A robo journalist’s best friend.

Meet Puff Piece: sentient dog of goo, and Times & Galaxy’s ship pet.

What makes a space-faring news ship feel like home? Who can comfort even the hardest journalist on a rough day? What causes damp messes in unusual places?

A ship pet, of course, and in Times & Galaxy, that pet is Puff Piece: a sentient, semi-solid “dog” made of green goo and sheer exuberance. Their adorable, glop-forward appearance has already made them one of the most beloved characters in a game filled with more than 100 of them.

“It's just this simple design that is so funny and so cute,” art director Kate Craig says. “When I saw it, I kind of went bonkers, and tried to put Puff Piece in everything. … Bridget [Gibson, character artist] hit something so perfect.”

So perfect, in fact, that the role of “ship pet” was created to accommodate the design. Puff began as a feline sketch for the game’s Cat Show story, where all manners of cats—from robotic versions to definition-stretching jars of eyes—would be vying for acclaim. But when Gibson showed creative director Ben Gelinas their first sketch, he was immediately struck by its potential.

Puff Piece’s initial, more, uh, teeth-forward feline design.

“I was working at a screen-printing shop, and we had a black lab who just hung out and was my favorite coworker at the time,” Gibson says. “The juxtaposition of this big fluffy animal with all the various paints and inks that we were working with was something very fun that Puff Piece kind of came from.”

Puff also bubbled up memories of newsroom dogs for Gelinas.

“I instantly fell in love with the green goopy monster, who at that time had menacing fangs,” Gelinas recalls. “When I worked as a reporter, coworkers would sometimes bring their dogs into the office for the day to just chill and be cute. I loved those days and agreed ‘the Scanner should have a ship dog!’”

Oh, to be sentient goo…

Gibson notes that, aside from losing the fangs, Puff’s design didn’t change much from that initial draft. Sometimes the goo just… gels.

“Is it Athena, the Greek goddess that was fully formed right from Zeus's forehead? Puff Piece just came out of my brain,” they explain. “I was merely a vessel for bringing that shape into the world.”

Who's a goo boy? You're a goo boy!