Little Cities was my initial brand management responsibility at nDreams Publishing and what a glorious way to start!
Shortly after its successful launch on Quest platforms, I was tasked with evolving the core brand identity of this ultra-cosy city crafting mini-masterpiece through four DLC updates. This later extended to taking the lead on adjusting our positioning and messaging as the title targeted fresh, more diverse audiences via ports to PlayStation VR2 and Apple Vision Pro hardware.
It’s frankly, bloody lovely.
The term “cosy game” has become a micro-genre in and of itself, but the vagaries of what that actually means in terms of player-fantasy has always…irked me. Fortunately Purple Yonder, the delightful dev duo behind Little Cities, crafted a title that merges delicious form with deeply satisfying function.
The fascinating brand journey for Little Cities was exploring how this notion of a “cosy” title can be weaponised (lol) as a genuine point of difference in a challenging VR games market.
For this campaign, we focused on directly marrying the simplistic and hyper-colourful aesthetic of the game to genuine, demonstrable VR-first player experiences. This was a tactile diorama world built for your hands to drag, drop and delight in. We wanted to show core VR players that we aren’t built this cute just for show (though seriously, look at those penguins), but to best support an experience that is fundamentally elevated by being in a VR headset.
In-short, our brand positioning was a direct acknowledgement that you can’t survive (or thrive) on vibes alone in the VR market.
Of course, the lure of classic city building nostalgia is always strong, with a loyal fanbase of folks who long to fuss over tax revenue, zoning and occasional kaiju attacks…but being real, is such a detail-centric genre actually more fun in VR? The true player-first innovation of Little Cities is that it doesn’t dump an established ‘flat’ genre in a headset - it (literally) leans into the form factor and crafts a city building game that is better being played in VR.
The elephant in the room was a famous city building competitor coming to the same platforms. At the same time. Yikes.
Therefore, from a brand ID and positioning perspective, the joyful challenge was in establishing how to confidently celebrate Little Cities’ unique strengths to carve out a space for ourselves. If a competitor is selling mayoral spreadsheet fantasy, we’re selling delightful diorama creativity. Complexity and numerical detail may be a strength on KBM, but in a world of 1:1 gesture control, we’ve got bubble poppin’ UI and drag n drop building. Again, what do you wanna put a headset on for?
While our major competitor sold a city builder, we branded a city creator. We are not the same.
As the title evolved to new platforms and thus new audiences, I guided the Little Cities brand through sensitive evolutions that dialled-up different strengths while maintaining that core cosy DNA. For example, for a more traditionally ‘core’ audience on PlayStation VR2, shifting the focus to escapism, sandbox creativity and ‘headspace’ to counter-balance the deliberately ‘low stakes’ nature of the gameplay.
Four major updates, three platforms, one cosy journey.
Little Cities (Meta Quest)
Little Cities: Diorama (Apple Vision Pro)
Little Cities: Bigger! (PlayStation VR2)
WORK TL;DR
- Positioning, competitor analysis
- Copywriting (messaging / TOV / blog content / store copy)
- Brand identity (key visual / logo / naming)
- Asset briefing (trailers / screenshots / social)
- Coordinating first party opps (PlayStation / Meta / Apple)
- Ownership of GTM