Henning Cozzi was offered an unusual gig in October 2012.
He was invited to spend a little over two months on the tropical island of Belize with Lucas Martel and other artists, working together on a short animated film. In fact, watch 10 minutes of the film embedded below. However, if you don’t have time, let’s give you a quick overview.
A lighthouse towers over a vast desert that stretches to the horizon. The world wasn’t always like this. Over this desolate landscape, a lone pilot flies toward a small cloud. It seems like the pilot didn’t exactly have a plan, but he tied his dreams to this plane anyway. Hope is just a sketch the pilot makes on a piece of paper labeled “Rainmaker,” and the pilot is not alone in these dangerous skies. Other planes with giant funnels at the back aim to suck the last bit of water out of the air first.
Will the pilot be able to accomplish his mission and make it rain before too many others are knocked out of the sky in search of water?
The artists Martel assembled worked on the island for two months, doing everything from storyboarding to animation, drawing inspiration from each other and the island’s environment. A company called Mighty Coconut was born.
“I had about a quarter of the amount needed to pay everyone their regular per diem rate, but ended up having enough to fly everyone, rent a house, pay for food, a small per diem, etc.,” Martell wrote in a diary video recalling that “destination production.” “This trip was entirely self-funded through my own freelance work.”
Martell had no outside investment in Mighty Coconuts and didn’t release a VR game until 2020, when the release of Walkabout Mini Golf culminated a wave of Oculus Quest 2 headset sales during the pandemic. These days, there are enough people to pay for a safe and fun escape every time Mighty Coconut releases a new course, employing 34 people contributing to a sea of art, animation, music, and gameplay.
Martel is feeling the pressure.
Other independent studios, such as Cloudhead, which developed Pistol Whip, have cut jobs in the face of changing priorities among platform companies. More than a decade after the creative vacation in Belize that founded Mighty Coconuts, is it possible that Martel feels a little like a pilot flying into the clouds?On my private tour of Tiki-a-Coco with Coetzee, I reminisce about his time on that island and the origins of Mighty Coconuts as I travel along a walkabout path.
We begin with a plane crashing on a tropical island beach, with drums rumbling in the distance. There are huts all over the island, but for some reason the furthest huts are the biggest. That curiosity that draws us straight into the landscape prompts us to investigate further and in the process discover the mythical origins of mini golf.
hello jerry
Once upon a time, 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 out of a bunch of coconuts where he saw his first hole-in-one. Jerry’s fall resulted in an entire culture of happy coconuts living on a virtual reality volcanic island.
“Jerry fell out of a coconut tree and fell into a hole, and that’s how golf was born,” art director Don Carson explained at the tour. “So it’s an island inhabited by coconuts who worship golf. That’s basically the story.”
The artists at Mighty Coconuts provided us with a tapestry that hangs on the back wall of the tiki shack depicting Jerry’s fall. When you exit from the side of the hut, you will enter a lively village. You might want to stop for a photo with your CocoVision camera before the baby coconut takes its first roll between mom and dad.
Walkabout introduced some of the first animated characters to a game with the 2022 release of Labyrinth. With Tiki à Coco, Walkabout’s animators found a foothold in a vacuum. That’s Mighty Coconut Canon. The artists call themselves “The Coconuts,” but they’ve decided that their virtual coconuts don’t have legs. In one hole, a bundle of bandaged coconuts cheers on their horrified friends as they tumble off the top board and are about to tumble into a recreation of “Jerry’s Fall.”
Coetzee told me after my interview that he doesn’t stop and think about how unusual his work is until I bring it up on tour. But that’s kind of impressive, right?
In 2012, he worked for Lucas Martel on a tropical island, creating a 10-minute animated film about a visionary who creates a magical spark of something out of almost nothing.
In 2025, he worked from home for Lucas Martel, designing a 36-hole mini-golf game on a tropical island populated by happy little coconuts in virtual reality.
