes the game more funny and more – maybe she solved something by accident just because she’s clumsy. We all work closely, we are a small team, so it’s all about iteration and trying stuff out until something clicks, and that’s what happened with Nanuka.

You mentioned the combat, and I know the last game you made didn’t have any combat in it. What made you guys want to add it this time around and what was it like sort of developing your own take on that?

Ali Motisi: Yeah, so we had the great experience working Full Void. Leo and I were together from the start of the project with Full Void. We had a lot of fun making up all the different puzzles and everything. In Full Void it made sense to have a young kid that can’t really fight, because it’s a little kid and it’s a different type of game. The main character is scared, and so therefore we came up with the idea of hacking in Full Void and other kinds of interactions.

Then by the end of the project we thought, “Okay, well for next game it will be great to have combat. That way we can create a lot more puzzles just because she can control the environment directly or she can fight stuff, break stuff.”
It just unlocks a new dimension of puzzle mechanics and interaction with the environment
.

I really, really love working with the Leo and Tom because they can animate in 2D, like handcrafted animation, and for the next game we had a good system going with Full Void and we knew we could feature a lot more animations. Therefore with the combat and the new animation system, we could just come up with lots and lots of interesting puzzles, therefore making a longer game but not a boring game, with lots of variety.

The aesthetic of this game is both a lot brighter and more cartoony than Full Void was. What sort of prompted that shift in aesthetic for the team and what was it like pinning down what you wanted it to look like exactly?

Ali Motisi: Tom joined towards the end of the project Full Void, and he gave a lot of great input in the game. He worked on the intro and the end sequence, lots of animations and many of the screens inspired animations as well. Then [to Tom] you remember why we went cartoon, right? It was around August.

Tom Cullen: As Ali said, we were working towards something maybe a bit more serious to start with when we were doing our prototypes. Then one week after I’d done that drawing that Ali was talking about, he just said, “Oh, this week we’re just going to – I just want to try something.” It wasn’t as cartoony as it is now, but we were going for a more cartoony idea then, and it was just fun working on it – like we said, it just kind of clicked.

As the game has gone on in development, we kind of go a bit more, “Should we try doing this?” And it’s a really silly idea that would only work in a cartoony context, so then we’d be like, “Oh yeah, go on,” and
then we do it and we’re like, “Actually that’s amazing.”
It’s been a lot of fun doing it, and it’s nice that it’s quite a lot different from Full Void. It was definitely whiplash to go from one to another, in a good way.

I know the game has a lot of distinct environments. Is there anything you can reveal about the places players will be going, and do you have a favorite area in the game?

Ali Motisi: That’s tricky, because it keeps changing, we keep coming up with new things. Like yesterday, Tom was working on a new location, which was kind of like tea houses, but not quite. He did an amazing background for the tea house. I look at the background, and here is an idea for a new section. We don’t actually need that to be a location, but sometimes it just looks right. We are still iterating, we’ve got many locations pinned down. I really like the start of the game, but
the start of the game is deceiving, because everything looks natural and normal, but then the game gets more and more strange and fantasy
.

I don’t want to spoil too much. My opinion – some people don’t like fantasy and that’s fine. I’m more sci-fi than fantasy myself. But if you start with non-fantasy and then you introduce fantasy elements slowly, I think you get everyone, right? Then you are into it, you invest. It’s like Jurassic Park. It starts from a good premise, you believe it could be real, and then it goes like, “Yeah, dinosaurs eating people.” [Laughs] It takes you there. So the game starts realistic and then we get lots of locations.

Basically the first couple of levels, you get used to the story and controlling the main character, and
then we start going crazy
. I really like the area, level three, we are working on, which is kind of bamboo forest inspired, but we got a lot more that we are doing. It’s all work in progress. What are your takes guys? What are your favorite places?

Leo Halwart: The latter part of level three is when you enter a certain town, which I designed and I really enjoyed working on that. It felt like I had an image in my mind and I put it down on paper and everyone was actually happy with it right away, which made me very happy as well. Then the whole area kind of developed itself really quickly. and I’m very satisfied with the result of that, so I’m very biased towards that part.

Tom Cullen: I like what we’ve worked on, but
we start to get a lot more crazy ideas later on
as well. There’s some that I really look forward to working on, but I’m not going to spoil those.

Ali Motisi: Yeah, it’s a dark place, that’s all I can say. It’s a very dark place.

The game’s description also mentions allies coming to the protagonist’s aid on occasion. Can you talk about what other kinds of characters the player will encounter along the journey in that regard?

Leo Halwart: Yeah, one of them is actually a part of level three, which is the one we’ve been developing right now. Gameplay-wise, we haven’t really decided on introducing the characters as a gameplay mechanic necessarily. They’re more plot relevant than gameplay relevant, I’d say, but
we think they help us convey the message that’s behind the game
, which becomes more apparent towards the end of the game.

Ali Motisi: Yeah, which is essentially about inclusion and diversity, a diverse group of people coming together and working together. At the moment what we’re settled on is kind of an oni character, oni girl, and then there’s a blacksmith as well. I really like what the concept we’ve done so far. Again, the game is not totally finished or fleshed out at the moment, but those are the ideas.

We just like having a bunch of different characters. The main character, the playable character, is Nanuka, but she’ll come across those other characters, and she will initially fight those characters, and then they might become friends or not.

Evolving From Full Void To Make Nanuka

Where The Team Draws Inspiration & Looking Towards The Future

Besides aesthetically and the addition of combat, what would you say are the biggest differences between this game and Full Void for you guys?

Ali Motisi: I’d say in a way the game is different. In a way, it’s a good continuation. It’s a good next step from Full Void because we are taking everything we learned and wrap it up and complement it. The aesthetic, the cartoonish look, helps us with the story, the gameplay,
because there is stuff that you can do because it’s a cartoon and makes sense
. You can do a really serious sequence which works and makes sense, or you can do something silly – it makes sense because it’s cartoony. You will not be able to do that in Full Void because it’s a serious game, while I think you can do the opposite in a cartoon.

If you think about Dragon Ball or Sailor Moon, there are silly parts, but then there are parts that can make you cry or laugh. There are parts of the story which are real.
I think being cartoon enabled us to tell a story from a different point of view
. Also gameplay-wise, the sky is the limit. We can come up with anything we want, it will make sense in the game.

Leo Halwart: Not to say that Full Void had a lot of limitations, but we would sometimes have ideas for Full Void and then we tried to implement it and we’d be like, “But it doesn’t really make sense.” Our world for Full Void was very grounded, very realistic. We tried to keep sci-fi and fantasy to a minimum there, it’s mostly just a dystopian future, so there were some ideas we had where we kind of were like, “Yeah, that’s a bit too silly or a bit too crazy.” With Nanuka it’s kind of the opposite, we have an idea and we’re like,
“How can we make it crazier?”

I’m curious what other pieces of media, whether it’s other games or cartoons, like you mentioned a little bit, where you guys found yourself taking the most inspiration for this game?

Ali Motisi: Myself, I love lots of classic Dragon Ball and animes and stuff from the ’90s. For you as well, you love anime?

Leo Halwart: Yeah, I draw lot of inspiration from anime. And for Nanuka, game-wise,
we looked a lot at beat ’em ups like Shredder’s Revenge and Streets of Rage
. Ali played Streets of Rage 4, was it?

Ali Motisi: The second one as well.

Leo Halwart: It kind of shows us a bunch of the moves, and we’re like, “Oh yeah, actually we really like the effects here and the way they convey the gameplay and stuff.” Those were, recently at least, our heavy inspirations.

Ali Motisi: Obviously, Nanuka is a very different game, but I like the feeling of the quick combat of beat ’em ups as well.

Tom Cullen: I come from animation, but more like old. My biggest inspiration, which I think helps, is
I watched a lot of Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes
. It comes off on the more silly side, especially in the really old ones.

What are you guys most excited to see players react to once the game releases?

Ali Motisi: I just can’t wait to see people playing the game. I am very excited to see the take on the actual gameplay and the evolution from Full Void.
Controlling Nanuka will feel both familiar but also liberating compared to Full Void
, and lots and lots of fun. Also the audio, the music, the sound effects. Robyn Powell, she works here on contract with us, she’s amazing. She’s done the music for Full Void and she’s so talented. She’s doing an amazing job for this game. The music is unbelievable. I love it so much, and I can say because it’s not me doing that, it’s her. [Laughs] It’s so good and I can’t wait for people to experience it.

One other thing we are doing, we are breaking the songs into chunks, into pieces that we can puzzle together to keep the song fresh. We’ve got different takes for main loops and then we’ve got different endings, so the music can react to what you’re doing in a way that is not often done in games where you just play an MP3 or something. It’s a
custom-made system from scratch that can play music and adapt to the gameplay
, which I think will help make the game more interactive, like a cartoon. You mentioned Tom and Jerry, and if there’s an action sequence, the music changes, it speeds up, so we want to do that with the music as well. I want to see what people feel when they play the game. I think they will enjoy it, but we’ll see. What about you guys?

Leo Halwart: One thing we spent a lot of time on is making sure that everything that looks interactable is interactable, whether it’s something like a crate that you can break or even a certain object that just reacts to you punching it and things like that. I think what I look forward to the most is people playing the game and being like, “Huh, I wonder what happens if I punch this,” and then something actually happens that we all animated, we all accounted for. I can picture people going like, “Oh, what? That actually worked!”

Ali Motisi: Yeah, and the secrets.

Tom Cullen: Yeah,
we’re including quite a few secrets
, whether it is just interactions that you’re surprised that you can interact with or you have to really go out of your way to find secrets, but some of them are going to be quite big. If you don’t go out of your way to look for them, you’re actually going to miss something quite fun or important. I’m looking forward to see how long it takes for a few people to maybe find some of those or their impression of them when they do find them. It’s exciting for me.

Nanuka: Secret of the Shattering Moon

is slated to release on Steam in April 2025, followed shortly by all major consoles.