PuffballsUnited

"Hey, good job there!"

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“	It's... finally here! The Henry Stickmin Collection is done, and out for all to play! I've spent over 3 years working on this and it's such a good feeling to finally get it out. I hope you enjoy it! I'm going to take a long break now.	„
	― PuffballsUnited^[src]

Marcus Bromander, better known as PuffballsUnited, also known simply as Puffballs, Marcus B, or Puff, is an American artist, animator, game designer and musician who is best known for creating the Henry Stickmin video game series. He also voiced all the male characters with dialogue, but was able to make each one sound different through different accents and pitch changes. He also composed the majority of the score of the Henry Stickmin series.

Born in 1990, Puffballs began his video game career in 2007 with Crossing the Pit, having spent the previous few years making flash animations. A year later, he began to release Breaking the Bank, beginning the Henry Stickmin series. From 2009 to 2015, he created the other games in the series, which were released on Newgrounds and Stickpage. Puffballs concluded the Henry Stickmin series until August 2020, when its final game and remastered anthology were released.

Aside from the Henry Stickmin series, Puffballs is also well known for being the co-founder of Innersloth, with their 2018 game Among Us achieving massive success in 2020. He serves as an artist, animator, and game designer in Innersloth. For Among Us, Puffballs made the maps Polus and The Airship, the latter being an homage to Henry Stickmin. Puffballs plays a lot of games on the side, doing a playthrough of Banjo-Kazooie on Twitch in 2020. He also did a developers commentary on The Henry Stickmin Collection, where he played through the game while showing behind-the-scenes content.

Early life, education and early career[]

Puffballs was born on September 9, 1990. He became interested in making video games when he was 8, and realized it was possible to make a real game after seeing Alien Hominid on the Gameboy Advance in a store.

After graduating from high school and college, Puffballs attended Oregon State University, where he met ForteBass, and began video game development together after graduation. Puffballs and ForteBass discovered their video game development skills could help each other, with Puffballs' skill game design and artwork complementing ForteBass' computer programming background. After ForteBass left his job at Microsoft, they decided to form a joint venture together. Puffballs and ForteBass founded Innersloth as a privately held company in 2015.

Animation career[]

Before creating video games, Puffballs created several flash animations in the mid 2000s, including Operation Infiltration and The Bridge. He continued making animations after becoming a video game developer, releasing them on his YouTube channel.

Video game career[]

Henry Stickmin[]

PuffballsUnited portrait — PuffballsUnited's portrait

Puffballs created his Newgrounds account on December 14, 2007. Two days later, he submitted his first flash game Crossing the Pit, a game about a stick figure trying to cross a bridge. On Aug 27, 2008, Puffballs submitted Breaking the Bank, which won two awards; Daily 5th Place on August 29 and Frontpaged on April 25, 2009.

After the success of Breaking the Bank, Puffballs released its sequel Escaping the Prison on April 11, 2010. It won three awards; Frontpaged and Daily Feature on April 12, and the Weekly User's Choice on April 14.

On Jul 8, 2011, Puffballs released Stealing the Diamond, and came up with a name for both the stick figure and the series; Henry Stickmin. Stealing the Diamond won four awards, including Daily 2nd Place on July 9, the Frontpaged on July 11, 2011, and Review Crew Pick and the Weekly User's Choice on July 12.

On May 27, 2013, Puffballs released Infiltrating the Airship, which introduced the Toppat Clan and fan-favorite characters Charles Calvin and Right Hand Man, the latter being Puffballs' favourite character in the series. It also featured Puffballs' favourite fail, Gravity Bubble. The game won four awards, including Daily 4th Place and Frontpage on May 28, and Weekly Users' Choice and the Review Crew Pick on May 29.

On Nov 12, 2015, Puffballs released Fleeing the Complex, the final Henry Stickmin game released on Newgrounds. Fan favourite character Ellie Rose was introduced, voiced by Reese B. Ellie was the first character voiced by someone other than Puffballs. The game won three awards, including Frontpaged and Daily Feature on November 13, and the Weekly Users' Choice on November 18.

In 2017, Puffballs announced that he was starting work on the series' final game, Completing the Mission, and also announced that it would be available alongside The Henry Stickmin Collection, which also featured remastered versions of all previous entries in the series. This collection was released on Steam on August 7, 2020, and received "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews, with a 98% rating based on 24,000+ reviews. Reviewers praised the collection for its humour, animation, production value (specifically in Completing the Mission), & storylines, with some praising the sense of nostalgia they experienced while playing the game. Completing the Mission was also praised by players and reviewers, and is often considered the best game in the series.

On December 30, 2020, Puffballs released the first part of his developer commentary for The Henry Stickmin Collection, and released the second part on January 1, 2021. During the commentary, he confirmed several character name references and revealed the fan theory about Jacob Rose and Ellie being related was false.

Among Us[]

Marcus — PuffballsUnited as a crewmate. Henry Stickmin can be seen on top of him.

In 2018, Puffballs and the other members of Innersloth released Among Us, a murder-mystery game which takes place in a space-themed setting, in which players each take on one of two roles, most being Crewmates, and a predetermined number being Impostors. The goal of the Crewmates are to identify the Impostors, eliminate them, and complete tasks around the map; the Impostor's goal is to covertly sabotage and kill the Crewmates before they complete all of their tasks. Puffballs made the Polus map for this game, which came out in 2019. For the first two years of the game's release, Among Us had a small fanbase.

Innersloth at The Game Awards 2020 — PuffballsUnited (middle), ForteBass (left), Amy Liu (right), and Victoria Tran (on the phone) at The Game Awards 2020 after winning Best Multiplayer Game for *Among Us.*

In 2020, Among Us received a massive influx of popularity, and received positive reviews from critics, being praised for its gameplay and setting, although it was criticized for its technical issues. In response to the game's popularity, Among Us 2 was announced in August 2020, however, the planned sequel was canceled a month later, and the team shifted its focus to improving the original game.

In 2021, Puffballs made The Airship map for Among Us, which is a direct homage to the Airship owned by the Toppat Clan. The map also features multiple references to the Henry Stickmin series, including Charles' helicopter. Before the map was released, the Innersloth crew released a trailer for it, which featured Puffballs reprising his role as Toppat leader Reginald Copperbottom by voicing a crewmate version of the character, who instructs the crewmates to do tasks and informs them that they have an impostor on the ship.

There are also many cosmetics in the game referencing the Henry Stickmin series, in forms of Hats, Skins, Pets, Nameplates and Visors.

Voiced Characters[]

Trivia[]

His favorite character in the Henry Stickmin series is Right Hand Man.
- His second favorite character is Geoffrey Plumb.
He is fluent in Swedish which explains Sven Svensson's accurate Swedish accent.
He hates drawing vehicles.
He dislikes jelly.
He likes to draw guns.
He is allergic to cheese.
His favorite and least favorite fails in the series are the Gravity Bubble and Gravity Manipulator, respectively.
- Coincidentally, they were both fail options appearing in Infiltrating the Airship, both starting with the word "Gravity".
The trial that occurs during the events of Lawyered Up was set on his birthday, September 9th.
The code used to get the Biggol Sword, 1214, is the date Puffballs joined Newgrounds, December 14th, 2007.
He has admitted in a interview that if he was pestered enough for a new game after Fleeing the Complex was released he would've said that "The Betrayed was cannon Henry is dead can't make new games"
He asks to be refer as PuffballsUnited or just Puff, instead of his real name.