Henning Koczy was offered an unusual gig in October of 2012.
He was invited to spend a little over two months on an island in tropical Belize with Lucas Martell and other artists to make an animated short film together. You should really go spend 10 minutes with the film, embedded below, but if you don't have the time right now let me give you a quick overview.
A lighthouse pokes out of a vast desert stretching to the horizon. The world wasn't always like this and, above this desolate landscape, a lone pilot flies toward a small cloud. The pilot doesn't seem to have a plan, exactly, but they've strapped a dream to this plane anyway. Hope is little more than a sketch the pilot put on paper labeled "Rain Maker" and the pilot isn't alone in these dangerous skies. Other planes with vast funnels flying behind them aim to pull the last bit of water from the air first.
Can the pilot complete their mission and make it rain before so many others, desperate for water too, knock them out of the sky?
Martell's gathering of artists did everything on that island from storyboarding to animation over that two-month span, drawing inspiration from one another and their island surroundings. That's where a company was born called Mighty Coconut.
"I had about a quarter of what it would've taken to pay everyone their typical day rates, but that turned out to be enough to fly everyone down, rent houses, pay for food, small per diems, etc.," Martell wrote on a diary video recalling that 'Destination Production'. "This trip was all self-funded through my own freelance gigs."
Martell hasn't taken any outside investment for Mighty Coconut and didn't release a VR game until 2020, when he crested the wave of Oculus Quest 2 headsets selling during the pandemic with the release of Walkabout Mini Golf. These days enough people pay for a safe and fun escape inside each new course he releases that Mighty Coconut employs 34 people contributing oceans of art, animation, music and gameplay.
Martell feels some pressure.
Other independent studios, like Pistol Whip developer Cloudhead, reduced headcount in the face of changing priorities at platform companies. More than a decade after that creative getaway in Belize founding Mighty Coconut, is it possible Martell feels a bit like that pilot flying toward the cloud? My exclusive tour of Tiki à Coco with Koczy recalls his time on that island and the origins of Mighty Coconut as we move along the Walkabout path.
We start at a crashed plane on the beach of a tropical island with drums pounding in the distance. Huts cover the island but, somehow, the one that's furthest away is the biggest. That curiosity drawn straight into the landscape invites us to investigate further and, along the way, we discover the mythical origins of mini golf.
Hail Jerry
Long ago a coconut fell from a tree and rolled into a hole in the ground.
His name was Jerry, and the game of golf was born to a bunch of coconuts who saw the very first hole-in-one. Jerry's fall led to a whole culture of happy coconuts living on a volcanic island in virtual reality.
"Jerry fell out of a coconut tree and fell into a hole and in doing so created golf," art director Don Carson explained on the tour. "And so it's an island inhabited with coconuts that worship the game of golf. And so that's the story basically."
Mighty Coconut's artists offer us a tapestry across the back wall of a tiki hut depicting the fall of Jerry. Exit the side of the hut and you make your way into a bustling village. You might want to stop for a photo with the CocoVision camera in front of the coconut baby taking its first rolls between mom and dad.
Walkabout introduced some of its first animated characters to the game with the release of Labyrinth in 2022. Now with Tiki à Coco, Walkabout's animators find their footing in a place without any. That's Mighty Coconut canon. The Coconuts, as the artists call themselves, decided their virtual coconuts lack feet. At one hole, a bunch of bandaged coconuts cheer on their fearful friend at the very edge of rolling off a plank above and into a "Jerry's Fall" recreation.
Koczy said after my interview he doesn't stop and think about how unusual his job is until I bring it up on our tours. But it's a bit striking, isn't it?
In 2012, he worked for Lucas Martell on a tropical island making a 10-minute animated film about a visionary producing a spark of something magical from almost nothing at all.
In 2025, he worked for Lucas Martell from home designing 36 holes of mini golf for a tropical island inhabited by happy little coconuts in virtual reality.
