This article was originally published in Issue 4 of the ICG Zine, June 2024. It was reformatted in December 2025, but has not been edited further.

ICG: Is there anywhere you want to start with Pop Pup? Anything you specifically want to talk about?

AJB: [laughs] Being a furry and like T for T trans stuff– that’s what the game was about, mostly. And Sonic Adventure 2 on the GameCube. The opening scene is a direct reference which some people played and picked up on. But yeah, it was just an homage to those things. Those are what I was thinking about when I made it. And then skateboarding as well.

ICG: Does music play a heavy role in your games?

AJB: Oh yeah, I wrote the music too. I do all the music for my games and the art, and then the coding as a solo dev project. I’ve played music for a decade and making music is always really fun, and doing it like the Fall Out Boy one. All of the songs are based on Fall Out Boy songs. They’re not really that referential, but it’s like maybe the chords and vibe. A lot of the new Fall Out Boy album had hand claps so I was incorporating those and little orchestral bits.

So yeah, I like working on projects that focus the setting like that with music. The song for Pop Pup specifically was one of the first things I did for it and it was a reference to the City Escape song and Sonic Adventure 2– which is the opening song. I just wanted to make this fun indie rock song but it ended up being a little bit more shoegazey, but it was supposed to be an homage to that song.

ICG: Did the idea originate as a Sonic tribute game or a skating game concept?

AJB: I just wanted that energy, that uh, I don’t know, the coolness of when you’re younger. Like the easiness of
“this is so ‘cool’.” With like, mascot games. It’s like, Crash Bandicoot’s a furry, but he was
very “cool” in pop culture. But then it’s so cringey that I think most people don’t think it’s cool anymore. But then it’s like, doing something like Ollie, it’s very furry and very Sonic. And, uh, I do think it’s cool in like a ’90s way, which is cheesy.

But I’ve also been watching some anime, like this one skateboarding anime. And I’m like, oh, I kind of miss this like, cool in a tongue-in-cheek way.

ICG: Is the anime “Sk8 the Infinity”?

AJB: Yeah, yeah. It’s so good. They love each other. It’s like my favorite kind of story. I’ve been processing it a lot and I think it’s given me gender feelings. The show is pretty gay feeling and then it’s about skateboarding which is a special interest of mine. This year I’ve been engaging with a lot of media that carries those interests. Seeing “The People’s Joker” and “I Saw the TV Glow,” which references Buffy, those were special interests of mine in high school and college. TV Glow was so cool in how it tied directly to Buffy, but then it stands on its own and is much more interesting for that.

ICG: Tell us about your moniker, “Fake Gamer Girl.”

AJB: Yeah, so games were definitely like, an offshoot of art. I started making art under Fake Gamer Girl Comics. The name has changed, and I think it probably will change again. I don’t know what to yet.

I started visual art in 2018, making comics. I was trying to make four panel comics twice a week. And then I did more comics, and eventually I did a risograph printed zine/comic called “Kid Canary.” I had one called “Rolling in the Keep” because it’s a dungeon crawler game, and it has dice rolls at certain panels.

I think after making comics for four years I started wanting to make games and I had dabbled in tabletop RPGs, just making little simple ones. But I don’t play them enough because generally I didn’t have enough friends that were into those games at the time, so I tried making it into a comic that still had game elements. I think it wasn’t the best medium, even though I think it’s a fun book.

At that point, the pandemic happened and then I wanted to make games for real. So, I just started a course and I did maybe two or three games with no animation. Then I learned animation and I’ve done three games that have animated elements. I don’t know, I’ve been getting better at it and that’s been really cool.

I like learning and games are like a great way to learn, it just pushes everything to the front – you get better at being well rounded. And as an artist, I just have so many hobbies that I can incorporate, but it does kind of tire me out creatively for a bit. But it’s nice that it just uses everything at one time, or it gets my wheels turning on every single discipline. There’s things I can explore better in games than I could in comics. I think comics are probably my weakest area writing wise. Oh, yeah, my friend Ash did the voice of Ali, who is like very Sonic-y, but if Sonic was a trans girl and very overexcitable and probably has ADHD.

ICG: What games influenced you?

AJB: I liked the Sonic levels that have that two-minute runtime, then Tony Hawk Pro Skater is a game I play a lot, and it’s probably one of the few games I’m actually really good at, where I can get really high combos.

So, I wanted to do a game that had the same combo thing as Tony Hawk where when you hit the ground it ends, so until you hit the ground you can keep building it. I also wanted to make a game that was one button. I always wanted to make a game that’s just like the T Rex Google game, where you just press jump.

Nailing the fun in something that simple was a fun challenge. I do want to add buttons to a Pop Pup sequel, but I feel like adding one button would change the whole game. And I like how much I can get out of one button. I want to add shooting in the sequel.

I did an update that teases the sequel through another character that’s a rabbit with rollerblades who’s red and is named Blade. I want to take the pop culture idea of Shadow and his gun and shooting in Metroid and Mega Man – something that would feel really good on top of the one button jumping and combo-ing, but I don’t know how that will work. Jumping and shooting, it’s never been done together. [laughs]

ICG: You’re reinventing the wheel. [both laugh] I think that sort of iterative approach to design is incredibly helpful.

AJB: I’m really excited, yeah. I want to do more levels for Pop Pup also, but the first one. I have maybe two levels, three levels possibly.

ICG: If you had to pick one comic to recommend to someone, what would it be?

AJB: This is actually a thing, I kind of call my work comics less and less because I very rarely do comics, but I like Scott Pilgrim. I like the Sonic IDW comics a lot, the Zelda manga. I think comics also were just a really easy way to tell a story or share something creatively, so it’s not necessarily my favorite medium, I guess, but I love it because it’s really easy to do. It’s like a DIY thing, and I did comics in school, like, parody comics of stuff.

Pop Pup can be played in your browser at: https://fakegamercomics.itch. io/poppup