As much as i sound like a loser for saying this, Velkommen, a Steam workshop map, might be one of my greatest achievements in my life so far.
Considering nobody really plays Condos in Tower Unite other than minigolf and gambling, getting more likes than 30 is already huge in this field.
And most of all, it was my experience closest to game developing, although there's no way this could fit in a professional portfolio.
Today I wanna explain my thought process behind this whole thing, why I created it to begin with.
Back in early 2020s, people got tired of oversimplified logos.
Every single brands turning their logos uniformed, robotic and flat just because some big corps trended it first was a disgusting scene.
I guess things like that sparked the modern appreciation of older aesthetics, because I was one of them too. Then the phrase Frutiger Aero came and stitched altogether better.
Although the aesthetic itself might've been defined by a professional, it was popularized by Gen Z's who miss the era and younger generations who just think it's pretty looking,
thus unprofessionalized again. While I value the revival, it also caused Frutiger Aero to be desaturated by their poor recreation.
Skeumorphism and abstract vector gradients are understandably costly and difficult to recreate, after all.
It's become blatant and superficial. People used the same songs over and over, put MSN buddy icons everywhere,
Nintendo console soundtracks renamed to random bullshit for some reason and uploaded by different "artists" similar to Vaporwave(I especially hate this because it steals credits).
Overall just ugly and samey. I'm not saying every modern work of Frutiger Aero was bad, some of them were great, but this made me tired really fast.
Later, Frutiger Aero turned into nothing but a corny ass injoke I started to fuck around with my friends. That Steve Harvey meme I made above follows the same satirical principle.
Just like my feeling towards them oversimplified logos, coming full circle. Tired.
I didn't want my favorite nostalgia bait to fall flat, at least for myself. I wanted to do something about it and that was the whole point of Velkommen.
But not long after, I realized that I'm yet another lay person like them. Am I qualified to be complaining all this? I could create the same superficial shit if I'm not careful anyways.
I didn't want that this time. I had to do research to prevent that.
As I started both studying the aesthetic and improvising my build in Tower Unite at the same time, I found a huge problem with Frutiger Aero. It was way too broad.
It's not a term for a genre. It's the whole era entangling everything. Because of this, the only judge is your rather unfair "vibe".
For example, this is a list of songs I had to exclude since they were overused.
While I still felt a bit empty deep down my heart, I stumbled upon a local wiki talking about Frutiger Aero. Its first line read;
It means various design styles that spread across advertising, media, images, etc., from approximately 2004 to 2013 after Y2K has faded away. It was frequently used when the term "Ubiquitous" has started trending.
Wait. Oh shit, that's it. That's the word I've last heard since what, a decade ago? That's the actual term us Koreans used back in the day referring to today's Internet of Things.
That keyword was a delightful find for further research. All I had to do was typing "Ubiquitous" in Korean and put extra words after it. "Interior", "Exhibit", "Experience", "City".
I felt as if I struck gold. This one time-accurate term was a game changer to look for refrences.
I was in the middle of the build, but it looked pretty charming and accurate so far. My Tower Unite friends instantly loved it when I showed them.
One of them said, "Is this also gonna be like a game?" This was because they played my condo m before. "Nah, I think it's only gonna be like a visual demonstration," I replied.
But then later on, I kept thinking about it. Have I seen a game based on modern revival of Frutiger Aero that's actually good before? Mirror's Edge doesn't count, that was 2009.
At that point the best experience I had was Frutiger Aero Hub in Roblox but the best thing you can do there is roleplaying there, it's a walking simulator.
Aesthetic-based games like the backrooms are difficult to balance its visual and gameplay, because too much of tasks can ruin the visual appreciation and too less is boring.
What if the amount of interactivity is just right? All I've got acclaimed about back in my Tower Unite works was interactivity, after all.
Dude this could work. Fuck it, let's get ambitious.
Wanting to be one of the guys to nail making a good Frutiger Aero game, I decided to go further even if it takes too long, even if it's inside an obscure game.
2026-04-29 written,
2026-04-29 last edited
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