Be Yourself, Up There
Version 1.10, 30th build, and the day players finally got a face in FlyQuest.
We just hit version 1.10, and somewhere along the way we crossed our 30th build. It's a strange milestone. Nothing flashy, no celebration — just the quiet realization that this thing we started as a duel demo has become a real, evolving app.
This time, we wanted to tackle something we'd been circling around for a while: avatars.
The face that was missing
Up until now, players had a presence in FlyQuest, but not really an identity. They had a name, a score, maybe a place on a leaderboard, but no face. And in an app that's supposed to feel personal, daily, almost like a companion — that gap was starting to bother us.
What we tried first
We tested a few different systems to let players embody an avatar. Most of what we looked at was third-party — quick to plug in, quick to drop. Some were too rigid, some were too cartoonish, some just didn't feel like FlyQuest.
None of them clicked. We knew one thing from the start: we wanted to push customization much further than the usual "pick one of six characters" approach.
So we built our own
We decided to do everything in-house. No third-party avatar SDK, no off-the-shelf character pack, no library to fight against. We wanted total freedom over what an avatar could be — and how players could shape one.
The system we landed on is modular: every avatar is composed of independent body parts. Skin. Hair. Eyes. Mouth. Outfit. Accessories. Layered on top of each other, swappable individually.
That structure means we can keep adding without ever rebuilding. New hairstyles? Drop them in. New outfit category? Plug in a layer. No external roadmap to wait for, no schema to negotiate with.
It also opens up a whole new layer of game design. If players can customize, items can be earned. If items can be earned, every session has a reason to come back — beyond points and badges. And for players who'd rather skip the grind, we can sell items directly from the customization screen.
As of today, we have over 100 customization items live in the app. The full set lives in the avatar wiki.
In-house, with Clara
The whole approach is mostly thanks to Clara, our artist. She can draw any customization piece we throw at her, in our style, in our colors, with Foxtrot-energy baked in. We're not capped by what some external library happens to ship — we can add infinite items, in any direction we want. Holiday outfits. Aviation-themed gear. Weird stuff. Whatever the game design needs.
Where avatars landed
We're already thinking about adding more layers later — more categories, maybe even animations down the line. But for now, we're really happy with where avatars have landed. The personalization feels distinct, the style feels coherent, and most importantly, it feels like us.
Avatars have officially joined FlyQuest's DNA.