Context
Books that wanted to become a place.
Tukoni began as award-winning picture books by Ukrainian artist Oksana Bula. Forest spirits, quiet kindness, animals that need help — the world already existed on paper. The ask was to make it interactive without sanding off the illustration.
Role
Tobto built the game that moves.
Creative direction and story lived with the Dream Operator / Bula side. Tobto’s lane was engineering: lead development on Unity with Adventure Creator — input, scenes, inventory, crafting, save flow, and the systems that keep a point-and-click adventure readable for kids and calm for adults.
Earlier, the same orbit had already touched the universe in VR (“Meet Tukoni” for Book Arsenal). The prologue was the leap from installation to a shippable PC and Android build.
Build
Adventure Creator graphs, not a black-box prefab dump.
Interactions lived as ActionLists: hotspot enable, character animate, wait, run in parallel, menu state. Collectables, cutscenes, dialogue options, and the GameEngine sat in a clear hierarchy so a forest full of mushrooms and boars stayed maintainable under a grant deadline.
Systems
Puzzles, notebook, craft — without a wall of text.
Explore hand-drawn locations. Combine items. Follow the Traveller’s Notebook. Dialogs skip paragraphs and speak in animated bubbles so reading level never blocks the journey. The code had to stay invisible: failures should feel like “try another leaf,” not “the UI broke.”
Funding
First Ukrainian game with state support.
In 2020 the prototype won a grant from the Ukrainian Cultural Fund — roughly ₴700k — becoming the first video game in Ukraine backed that way. The money covered a prologue, not a full campaign: ship something kind, free, and credible, then earn the right to go further.
That constraint shaped engineering priorities: a tight vertical slice, multi-language from day one, Steam + Android + itch, and a build that parents could finish in one evening.
Outcome
Overwhelmingly Positive — and still growing.
Tukoni: Prologue launched free on Steam (19 Nov 2020) and Android. Reviews landed Overwhelmingly Positive; early coverage cited tens of thousands of downloads across stores. Later the project returned as Tukoni: Forest Keepers, with visual-art awards along the way — DevGAMM Excellence in Visual Art, Digital Vikings for upcoming art style.
Tone
Kindness as a technical requirement.
No timer pressure. No jump-skill gate. Systems tuned so the forest stays gentle: if the player is stuck, the notebook and bubble language should pull them forward. Tobto’s job was to make that softness run at 60fps on modest hardware — Unity scenes, inventory logic, and localization wired so the illustration never has to apologize for the code.
Story
- 01
Picture-book universe needed a playable forest without losing the drawing.
- 02
Tobto led Unity / Adventure Creator engineering for puzzles, craft, and flow.
- 03
UKF funded the first state-backed Ukrainian game prototype — prologue scope only.
- 04
Free launch on Steam, Android, itch — Overwhelmingly Positive reception.
- 05
Path opened for Forest Keepers and further awards for the art-led adventure.
Play
Tukoni: Prologue on SteamDevelopment diaries on YouTubeFree prologue. Full forest still growing — wishlist Forest Keepers when you’re ready.