For anyone who spent the 1980s or 90s trading neon-colored, dimensional decals at recess or meticulously decorating a school binder, the tactile memory is visceral. There was a specific resistance to the peel and a satisfying weight to the placement of a puffy sticker. That specific, nostalgic sensory experience is exactly what Lykke Studios attempted to digitize with the release of the Lykke Studios puffies game.
Now a 2025 Apple Design Award finalist for Inclusivity, puffies. Is less of a traditional game and more of a digital sanctuary. Available via Apple Arcade on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, it blends the logic of a jigsaw puzzle with the aesthetic of a sticker book. Players open themed packs—ranging from punk-rock capybaras to sporty sushi rolls—and arrange them on a blank sheet, ensuring every kitschy decal fits without overlapping.
The result is a masterclass in “micro-interactions,” the small, often invisible design choices that make software feel human. For the eight-person team split between Cyprus and Thailand, the goal wasn’t just to create a puzzle, but to simulate the physical properties of vinyl and adhesive.
The engineering of a “blop”
The development of puffies. Began with a philosophy of materiality. Jakob Lykkegaard, the founder of Lykke Studios, notes that the team always starts with a physical medium they admire. This approach previously led to the 2023 Apple Design Award-winning stitch., which focused on the texture of woven thread, and tint., a 2022 finalist that simulated watercolor paint on heavy paper.
Moving into the world of puffy stickers, however, presented a significant technical hurdle: physics. Unlike traditional 2D sprites, every one of the game’s 4,000 stickers is a 3D-modeled object. In the early stages of development, the physics engine struggled to manage these objects. Lykkegaard recalls that the first prototypes essentially exploded, with stickers ricocheting wildly across the virtual tabletop.
Once the chaos was contained, the team entered a period of obsessive refinement. One particular challenge was determining what should happen when a player attempts to place one sticker directly on top of another. While Here’s a rare occurrence during standard play, the team spent three months debating the physics of the interaction—questioning if the sticker should slide, stick, or move in a specific direction and speed.
they decided the sticker should simply zip back to its origin point. To achieve this feeling, Lykkegaard says the team scrapped the entire codebase and started over until the movement felt natural. This attention to detail extends to the visuals; rather than using automated tracing, which the team found too sterile, every cutout around the stickers was drawn by hand.
Design born from a “creative bubble”
The unhurried nature of the game—which eschews timers and “game over” screens—is a reflection of the studio’s environment. While Lykkegaard is Denmark-born and much of the team is European, Lykke Studios is headquartered in Phuket, Thailand.
Lykkegaard describes the location as a necessary escape from the high-pressure environments of the Bay Area or Europe. By operating outside those “bubbles,” the team maintains a slower pace of life that allows for deeper creative exploration. This mindset is evident in the game’s level design; every sticker sheet is designed by hand, avoiding the use of algorithms to generate puzzles.
The art itself is a global effort, featuring contributions from illustrators worldwide. Tanin-Andre Hohmann, a producer at Lykke Studios, emphasizes that the goal was to keep the art “unfiltered,” ensuring the personality of the original artists remained intact in characters like anthropomorphic toilet plungers and cactus creatures.
Prioritizing inclusive play
The recognition from the Apple Design Awards specifically highlights the game’s commitment to inclusivity. For Lykke Studios, accessibility was not a post-launch addition but a core design pillar. The team implemented several features to ensure the game is playable regardless of a user’s motor function or device size.
| Accessibility Feature | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Finger-Offset Option | Accommodates reduced motor function or larger hands |
| Adjustable Snap Distances | Allows pieces to click into place more easily |
| Placement Outlines | Provides visual guides for sticker positioning |
| Dynamic Camera Zoom | Prevents overwhelm on smaller screen devices |
The team’s approach to these features is reactive and empathetic. According to the studio, if a player identifies a barrier to entry that is feasible to fix, the team integrates a solution. This philosophy extends to the “snap distance”—the precise pixel threshold a piece must hit before it clicks into place. The team iterated on this distance endlessly, believing that while players might not consciously notice the adjustment, they would subconsciously feel that the game “fits better.”
This level of polish comes at a cost of time, but for a studio that has already seen critical success with previous titles, the freedom to obsess over the “rip” of a sticker pack or the parallax effect of light hitting a vinyl surface is a point of professional pride. As Lykkegaard puts it, there are elements of the game that players may never consciously see, but the team puts energy into them simply because they know they are there.
Lykke Studios continues to refine its portfolio of tactile experiences, with puffies. Serving as a benchmark for how haptic feedback and inclusive design can transform a simple puzzle into a sensory experience. The studio’s ongoing relationship with the Apple Design Awards suggests a continuing trajectory of high-fidelity, accessible software development.
Do you prefer the tactile feel of physical puzzles or the polished convenience of digital ones? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
