Pixel Pajama Studios is a tiny indie game studio based in Minnesota USA. Co-Founders Derek Sonnenberg (fedellen) and Bonnie Thompson (abonbon) initially began their pixel art journey as an enjoyable hobby to share together in late May of 2018. The idea emerged to turn their art into a game soon after.
Bonnie, being a classically trained artist, was the perfect fit for Art and Animation; Derek took it upon himself in September of the same year to begin learning how to program and build a game with an engine called Stencyl. Adventures of Duck Guy prototypes were being playtested within months. The long term goal, to create beautiful Pixels in their Pajamas, obviously.
In May of 2019, daunted with the upcoming task of level design, world building, and animation, Derek switched gears; using what he had just taught himself to solely develop and release a game. Pixel Pajama Studios became Pixel Pajama Studios LLC and Astral Defense was polished for release.
Throughout the summer and fall of 2019 Pixel Pajama Studios began development of a new project together, Sonar Smash. Initially the idea was to “clone” Astral Defense in a different theme but Sonar Smash quickly evolved into it’s own game with numerous unique features.
Shortly after it’s release, Sonar Smash was featured by Apple. Several updates were put into the game including a content patch with new enemy types. Unfortunately while the downloads were soaring the game was not monetizing well enough to consider further development.
Throughout mid 2020, the team has developed several demos and prototypes. These projects included their recently released Doomridge Dungeon Demo and Asset Packs. At the end of 2020 and into early 2021, Derek dove deeper into programming and software development. In particular, he’s been learning full stack web development with TypeScript and React while developing List Together.