CorgiSpace Review
CorgiSpace is a joyful collection of tiny, clever games that celebrate creative design.
CorgiSpace. Credit: Adam Atomic / FINJI
Adam Atomic (Adam Saltsman), creator of Canabalt and co-founder of indie publisher FINJI (Tunic, Night in the Woods, Overland), has released CorgiSpace, a delightfully weird collection of bite-sized games. The set bundles 13 tiny experiences developed by Saltsman over the course of a year, each one a complete game you can finish in under an hour. While it doesn’t reach the sweeping scope of last year’s excellent UFO50, CorgiSpace more than makes up for it with charm, creativity, and surprise.
“CorgiSpace is about doing things that are easy and not obvious, not giving up on our ideas, keeping our formulas fluid, and just having a lovely time noticing the weirdest little things.”
The collection takes its name from Saltsman’s personal design philosophy, which he developed while making these games. His CorgiSpace manifesto champions creating “games with short legs”—games made small on purpose with ideas that are “simple but not obvious.” The philosophy grew out of his frustration with abandoned projects, alongside a desire to keep game development fun, low-pressure, and sustainable in his spare time.
CorgiSpace. Credit: Adam Atomic / FINJI
All 13 games were created using PICO-8, a “fantasy console” defined by strict constraints, such as 128×128 resolution, a 16-color palette, and a maximum game size of 32k. These limits force devs to distill ideas down to their purest form. Where UFO50 felt like a lovingly curated museum of fully realized retro games, CorgiSpace plays more like a master game designer’s sketchbook—experimental and full of personality.
Each game can be completed in an hour or less. Rat Dreams delivers a surprisingly effective soulslike combat loop inside a tiny dungeon crawler. Prince of Prussia reimagines Prince of Persia as a stealth puzzle game where you stab Nazis. Vampire vs Pope Army casts you as a vampire who must “drink popes” to escape prison. Sebastian’s Quest riffs on Sokoban and merge puzzles, starring a pug with an overwhelming desire to eat cheese. These are just a few personal favorites; the rest of the collection is packed with equally clever ideas.
CorgiSpace. Credit: Adam Atomic / FINJI
What ties everything together is Saltsman’s distinctive sense of humor. Dino Sort, a logic puzzle about organizing dinosaurs, punctuates each completed level with an asteroid strike that instantly skeletonizes your carefully arranged prehistoric friends—a joke that somehow never stops being funny. The tone across the collection is consistently playful, mischievous, and lightly irreverent.
CorgiSpace. Credit: Adam Atomic / FINJI
True to old-school design, most of the games explain little to nothing. You’re expected to experiment, learn through failure, and uncover systems on your own; part of the joy comes from that process of discovery. Most titles also don’t allow saving, requiring you to finish them in a single sitting. This rarely felt frustrating, as the games were short and engaging enough to completely hold my attention.
PICO-8’s limitations help give CorgiSpace a cohesive visual identity. Sprites are simple but expressive, animations convey personality with just a couple of frames, and the crunchy four-channel sound design fits the retro aesthetic perfectly. Everything is carefully crafted to squeeze the maximum amount of readability and charm into the 128x128 pixel canvas.
CorgiSpace. Credit: Adam Atomic / FINJI
Completing each game unlocks a brief developer postmortem. Saltsman’s candid reflections about the inspiration, discoveries, and design decisions behind each game are a genuine highlight, especially for aspiring game designers. I found myself wishing these insights were even longer.
CorgiSpace doesn’t aim for UFO50’s towering ambition, and that’s entirely the point. Just as making these games reaffirmed Saltsman’s love of game design, playing them reminded me why I love games in the first place. It’s an ideal collection for a relaxed afternoon, especially if you enjoy clever games.
CorgiSpace is available on Steam and itch.io.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Steam Deck
