Thanks for the kind words!! We initially were thinking "nuclear winter" as a concept. We were going to take a bit more of a darker angle. One of our artists put together the snow, and Kilo and Tunn running in it and we loved it! 

Then we thought you could maybe fall into a cave...which led to: "we need some background assets. maybe some mushrooms or something?" and one of our artists made the first mushroom which looked like this guyWe thought it was super cute and immediately coined the name "mushie". The whole mushroom concept took on a life of its own after that and became integral to the game as you'll see in the playthrough lol. We just think they're light hearted, cute, sassy little shrooms and we love em! 

Thanks for your question! :)