Mighty Coconut

Mighty Coconut
Information
Industry	Video games, animation
Founded	2014
Founder	Lucas Martell, Christina Martell, Tad Catalano
Headquarters	Austin, Texas, United States
Notable Personnel	Lucas Martell (founder and CEO), Don Carson (senior art director), Jeremy Wynn (game director)
Products	Walkabout Mini Golf, Laser Mazer, 57° North, Walkabout Dungeon Golfer (in development)
Website	https://www.mightycoconut.com

Mighty Coconut is an independent studio in Austin, Texas, that makes animation and virtual reality and augmented reality games. It was founded in 2014 and is best known for the VR game Walkabout Mini Golf, which it has developed and published since its launch on Quest on 24 September 2020. The studio was started by Lucas Martell, the animator behind the short film Pigeon: Impossible, together with Christina Martell and art director Tad Catalano, and it spent its first years on animated shorts and work-for-hire visual effects before turning to games.

Walkabout Mini Golf grew from a solo project into the studio's main business. It sells new courses as paid downloadable content, many of them licensed from properties such as Jim Henson's Labyrinth, Myst, Meow Wolf and Wallace & Gromit. In 2026 the studio cut staff twice, citing a shrinking VR market: Martell wrote on 30 September 2026 that the team, which had peaked at 36 people, would number 17 after the second round.

Reviewed 14 October 2026. Checked founding, founders, animation origins, the AR apps, Walkabout Mini Golf release history, licensed courses, team size, the 2026 layoffs, Pocket Edition sunset, Dungeon Golfer, GRASS and the Xylodon release against the cited studio posts, press reports and store listings. About review dates.

History

Animation studio (2014-2017)

Lucas Martell moved to Austin in 2003 to work in film, starting in sound and moving through post-production and visual effects into animation. He spent several years making the six-minute short Pigeon: Impossible, finished in 2009, which was sold to Fox Animation and became the basis for the feature film Spies in Disguise. According to the studio, its origin was a 2012 animation retreat on a small island off the coast of Belize, where a group of animators worked on the short The OceanMaker. The Austin Chronicle reported in 2016 that Lucas and Christina Martell founded the company in March 2014 together with art director Tad Catalano, and that producer Tim Cunningham joined as a partner about three months later. At that time the studio described itself as a 3D visual effects and animation house, doing commercial "vendor" work alongside original projects; its credits included work on Lazer Team, Hardcore Henry and Green Room. A 2022 Jim Henson Company press release described Mighty Coconut as founded in 2014 following The Oceanmaker, and said the two shorts had been viewed more than 30 million times online and screened at more than 350 festivals in 63 countries.

Mobile AR games (2017-2019)

The studio's first interactive releases were augmented reality apps for phones. 57° North is a branching, choose-your-own-adventure story about two cousins stranded on an island after a storm. It runs on iOS and Android and can use the Merge Cube, a printed foam cube that the phone camera tracks: players rotate the cube toward the choice they want to make. Next Reality listed it at US$2.99, and the Austin Chronicle noted that the US$15 cube was the main barrier for buyers.

Laser Mazer followed as a room-scale AR puzzle game in which players physically walk, crouch and squeeze through mazes of virtual lasers placed in the real world. It runs on ARKit devices (iPhone 6s or newer, fifth-generation iPad or newer) and ARCore phones, has 40 levels and 12 survival modes, and the studio recommends a play area of at least 15 by 15 feet (5 by 5 m). It was a nominee at the 2018 IndieCade festival in Santa Monica, and the studio's App Store listing describes it as a Jury Prix winner at IndieCade Europe. Android Police included it in a February 2019 roundup of notable AR games, priced at US$3.99 with no ads or in-app purchases.

Walkabout Mini Golf (2020-2025)

Martell has said his first VR headset was an Oculus Rift DK2. He showed a prototype of the game to people from Oculus at IndieCade, and he built it largely alone during the COVID-19 pandemic over about a year. MIXED reported that the game was based on an existing AR prototype. Walkabout Mini Golf launched on Quest on 24 September 2020 with four courses, 19 days before the Meta Quest 2 went on sale, and was the first VR game the studio released.

The game came to SteamVR on 15 July 2021 and to PlayStation VR2 on 11 May 2023. UploadVR noted that, with the PS VR2 release, it was on Quest, SteamVR, Pico and Viveport with cross-platform play. In 2023 it also reached the Pico 4 and was a launch title for the Meta Quest+ subscription; that year the studio released eight new courses and its first hardware product, the Walkabout Grip-to-Putter, made with HelloRealVR. A flatscreen iPhone version, Walkabout Mini Golf: Pocket Edition, went on sale on the App Store on 10 October 2024 at US$4.99 with cross-play against VR players.

The team grew from Martell alone to 3, 8 and 12 people, and peaked at 36. In a March 2025 interview Martell said the studio had 35 people, working mostly remotely, with a new course roughly every seven to eight weeks and the team working 12 to 18 months ahead; former Disney Imagineer Don Carson is the studio's senior art director.

Downsizing (2026)

On 27 January 2026 Road to VR reported that Mighty Coconut had laid off 25 percent of its staff, leaving 27 people. The studio raised the price of new DLC courses from US$4 to US$5, planned six courses a year instead of the usual seven, scaled back work on features such as Employee Mode, Chess and Slingshots, and said it would prioritize the VR version over Pocket Edition. On 30 April 2026 the studio announced that cross-play between Pocket Edition and VR would end with the release of the Blokhaven course on 7 May and that it would stop selling Pocket Edition on the App Store; existing owners keep their purchases, without further updates.

At a "Mighty Coconut Presents" showcase on 10 August 2026, the studio announced Walkabout Dungeon Golfer and a move into third-party publishing. Dungeon Golfer began as an April Fools' joke on 1 April 2026. It is a roguelike dungeon crawler built on Walkabout's putting physics and is planned for both VR and flatscreen platforms with cross-play; Martell gave summer 2027 as a target, not a release date. GRASS is a flatscreen co-op lawn-mowing game by Cosmic Dog that Mighty Coconut is publishing; UploadVR reported that it was available to wishlist on Steam and would also come to Xbox. At the same showcase, game director Jeremy Wynn introduced the trailer for the Gloop Lair course.

On 28 September 2026 Martell announced a second downsizing: ten people would leave over the following several months. He attributed it to the state of the games industry and especially VR, where funding, hardware and press attention had moved elsewhere, and said the studio could not sustain its size without a steady stream of new players. He also wrote that "Walkabout isn't going anywhere", though new courses might come less often. Road to VR put the cut at about 35 percent of staff. In a follow-up post two days later, Martell wrote that revenue had fallen since the peak while costs kept rising, so the studio had been spending more than it made. He pointed to expensive hardware, a Quest audience shifting toward free-to-play games for younger players, and cancelled large VR projects, and ruled out further price rises because earlier increases had reduced the number of buyers. The studio released Escape From Planet Xylodon on 8 October 2026 at US$4.99; UploadVR described it as the game's 42nd course and the fifth of six planned for 2026.

Products

Title	Year	Type	Platforms	Notes
Pigeon: Impossible	2009	Animated short	Online, festivals	Made by Lucas Martell before the studio was founded; basis for Spies in Disguise
The OceanMaker	c. 2014	Animated short	Online, festivals	Begun at the 2012 Belize retreat and still being finished in mid-2014
57° North	Released by early 2018	AR interactive story	iOS, Android (optional Merge Cube)	Branching story, about one hour per playthrough
Laser Mazer	2018	AR puzzle game	iOS (ARKit), Android (ARCore)	IndieCade 2018 nominee
Walkabout Mini Golf	2020	VR mini golf	Meta Quest, SteamVR, PlayStation VR2, Pico, Samsung Galaxy XR; iOS Pocket Edition (2024; end of sales announced 2026)	Main product; courses sold as DLC
Walkabout Grip-to-Putter	2023	Hardware accessory	Walkabout Mini Golf players	Made with HelloRealVR
Walkabout Dungeon Golfer	In development (target summer 2027)	Roguelike golf game	VR and flatscreen, cross-play	Announced 10 August 2026
GRASS	Announced 2026	Co-op lawn-mowing game (publisher only)	Steam, Xbox	Developed by Cosmic Dog

XR work

Licensed courses

Most Walkabout courses are original designs, but the studio has made several with outside rights holders:

Course	Partner	Release	Notes
Walkabout Mini Golf: Labyrinth	The Jim Henson Company	28 July 2022	Based on the 1986 film; US$2.99
Walkabout Mini Golf: Myst	Cyan	November 2022	Built in cooperation with the developers of Myst
Walkabout Mini Golf: Meow Wolf	Meow Wolf	December 2023	Based on the Numina world of the Convergence Station exhibit in Denver; Meow Wolf co-founder Caity Kennedy, Numina's creator, worked on its design
Walkabout Mini Golf: Wallace & Gromit	Aardman Animations	25 July 2024	Nick Park sketched hole concepts used in the course

Design approach

In his 2025 Voices of VR interview, Martell said the whole game is meant to be playable with one button, the trigger, which also warps the player to the ball. The team relies on physics-based swings and generally avoids adjusting the physics to help the player. Private rooms are joined by typing a shared room name rather than through friend lists, and Martell estimated that about 55 percent of games are multiplayer. Courses are sold as permanently owned DLC, and the studio also sells avatar packs. MIXED reported that players spent a combined 4,820,150 hours in the game during 2023.

See also

• Walkabout Mini Golf
• Meta Quest
• PlayStation VR2