Her story
Busya is an apricot Maltipoo — half Maltese, half toy poodle. She's my dog. She wasn't invented for the game or drawn from a description: she's real, warm and curly, and every photo on this page is of her.
Anyone who has a dog knows how she waits by the door. There are no words in that kind of loyalty and no conditions — just waiting. I wanted to tell a story where people search for her on the far side of the world, and she finds her own way home. That story became Across the World to You.
The road begins in Uzbekistan, in Khiva and the Cotton Fields, and runs through Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and Istanbul, to a home in Vienna. It's a long way, and the game doesn't pretend otherwise: there is separation in it, and loneliness, and tiredness. But one rule never bends — Pixie never gets hurt. If she stumbles, Aigerim catches up and picks her up, and the journey carries on with the next run.
What mattered most to me was that the dog in the game is her, not just "a cute little dog". So from her photos we painted a portrait and a view from four sides, and approved them only once they really looked like Busya. Everything is checked against them: the painted portraits in the menus, the videos and the 3D model you run with.
The model was rebuilt more than once. We put every version next to a photo and asked ourselves honestly: is that her? It turns out the face decides it — the muzzle, the eyes, the nose, the line of the mouth, the way the fur falls — and only then the curls on top of her head, the long soft ears and that apricot coat.
In the game Pixie has a wardrobe: outfits from the Suitcase and the shop. Every item is fitted on her model — front, side, back and mid-run — so it sits the way it would on a real dog, without sinking into her fur or floating above it.
Some of the game's pictures and video were made with generative tools. But a machine doesn't get to decide whether it looks like Busya: every image is compared with her real photos, and anything she can't be recognised in stays out of the game.
This game is about home being not a dot on a map but the one who's waiting for you. If you have a dog of your own, you'll understand why Pixie runs.
I wanted the game to have not just a dog in it, but her — her curls, the way she looks at you, her loyalty. Everything else was built around that.
