Winnie’s Hole: Interview with Simon Boxer of Twice Different
Developer Simon Boxer’s body horror deckbuilder is a unique spin on Winnie-the-Pooh.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
Twice Different’s Winnie’s Hole is a turn-based roguelite deckbuilder that casts players as a rapidly mutating virus infecting Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne’s now–public domain, honey-loving bear. As someone with a soft spot for body horror, I was immediately hooked when I saw the game’s early trailers.
Even in Early Access, Winnie’s Hole is already fantastic. Its core systems revolve around polyomino placement across two distinct phases: growth and combat. During growth phases, you spread the virus through Pooh’s body by placing polyominoes, unlocking new cells, mutations, and bonuses along the way. Combat uses the same shapes in a clever twist. Rather than playing cards directly from your deck, you place polyominoes onto a grid representing Pooh’s brain, triggering chained combos from the cards already dealt there. It’s a novel, deeply satisfying take on the deckbuilding roguelite genre.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
The art style immediately stands out, blending grotesque body horror with an old-school Nickelodeon sensibility, blended with fairy tale illustration. Its darkly comic reimagining of Winnie’s world feels purposeful and thoughtful, a far more inventive take than Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a viral horror film that first took advantage of the character’s public domain status; that movie treats Pooh as little more than a cheap gimmick to sell an otherwise terrible slasher.
I spoke with Simon Boxer, founder of Twice Different, about the development of Winnie’s Hole, its unusual design, and the thinking behind its unsettling tone. I’ve included his responses in full below, with only minor edits for clarity.
Winnie’s Hole is available now on Steam in Early Access.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
Sam Kahn, for The Geekly Grind (GG): Could you introduce yourself? Tell us who you are, your company, and what you do. What led you to found your own studio?
Simon Boxer (SB): I'm Simon, the founder of Twice Different, mostly working as a Creative Director. I work across all creative domains, both in providing the core vision and executing on our projects in assistance with other teammates. I do art, UI, game design, writing, production, marketing, and generally manage the business.
I've been working in games for almost 20 years, and started as a concept artist / graphic designer. I love video games and have always played a wide variety of games, with a particular soft spot for games about mastery and roguelikes.
I started Twice Different because I felt like my design taste was overlooked when working as an artist. I wanted to design a game myself, but I had no formal design experience beyond sharing probably too much feedback on projects I'd worked on. I felt like the only way I could realistically be the vision holder on a project was to do it myself, so I set out to learn programming. I prototyped a functional demo for Ring of Pain, managed to get funding to bring on a full team, then a publisher deal to see it to completion.
GG: Can you describe Winnie’s Hole? What do you want players to experience with the game?
SB: I want our players to experience a game they haven't played before. I want to provide a fresh challenge for them to master, and wrap it in an interesting narrative. We make turn-based roguelikes, and when we prototype and iterate on designs, I try to think about where the genre can be improved or streamlined.
Mechanically, Winnie's Hole is a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder where, instead of playing a hand of cards one at a time, each move will create a combo of multiple actions in your deck. It's a fast-paced deckbuilder with a lot of automatic resolution and stackable modifiers. Another convention in roguelikes is to use a node map for navigation. Instead, we developed this into a whole virus-spreading game in itself, which seamlessly fits with combat by using the same inventory of block shapes to play your moves.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
GG: I love body horror, so the game’s premise immediately caught my interest. How did you arrive at this concept, and did it come before the game design itself? Why Winnie the Pooh?
SB: We're fairly design-first. I wanted to make a game about building a monster. We decided to prototype a game with a Winnie-related story partly to take a break from prototypes that weren't working, and partly because I thought it could be an interesting challenge to work with an existing IP. Winnie had entered the public domain, so it seemed like it could be an opportunity, but in reality, I didn't expect it to become what it is now.
I think A.A. Milne is an excellent writer, and his characters became a rich inspiration for me to write my own comedy vignettes with a darker flair. When I started showing friends, they thought it was very funny, so we kept working to the point of being able to announce the game. Our announcement went wildly viral, so we decided to take a chance on it and aim to make a genuinely good dark Winnie game.
GG: How do you balance horror elements with the inherent wholesomeness of the source material? I’ve spoken with other devs about this: what is the relationship between horror and comedy in the game?
SB: The body horror is part of an analogy, which happens to manifest in a hilarious way, so in that sense, they're very connected. From another perspective, the horror is kind of incidental. The virus is trying to survive; it's not inherently malicious, so in a way, the story is quite wholesome. Winnie is doing his best with limited autonomy. You grow and control mutations on him, but he's still cruising along as a friendly bear. I think this contrast has been a huge catalyst in finding fun interactions between Winnie and different characters in the world.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
GG: What works in other media influenced the game? Some movies come to mind, and I’m really curious about what inspired you.
SB: For the comedy style, I would probably say SpongeBob mostly. I love the grotesque close-ups and the innocence of SpongeBob and Patrick. I get inspiration from everywhere, but I don't actively draw much inspiration from other media beyond games. To be totally honest, I only watched The Thing for the first time a few months ago... About 3 years into development.
Games-wise, I've played a ton of deckbuilders, drafting games, autobattlers, and turn-based strategies. I try to assess where the standard is for the current market and try to build upon that. Some games I was enjoying before and while making this project were Loop Hero, Ravenswatch, Peglin, Super Auto Pets, Die in the Dungeon, Lonestar, Slice & Dice, The Bazaar, Backpack Battles... and of course, Slay the Spire has been a current gold standard of deckbuilders, so it must be considered at least for market positioning. Thematically, I wanted to hit a graphic style in the realms of Nickelodeon meets a graphic novel.
GG: The game has a lot of moving parts. There are the virus growth and combat sequences, both driven by polyomino placement. There are perks, a combat action deck, upgrades, and then the external metaprogression. How did you approach designing these interconnected systems? What part of the design was the genesis of the game?
SB: We prototyped dozens of combat systems before finding one that was gelling, and then continued to iterate. We were definitely too ambitious with this game, being effectively 2 games in 1. It took a lot longer to come together than the design of our last genre-blending roguelike, Ring of Pain.
The game started as a virus-spreading, abomination-growing autobattler. We then decided that making it turn-based gave more depth and agency, but I still wanted it to be somewhere in the realms of being a 'semi-auto' battler… Then proceeded to spend a ton of our time and energy on the combat systems and deckbuilding.
For the metaprogression, partly I thought it could be funny for it to be an ‘extraction game,’ and I was playing a lot of Hunt: Showdown in the early days of development. Mostly, putting unlocks behind all winning with different content seemed like a good way to encourage people to try different builds. I have a lot of opinions on roguelike/roguelite design and feel the metaprogression in a lot of roguelites does a disservice to the game itself. This is largely player taste, though.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
GG: It’s impossible not to compare Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and the recent trend of horror takes on public domain characters to Winnie’s Hole. This is my favorite take on the trend so far, and I’d love to see an animated adaptation of the game. What makes Winnie’s Hole unique?
SB: Winnie's Hole is an anti-cosy reaction to a messed-up world. You need to find laughter in absurdity. The themes we'll continue to develop are a parallel to how the game has been received in itself. I'm not sure if this will be fully visible even when the story is finished, but it's got a social commentary which is missed when looking only at the surface.
GG: Are there any thematic connections between Ring of Pain and Winnie’s Hole? Are there themes or topics that interest you in particular that are revealed through your work? I know that your experience with aphantasia influenced Ring of Pain; is there also personal meaning in Winnie’s Hole?
SB: I think all creative works need to draw from life and experience in some way to create resonance and a feeling of authenticity. Ring of Pain is more of an exploration of self, with fewer key characters. Winnie's Hole is an attempt to be more ambitious with writing and connecting a narrative with more characters.
I've not been trained as a writer, or really done it before. I like outsider art, though, and Ring of Pain really spoke to some players in ways I could not have imagined. Really, I'm just trying to tap into human experiences and share ideas that will hopefully make people reflect a little, and maybe even become more empathetic.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
GG: You’re also working on The Dungeon Experience with Jacob Janerka and Bone Assembly. What’s your role in the project, and how do you divide your time between the different things you’re working on?
Yes! We co-created The Dungeon Experience and worked on it creatively together for a couple of years, establishing a lot of its art direction, general theming, and core cast. Beyond this, we distinguished our roles as I was about to ship Ring of Pain. Jacob holds the creative reins, and I took on the business side, pursuing funding and operating the company.
GG: You started as a concept artist, then learned to code to make your own games. How have you grown as a developer, going from one title to the next? What are the biggest lessons you learned from Ring of Pain that you applied to Winnie’s Hole, and are there any new lessons you’re going to carry forward?
SB: So many lessons:
Strategy game enjoyers are a really great audience. Our community is very creative and supportive.
I really like working in small, skilled teams where everyone is pretty self-sufficient, has their own responsibilities, and ownership over them.
Don't make achievements that incentivise boring ways to play.
There is demand for games without grind, even if it seems like grindy games attract a lot of players.
Work to your strengths. Don't try to compete where you lack the skills to do so.
80% good is good enough, get it in, test, and iterate.
Properly communicating your game (making effective tutorials) is maybe 30+% of developing a strategy game.
If a player is trying your game, they want to like it. More often than not, negative feedback is due to a mechanic that we need to better communicate.
Ring of Pain was incredibly well-scoped, a very smartly made game, and I should probably go back to being a bit more constrained in the future.
Don't make 2 games in 1. Or cutscenes, probably.
Making a game that seems like a meme is a double-edged sword. People expect it to be bad, which is great if they play it and get surprised, but if they're unwilling to see what it offers, they'll never get to see how special it is.
Winnie’s Hole. Credit: Twice Different
GG: You're self-funding and self-publishing Winnie's Hole after Ring of Pain's success with Humble Games. What motivated this shift toward complete independence, and how has it changed your design process?
SB: I know we have the passion, drive, and skills to make a good game. I wanted to try self-publishing as an experiment. Early on, I did lightly float the idea to a few publishers who could potentially help with different markets, and it seemed like a common sentiment was that they didn't really know what to make of it being Winnie-related. So I didn't bother pursuing it further.
We're a lean team, so the real consideration, if you don't need funding, is “will this business partner be a net benefit to project earnings?" and that feels very hard to assess. We have a lot more flexibility long term without a publisher, so it's tough to assess the risk. Negotiations can also take months and distract from my time building the project.
Releasing Ring of Pain gave us so much experience working on a live game, building a brand, and a community. For Winnie, I made all the trailers, and multiple have gone organically viral. I think we have a decent chance at being successful at our scale, and we didn't need the extra funding, so why not give it a go?
GG: As part of your Early Access process, you’re soliciting community feedback. How do you balance that input from the audience with your artistic vision, especially for such an unconventional concept?
SB: Probably 80+% of the community feedback I've read I agree with, and maybe half those things are already in our future plans for development—very reassuring, and convenient! Feedback has mostly been requests for quality of life features, or about issues with some part or situation in the game. I love it when players present a problem they're having because it's interesting to understand how people interpret what the game presents, and fun to try and think of a solution. It's like a window into human psychology, which really appeals to the UX designer part of me.
In launch week, most of our work was focused on fixing issues and adding quality-of-life improvements. Now it's exciting to get back to making and planning more content!
In case you missed the link earlier, Winnie’s Hole is available now on Steam. It’s a great game!
