Hailing from the south of Spain, Hypeful have travelled from the beautiful city of Malaga to Vitoria-Gasteiz to take part in the F2P Campus and take BigBox, their first game, to the next level.
Since they arrived at the campus, Álvaro Pérez (programmer), Iván Moreno (artist), Jose Luis Jurado (designer) and Marta Cascalis (artist) haven’t stopped working for even a minute. Most of them have a certain amount of experience behind them: some are part of small personal projects and others have worked on games such as White Spell; but BigBox is their first game as a team at Hypeful.
It’s time to get to know them better and see what makes BigBox so special.
F2P Campus (F): When did the idea of making BigBox arise?
Hypeful (H): The idea of BigBox came up more than two years ago on one of those typical nights when you’re half-asleep and suddenly a lightbulb goes on. The next day, when you get up, you’re still thinking about it and that bulb starts to seem more and more interesting.
And what began as just an idea took shape over time until it started getting serious. We ended up making a prototype that people really liked and it led us to develop it seriously, and now here we are.
F: What’s the game about?
H: It’s a sort of chess game, so to speak, but with a special emphasis on real-time battle in which you have to challenge your opponent and use different cards and abilities to gradually reduce their health and eventually win.
F: What makes it special?
H: One thing that makes us different is that you can move freely and constantly surprise your opponent.
F: What’s inspired you?
H: The whole team loves strategy, and we’ve tried to combine the action and dynamic of MOBA games like League of Legends (LoL) and the strategy of card games like Hearthstone and Clash Royale.
F: Why did you choose free-to-play as a business model?
H: Because we feel it’s the most accessible to the public, and also because financially speaking it’s one of the most interesting.
F: In what area would you say the campus has helped you the most during development?
H: Not making mistakes. We want to know what the common mistakes are, and get help to avoid them. We know we’re going to mess up and the campus is helping us to foresee those problems and avoid them whenever possible.
F: What are you most proud of?
H: The art. We’re all in awe of games like League of Legends (one of our games of reference); they connect with the community and convey emotions. They get the player not only to have fun, but also to fall in love with the characters, with the world…not just have a couple of games and forget it.
So with BigBox, despite it being a mobile game, we’re very proud of having taken those small steps to make something that not only can be enjoyed as a videogame but also as a little work of art.
F: What has been the biggest challenge so far?
H: I’d say the challenge of coming to the F2P Campus. This being our first big project as a team we were lacking a lot of experience, and arriving here at the campus meant realizing that we had a lot to learn, and a lot to do in very little time. We arrived very confident and then realized we had a lot to do. It was a problem, but one that we’ve faced gladly.
F: How would you define the Hypeful team in one word?
H: Family.
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