Hypercharge: Unboxed

[00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Pre-Order Bonus podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Cameron Warren, and I'm joined, as always, by the Pixel Professor Jacob Price. It's July 18th, 2024. Back to talk about video games. Jake, what's going on in the world

[00:00:31] of gaming for you right about now? Oh my gosh, I think five relatively hyped games came out this week. Something along those lines, right? So keep them busy, but of all the games that have come out, I downloaded a flock.

[00:00:48] Did I am obsessed with flock right now? Like it is really great. Yeah, flock. What is flock? What is that? You are a space. Is it space? It feels spacey. It's got a spacey vibe. You are like

[00:01:04] the niece or nephew of some ornithologist, and she asks you to find a bunch of different weird birds and catalog them. Oh, and a perna game pass, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is the chillest

[00:01:20] like collectathon in the world, and it feels great to play. It's like super chill, pretty straightforward, but man, it is scratching an itch. I love that dude. I yeah, that's awesome. I need

[00:01:37] something like this for sure. So that's exciting flock on game. But yeah, I'll have to check this out for sure. You just kind of go around scoop up new birds, add them to your flock, move on.

[00:01:49] And you've also been playing Golden Sun on Nintendo Switch online, right? Like the Game Boy. That's probably the other game that I'm currently obsessed with. You've had some like glowing things to say about that and I've been like, oh man, I guess I

[00:02:07] I guess I missed out there. Dude, it's surprising. So it's a 2001 game. You can fact check me on that. It's essentially the point is that it's like over 20 years old or about 20 years old.

[00:02:21] And it implemented a bunch of things that we would consider like contemporary to our time Q quality of life. So for example, like when you go to a shop and you buy a weapon, you can equip it immediately and then it'll give you prompt to sell back

[00:02:36] whatever item that you just unequipped. I was like, right? I was like, dude, I don't feel like that this is really all that common in older games like that. But part of that and Cameron and I were going to have a whole episode on Immortals of Avium,

[00:02:49] but I started Golden Sun when I started Immortals of Avium into myself. I was just like, these two games have night and day difference, like initial exposition for the storylines. And I actually think Golden Sun does a really fantastic job of just throwing you into the

[00:03:06] story, like getting you into the story quickly, getting you up to speed and getting you to care about its characters, which I found to be super impressive. I was like, all right, cool. I care.

[00:03:19] Let's see where this goes. And yeah, I don't know that one's been another fun one to play. Nice, nice, nice. Yeah, I haven't played a lot of games since we lost spoke because I've been doing a lot of golfing. Wait, a game in real life?

[00:03:38] Went on a golf trip. Yes, this is the real life video game. You know, shockingly golf has a lot of parallels to like really grindy video games, to be honest. Like an MMO? Like what kind of grind are we talking?

[00:03:53] Yeah, it's like, imagine a grind with where the payoff is not worth it. I took a drink. I wish sometimes I wish we did video. I took a drink literally right then and

[00:04:09] I nearly threw up on my desk. No, honestly, so golf is like you grind and you grind and you grind because you're going after, right? You think like, okay, I'm gonna get

[00:04:20] so there's a gear game first off. Yeah, so there's like you got to make your investment in gear and it's all paid microtransactions. So you can't just earn gear. It's all paid. It's all paid MTX.

[00:04:35] It's paid. It's it's like kind of pay to win, but like there's also just, you know, you got to level up, but it does this weird thing where the grind for levels is just extremely high all

[00:04:49] the time. And then sometimes what will happen is like you'll go into a dungeon and your level that you think that you earned will just drop by like 20 levels and then the dungeon will

[00:04:59] become super hard. So it has like randomized level caps that you just don't know when they're going to happen. So nice overall like five out of 10, but then every once in a while

[00:05:11] 10 out of 10. So that's why you play. So if golf were a video game, it would be the most brutally like money grabbing squeeze game ever made. Here's the thing. Golf is the ultimate roguelike honestly because you can play the same course. No procedural generation

[00:05:36] literally the same course every time and like a million variables change every time. Right? So until you get really, really high level, it's like a constant never ending adaptation to kind of new situations and new variables, which makes it quite interesting

[00:05:55] and like also quite frustrating. But every once in a while the stars align and you know, yeah game design lessons from golf. The game five out of 10 until it's a 10 out of 10, five out of 10 with occasional 10 out of 10 dungeons, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.

[00:06:20] No, I'm video game wise still still chugging away on XCOM to make it some good progress there. I think I might actually take that one to the finish line this time. It's been so many years

[00:06:30] coming. That's a fantastic game if you haven't played that one. That's a really deep that's probably still the best of any of these tactics games that have come out over the past like probably

[00:06:41] six, seven years. That's still the best. It's still like the deepest and does the most kind of interesting things. There's Gears Tactics out there and like some other ones in that realm. That one's probably still the best like in that.

[00:06:54] Otherwise just been dabbling around still with just random game past stuff. College football 25 hopped in there last night. Feels great to be back in college football video game. Shout out to our friend Rob Zor. Yes, our good friend who worked

[00:07:15] on the game did a fantastic job there. So I'm ready for I'm ready for the next big thing. What's the next big thing, Jake? What do we got coming down the pipe? What are we doing here?

[00:07:28] This is a good question. So I mean obviously this week some big things came out but what's kind of crazy to me is the the meta critic or open critic scores only like one or two of the

[00:07:41] games have come out. I've actually been over 80 and I've been surprised. Some of these are like flock. The game I'm currently obsessed with is ranking quite like somewhere in the 70s and Flintlock the Siege of Dawn is also like 70 maybe on average maybe less at this point.

[00:08:04] Yeah, so those things have really really shocked me. Let's see I'm trying to think beyond I probably the next biggest biggest game right is Star Wars Outlaws. I've a yeah well but Wukong. Wukong dude I keep forgetting that's August 20th maybe

[00:08:21] is that right? Yeah, I think we're still like a month away from big stuff dropping again. So it's going to be a lot of like keep grinding on the backlog and then there's some little things

[00:08:35] aside from college football 25 if that's your jam. Right there's some I mean that game yeah yeah no for sure I think that game is turning to be super huge and

[00:08:47] and then you know Flint I think the only one I really have my eye on at this current moment that's new is Flintlock which isn't revealing as well as I thought it would. I actually played

[00:09:01] the demo and was actually pretty impressed so I'm a little shocked that it's gotten as low scores as it has but I'm definitely still gonna open that up and go play that one. I had a good time

[00:09:13] with the demo and yeah man it's good but I'm definitely in my we talked about this last week but I'm definitely in my like dog days of summer backlog grind out old games replay games I've

[00:09:31] already played a dozen times before mode so. Have you dabbled in the open beta for Concord? Didn't that come out recently? You know zero interest in Concord 100% Not fair I mean I've seen some good things but same I just it's a hero shooter and it looks fine

[00:09:52] and people are saying they're having a good time but I don't know I think I watched the stream for like 15 minutes and I was like no I'm gonna pass on this. Yeah it's just not my jam I'm not

[00:10:04] I was never a huge Overwatch fan not really interested in hero shooters I think my favorite shooter still on the market is Hunt Showdown which is having a it is getting an engine upgrade next

[00:10:18] month. Oh cool so it's getting a quite a massive upgrade with a new map and a huge graphical overhaul so I'm excited for that. The other thing I was going to throw this out to you Jake is

[00:10:31] do I need to play No Man's Sky again because that train never stops bro and they're releasing another thing and I'm like dude at this point like it is there is so much content I am like just

[00:10:48] I'm floored. I don't I'm floored. I bought No Man's Sky when it first came to Xbox and I really did enjoy it quite a lot. It did feel a little overwhelming then with all the stuff that

[00:11:04] you could do and definitely I can only imagine that buying it now would be just a total nightmare although I do want to say that No Man's Sky is a very cool video game and that story with

[00:11:19] Hello Games is you know one of those stories that's becoming more and more rare and this is something that I've been thinking a lot about actually just studios that actually get a second

[00:11:31] chance at their games and at what they're making when the first impressions were you know were really bad so um yeah I don't know I always think about No Man's Sky they release these massive

[00:11:43] content updates and I would just love to see their financials because all this stuff is free. Dude that's my question. It's like how do they pay how are they paying for this stuff?

[00:11:55] What do they I don't know. I don't know man and it could just be hype for Light No Fire which we still have no news about like at all so um that could also just be where I'm just like I

[00:12:10] I just I want to feel something so yeah I might just. No Man's Sky is great though I mean it really is a fantastic game. I never played multiplayer though and I do feel like that would be a really

[00:12:21] good experience but um yeah. The last time I played it it did feel like a teeny bit empty I think and obviously they've done like a lot to remedy that and there is multiplayer and

[00:12:34] stuff like that but yeah just like I think you said of the best it can feel super overwhelming and I think at this point it's at this point it's almost like there's too much stuff which

[00:12:47] gives me pause before opening that game up because I'm like man I would really love to do this but it's just too big it's too big yeah it's it's too big oh I did want to mention um I actually

[00:12:59] cracked open I bought this at launch I bought Pacific Drive which came out February this year oh yeah yeah um cracked it up and play through the tutorial play through the first mission and

[00:13:11] there is a lot of menuing but if you it's like a single player survival crafting experience and it I think it's done super well I I'm glad I finally broke into it that's another game

[00:13:28] that I'm going to be putting into my rotation although my rotation is getting too full I need to wrap up some games or just make the the hard decision of knowing that I'm not going to finish

[00:13:38] the game just kind of shelving it indefinitely but negative ghost rider the pattern is full I feel like you need a gatekeeper for your video game you need like somebody a manager you just you know you shoot him a note you're like hey I'd like to play this

[00:13:55] game and they can just be like nope that's vetoed like you got to stick with what you have you have to get approval have to get approval um I can do that I can I can filter games for you

[00:14:06] Jake just let me know oh I know you can I know you can that's why I haven't asked you just uh give me access to your xbox account I'll put a password on it and you have to ask I have to go

[00:14:16] on and download games okay you know what you know what's actually not the problem it's it's not xbox the problem is actually steam because uh listen to this you all are gonna laugh at me

[00:14:31] my wish list right now has 175 games on it whoa and what I have a lot of games on there and then steam has sales like every I don't know two weeks and then it's like oh this game that's

[00:14:49] been sitting on your wish list for a long time is two dollars and I'm like oh yeah two dollars and so I have way too many games on steam that's how they get you man that is how they get you

[00:15:08] well with that Jake let's dive in to our uh to our content for this episode which is talking about the game hyper charge this is a indie project this is the small soldiers video game that if

[00:15:31] you have been on twitter or not living under a rock you've seen you've seen a clip of this somewhere yeah and you've been impressed with it and you said man that looks like a really cool first

[00:15:42] person shooter where you play as like a toy and guess what it it actually really is Jake how are we gonna break this one down well we switched to our new kind of delivery system for these episodes

[00:15:54] if you recall the changes aren't that big you know it's just kind of go through them really quickly right now instead of four categories we're doing three this is just kind of to kind of give a

[00:16:03] name to what we're already doing we're going to be talking about hypercharge and we're going to be talking about the hypercharge unboxed edition which is kind of like 1.0 that came out uh was this

[00:16:13] month or two ago um so the first category is narrative we'll be talking about the story here there is an important story um and campaign that happens so we'll be discussing that for a little

[00:16:24] bit second we'll be talking about the game design so this is just kind of all the different things about how the game is structured that stood out to us um different systems that you

[00:16:33] interact with different ideas of progression and kind of how the game functions also as an FPS game um and then finally we'll talk about impact on the industry here we will talk about

[00:16:45] some we'll crunch some numbers um we'll be talking about what we think this game is doing in the in this case for for indie studios but also just broadly if anybody's taking

[00:16:57] notes and what notes that they are taking so that's how we are going to be talking about hypercharge tonight in this episode um what i'm gonna be real with everybody here i did not give a

[00:17:11] single who about this story um yeah it's funny you said that i was about to say i'm gonna be honest with you guys did not pay attention to the story at all this like yeah zero the the story i think

[00:17:25] the delivery method for the story it's kind of it's presented to you and like this comic book style has really awesome art it has this super overdone over the top story you are playing as uh

[00:17:41] who's it sergeant no sergeant max ammo yeah um and then there's this kind of weird story about how his like another addition of this toy becomes evil and tries to destroy this thing called the hypercharge

[00:17:57] which is a bunch of different machines that i think the toys put around a room so yeah exactly i mean it's like it just it was just like okay this is here because it should be here because it feels

[00:18:11] like it needs to be here um i'd stop paying attention i just to be honest dude they should have got the license for small soldiers i bet that license can't be that expensive it's it can't be that

[00:18:22] bad right well i mean this is a team of six i think um so it doesn't matter if small soldiers the license probably is cheap but they didn't have this actually this actually brings me to a good

[00:18:37] point which is man i really need to watch small soldiers again you remember that movie i do remember that movie and i'm i'm confident that rewatching small soldiers as a grown adult i'll be

[00:18:49] like i can't why little kid jake loved this movie and i will never watch this ever again like i already have my mind made up about a rewatch which is probably why i haven't rewatched it i remember

[00:19:02] really really liking that movie and now i think i need to like sit down with my children and like force them to watch it even though i don't actually i remember really liking it but i don't

[00:19:12] actually know if it's good or not to be i i seriously have no idea oh my goodness i haven't pulled up dude oh my goodness we got kirsten dunce tom ealy jones phil hartman david cross no kirsten

[00:19:27] dunce is in this dude hold on a second do we we might need to rewatch this there's no yeah dude look at all these names denise leary's in here dude what is tom ealy jones doing in small

[00:19:39] soldiers he's the voice of the like the small soldier remember i mean they're sure i don't know i've liked the main bro budget 40 million running time let's uh let's see what's the imd beyond this 6.3 not bad i've liked worse movies not good but not terrible

[00:20:03] dude uh i'm watching this where's the string what were we talking about we've got off track here folks yeah okay this is the thing though is hypercharge does kind of rely a little bit on this hyper niche i feel like nostalgia for this

[00:20:21] movie although i feel like you could tell that they definitely did their homework too so they wouldn't get struck with a copyright like any sort of copyright lawsuit because what you do notice

[00:20:33] from the story is kind of how it is trying to be different than this right and uh yeah i don't know man it's just like the story it didn't need to be anything more than this i mean do you think

[00:20:47] it really did i mean look i think a game is always better if it has a good story yeah yeah but i think but it's also at the end of the day like a question of resources and energy and i think in a game like

[00:21:02] this like you have to when you're a six person team you just have you have to nail the mechanics and like the vibes right yeah so you know things kind of get left left behind that being said like

[00:21:17] to your point jake they did some really awesome comic book art and they did great presentation on the story i just i just think it's like kind of it's inconsequential and you know it's not

[00:21:31] you know there's not a lot of production values around it to kind of get you invested which is completely fine it doesn't need to be right and that's that's just kind of what this game is

[00:21:40] but it definitely it definitely thrives on the nostalgia for the small soldiers movie which is just this really weird niche film that a lot of millennial kids watched and that really nobody

[00:21:56] else has ever seen or even remembers yeah and yeah those are the people who are buying this game i don't think anyone else is probably buying this game and no one really gets the whole

[00:22:07] like toys shooting each other vibe but it's very much if you know if you think about small soldiers like this is what comes to mind for sure yeah and what i was getting at is in the narrative they

[00:22:17] try to skirt some of the stuff from small soldiers have been like in the marketing especially they were just like hey this is about what you imagine was happening as a kid and i do think

[00:22:27] that kind of rationale does help kind of justify some of the illogical nature of the story because when you're a kid playing with action figures and you're just kind of you know projecting or creating a narrative for your action figures you gotta jump through

[00:22:43] some crazy hoops to try to make things work and so that kind of i guess this is me trying to come from the mindset of the devs okay sure that all makes sense like it kind of does

[00:22:56] recreate that childhood like way of imagining a story but yeah playing it now it didn't even it didn't really feel that way and but i don't think i i don't know what i was expecting i wouldn't

[00:23:09] go to the team and say hey write me like some sort of marvel story out of this but at the same time chapters that kind of made sense chronologically in a story that's building on top of itself rather than what they kind

[00:23:23] of have with just like an anthology of what felt like random stories thrown in it would have helped it would have helped i would have appreciated it yeah i think i i think what i was expecting was more your sort of

[00:23:41] call of duty ish set piece style four to five hour campaign yeah right that's that's kind of what i wanted but what you get is basic basically and i think this takes us into talking about the

[00:23:58] mechanics uh or excuse me the design yes because it we're just merging on one because that's the right way to do it uh the design of this game which is uh wave based like survival mode yeah

[00:24:19] which um you're defending usually so basically you've got these levels which consist of different there's like a kid's room uh there's a toy store there's like various levels like that and then

[00:24:34] usually have like three little uh charging stations or charger things and you have four or five different cards that you can use to buy uh defenses which you can build around in these little kind of preset

[00:24:54] play sets on the map where you can build obstacles to stop the bad toys like when they come in and try and blow up your stuff and then you just play wave based like shoot them up essentially yeah

[00:25:07] uh and that's basically what like the campaign levels are it just you kind of just progress through those you can manipulate the difficulty you can manipulate like the timer you can manipulate like a couple different things um and that's pretty much it

[00:25:21] yeah um and honestly i think this level structure is really solid it's probably one of my favorite parts about this game is that you just have essentially different arenas and they're based on

[00:25:32] different rooms like you said there was one where you're like in an arcade and you're on top of like a uh an air hockey table um and where there's just like it's much more limited and basically you're

[00:25:42] on that level you have to fight a bunch of beyblades like that's what the enemies are dude those beyblades dude they're rough enemies they had they're looks like relentless bro um but i i just really like this philosophy of the the game design here in the level specifically

[00:26:01] right it's wave based between um each of the waves you have an opportunity to fortify your defenses to kind of scour the room and find more resources so that you can build more things to

[00:26:11] prepare for the next wave um you can also just kind of find upgrades or find new weapons you can find collectibles you can find secrets um and there's actually quite a lot of platforming in this game like when you're going around these different rooms to find resources

[00:26:30] which i thought was a good way of kind of subtly introducing like some type of pacing difference like with with different mechanics that you're doing in the game and so that

[00:26:38] structure i really enjoyed i thought um it was it was really solid and it made me want to engage with all aspects of the game um so yeah big fan of that but i'm going to flip a little here

[00:26:52] i was really not a fan of any gun except for this just starter rifle um like when you're in the action the game felt good but i picked up a bunch of guns and they

[00:27:08] did not they just didn't have the gunplay like they're just the base rifle had for me so i rarely if ever like after the first few fails attempted anything else yeah i think um what i like the most

[00:27:27] here is i like the verticality yeah uh so they they put these basically like these jump these jumps that you can either build or will just be like pre-placed around each of the maps

[00:27:39] and when you go on them you do this like massive jump and you can kind of fly around the map there's a lot of verticality and like a lot of good good movement and like a nice physics system in there

[00:27:49] so you get like um you know ragdoll physics which is fun but to your point weapons uh i don't know do you like yeah like the main weapon kind of feels like the best weapon

[00:28:03] and you can get attachments you don't really pick up new or different weapons which in my opinion like would have been nice to play into the whole like toy aspect yeah it would have

[00:28:12] been cool to have kind of different funky weapons because you're a toy instead of just like oh this is just like a straight up like machine gun in the toy world right um you have a limited ammo

[00:28:24] with everything but you can pick up like different attachments to turn it into like a shotgun a sniper or to give like a stock or like a sights on kind of the basic weapon to just upgrade it

[00:28:37] like a teeny bit it's nothing super complicated but to your but to jake's point it kind of feels like that basic one is just like the best yeah especially in the wave base mode i could see

[00:28:48] in the pvp which i didn't dive into much at all i could see the pvp how you'd like you know potentially mix it up there like go sniper but right yeah not not a ton of weapon variety yeah

[00:29:00] it was a big shame and i think it was a missed opportunity like you said i think um branching out even from just like traditional guns like i'm even thinking like some of the weird stuff that

[00:29:10] like borderlands offers just like wacky right i think that could have made those other weapons feel a lot more interesting cooler and some of the weapon like attachments like i got uh what was it like a

[00:29:25] like a grenade launcher attachment it was just unwieldy man like i couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with that thing and so i was like this is a waste you know uh let me just switch

[00:29:34] back to good old reliable here so yeah that that was a shame i think however the defense stuff that you can unlock that felt good so like being able to get all sorts of different booby traps so

[00:29:48] we're like spikes for example or you could get like goo to slow down enemies or there was like an incinerating plate like a heat a hot plate that would just like heat up and was effective against

[00:30:00] like different enemy types like plastic enemies or whatever um those i felt like i could do some like strategizing with it and um yeah turrets amazing super important like you have some encounters

[00:30:13] where there's a lot of aerial aerial based like enemies and so having some of those up were really important and i felt like i could play a little bit more into like the rock paper scissors

[00:30:24] of like hey if i have like these attachments and i know these types of enemies are coming in these waves then i'm gonna have just better defense overall so the defense side i definitely liked it

[00:30:35] the weapon side man i was really begging for for something else to to feel viable or just manageable yeah i think um at the end of the day i did like so the things i like the most i like the ragdoll

[00:30:57] physics i like the verticality i like the cool kind of toy toy store levels and like the toy store vibe i like to be able to like customize your action figure and make them look cool and i think

[00:31:08] they did an amazing job with the presentation and like the design of the toys and like and the toy characters and how you can kind of change them out and change the colors and like really

[00:31:19] make them your own yeah i think uh and sort of the basic shooting of kind of the basic gun is like quite fun i found the uh i kind of found the wave based mechanics like i don't know like a

[00:31:32] little dry or like retrod a little bit i i kind of wanted wanted something a little bit more i don't know i don't know i don't know what it's missing maybe a little bit of um it might have been

[00:31:43] nice to have like i don't know like a gun placement or maybe make it more like tower defenses i don't know there's something misinformer here in the gameplay that like made me not want to come back

[00:31:55] it was kind of hop in i have to with my kids for like a few sessions played had like decent fun on the levels but my kids weren't having like the greatest time because they couldn't get crazy

[00:32:06] with the building which is what they like like my son's obsessed with minecraft now like every other kid ever in the universe in history of games um it's so funny i'm like i still

[00:32:18] don't get minecraft and like my son's addicted to it uh so that he couldn't mess around that way and then for me like the shooting was kind of like that's just like not quite there

[00:32:27] and so when that part didn't feel amazing it just i just like didn't really want to keep going so that that kind of that's kind of what happened to me with hypercharge at the end of the day

[00:32:36] same i mean i didn't finish the campaign um which is a shame because i think a lot of ideas that were really solid and i think if you fell in love with this game there's actually

[00:32:44] a ton to do there's a huge checklist of objectives in every single level um and something that i do want to praise is just kind of the in-game reward system like if you get like a gold

[00:32:56] medal or a platinum medal on certain levels um if you get certain objectives you unlock more customizable pieces for your toy that you kind of play as that kind of stuff all

[00:33:08] felt really good and it felt very much like old school like hey play the game more and play the game better and you get like more rewards that you can use within the game and so that to me

[00:33:18] was like okay i i like the structure this is why this structure feels really good and of course this game doesn't have microtransactions you know at all so i feel like if you're one of those

[00:33:29] people it's like i just want to earn everything in the game well in hypercharge you absolutely can do that right um so yeah that kind of stuff all that felt really good but yeah man i just

[00:33:39] wanted to use another gun and honestly i you know other than the rifle and i wanted i think um you got to turn the sensitivity up because it's interesting um i felt like it was slower more

[00:33:54] methodical shooting even though that some of the enemies are crazy fast and so i felt like sometimes my tracking would be a little off so i ended up turning up the sensitivity to kind of

[00:34:04] keep pace with uh the kind of frenzy that would happen in each wave it's it's it's tough because this game for me was such a mixed bag there are things that i really liked and there are things

[00:34:15] that i really didn't like um but yeah there's just enough that i didn't like the kind of outweighed my desire to finish the campaign jake any other thoughts on the design of hypercharge

[00:34:29] uh last thing i'll say is that the art direction is awesome though like it looks really good um really like how they treated the action figures how they made them really their own the levels looked really good too they looked cool and they felt relatively organic right so

[00:34:47] like you'll be in a garage and there's like a car in the garage and there's stuff on the shells and um i really like it when the kind of level design is really hidden behind good art direction

[00:34:59] and i just kind of love how those it really just felt like oh now we're doing a battle in a garage let's find any garage and this is where the battle is taking place but as you kind of navigate the

[00:35:08] garage you realize oh this is actually smart level design like they've hidden the collectibles really well they made the platforming challenges really interesting and you know pretty difficult um and they've kind of set up the arena in an interesting way so i think that there is a cool

[00:35:21] mesh between art direction and level design let's talk about the impact on the industry for hypercharge so this was a game that did a great job at least the team over there

[00:35:40] uh you know super small team but they did a great job capitalizing on social media for this like god it got the got the clips like some really great fun clips out in front of people

[00:35:51] i was super hyped for this game i had seen it really early and kind of been on my radar for a long time um they played into the whole small soldiers thing really hard they just they did

[00:36:02] a great job on that and i was excited for it and i it was 40 bucks or 30 bucks i believe which was a great price point i picked it up instantly like the day it came out and it's

[00:36:15] funny because it's one of those where while i was a little bit let down a teeny bit disappointed with just the overall experience i i wasn't disappointed or like unsatisfied at all kind of with the

[00:36:30] purchase and i went into it i don't know what it was about this game but they just did did a really great job so impact wise you know it's hard to tell ever are there good learnings for

[00:36:43] you know other teams like trying to get their games like in front of people but just something like this i don't know it just presented really well yeah even though it kind

[00:36:51] of didn't hit necessarily as hard as maybe i would have liked it to it was just presented super well and had kind of enough little bells and whistles and like solid marketing to kind

[00:37:04] of get me invested that's kind of what i see the impact of this one i think gameplay wise and just game wise i think people are going to forget about this one pretty quickly but the one thing

[00:37:14] it did do is like it had some like pretty excellent marketing and that's one thing in the indie space is that just getting excited about stuff way way ahead of time and kind of getting things on

[00:37:28] people's radar like way early i think it makes a huge difference in the indie space yeah indie space is more and more crowded and they did i totally agree they did a phenomenal job of posting really good

[00:37:43] clips being super active they really pushed hard it's interesting on the xbox crowd right because i feel like a lot of their tweets were like remember when you would just play some fps

[00:37:53] with your friends on the couch well look this is a game where you can do it and look you get to play as action figures just like you did when you're a kid and i was like oh man yeah yeah you

[00:38:02] know like i was the demographic that they were absolutely chasing and i think they did a really good job of just like and this is the thing about indies right it's a lot of time indies they're they're pushing for their specific demographic and i've said this a thousand

[00:38:16] times but i'll say it again at this point in gaming there are enough players in the world to buy your game and you make your game successful the problem is getting your game in front of their

[00:38:29] eyeballs right where how exactly who how can you exactly bridge that when it's so crowded and they nailed it um i do want to mention however there was a little bit of twitter some

[00:38:43] some idiot on the internet could you believe this there was an idiot on the on social media right um so the hypercharge devs they tweeted this out this is within 24 hours of the game

[00:38:57] releasing on xbox they said okay i'm really emotional right now we've just sold over 25 000 copies of hypercharge on xbox in less than 24 hours then you know they're just super grateful thank you so much for people who are playing our indie game somebody retweeted this and says your game

[00:39:11] sucks and these are crappy numbers and then rami uh um east my ill who everybody knows in the indie space he says this and i just love his breakdown here he says hypercharge sells at 30

[00:39:25] bucks on xbox leaving about 21 dev cut after a 30 platform cut it is self published so the rest is theirs 21 multiplied by 25 000 is 524 825 before taxes that means the team of six made 87 000

[00:39:41] and change each in one day on one platform enough to make more games and i loved this tweet because this was a really good reality check that as hard as it is for indies to get funding and to make games

[00:39:56] you know if your dev team is six people 25 000 copies can be a major success enough for you to make another game and so that's a huge huge win and what's interesting is if i'm not mistaken

[00:40:10] hypercharge the dev team went on to say within the first week they were close to like 100 000 copies sold so you take all those numbers and you multiply them by four you know what i mean and it's just

[00:40:20] like this might be chump changed to like a major triple a publisher but for a small indie dev of six man they had their lives changed you know they get to keep doing what they want to do and

[00:40:34] keep making games so a little bit of optimism for the indie space yeah yeah absolutely and and as we see like i think the indie space finding that price point where it's like an easy conversion like it's

[00:40:52] an easy like oh i saw that video like it looked good it's got decent reviews like i'm pulling the trigger no problem yeah like 30 bucks or whatever like good to go um because then if you

[00:41:03] do that like we see what the windfall is of making your your second game your third game in your fourth game yeah like if you can if you can sort of make it work the first time out every um you know if you

[00:41:17] keep building incrementally on kind of what you did which a lot of the great studios that's kind of what they do right like they they find an issue that they like they make something

[00:41:27] that kind of lands a little bit and then the next iteration they just make it better to improve it they expand it um and i think because the success of this one it'll give this team

[00:41:38] the chance to make you know that next version of what this is which you know maybe then we get the we get those small soldier set pieces yeah yeah maybe now they got enough for the licensing

[00:41:51] right um can you imagine i mean it'd be cool it'd be super cool but yeah that's that's the dream and i feel like uh camera and i we've been pretty doom and gloom because the industry has

[00:42:01] kind of been doom and gloom but it's these kind of success stories that make me think man if a if a studio can have a really successful game and get enough of a court audience so that they can make

[00:42:12] a sequel the sequel i'm sorry might not be a sequel just whatever they put out next right they're gonna go into that with so much more knowledge about how to make a better game they're

[00:42:22] going to know what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are and then they're just going to keep improving and making better games and that's the dream model isn't it isn't that the

[00:42:30] dream model and i and i'm sorry we're taking this back to from software where like you have a team that has an idea and they get really good at that idea and then 10 years down the road after

[00:42:42] they get these incremental successes on all the releases they put out elden ring or something right and so i'm hopeful that for a studio like this and the studio is called digital cyber

[00:42:53] cherries by the way i'm hopeful that with the success that they've been able to take from hypercharge that they're able to make a better game and you you better believe that this is a

[00:43:02] studio that's going to be on my mind the next time they're like oh hey we're working on a new project i'm like oh i shouldn't i need to keep that in the back of my mind because while i didn't

[00:43:10] love hypercharge there was i could feel that there was a lot there that they could turn into something that's really excellent 100 jake any other final thoughts on hypercharge so i've ended on a high note i'm trying to decide if i should go back to something negative or not

[00:43:31] i think this game set out it did what it set out to do but i think you're right in the sense that aside from its marketing and finding the right people to buy the game and setting

[00:43:40] a price point that worked for the content that was there unfortunately we're not going to see hypercharge on a bunch of end of the year lists and within you know a while we're not going to be

[00:43:51] thinking about this game which is a shame but at the same time it doesn't matter as long as they get a chance to make their next game yeah 100 agree i yep wanted to be a little better but

[00:44:04] sometimes just you know you just make it work and they found a way to make it work and then you hope that they'll uh but it makes me think of splitgate just gotta announce splitgate two for

[00:44:16] 2025 man that game was it's solid it's solid but it didn't quite hit it makes me wonder what they'll do now that they have a shot at a second game um and i think that the this hypercharge studio

[00:44:28] is going to be in the same place i mean hopefully splitgate two is not competing with the next halo splitgate one in 2025 i doubt it and so i'm hopeful i loved splitgate it came out like a month and a half before the halo infinite multiplayer came out

[00:44:46] yeah super bad timing on awful awful awful timing but you're right i don't think we're getting a halo game in 2025 um who knows what's happening over there uh with halo right now this did you

[00:44:58] see that the show just got canceled right paramount was not doing season three yeah yeah and that could be a that could be a good special topic jake talking all about halo where's what's halo what happens to halo

[00:45:15] we'll see we'll see the fall of a franchise oh oh well ladies and gentlemen this has been our episode talking hypercharge out on pretty much all platforms if you like toys battling with machine

[00:45:32] guns you will like this game it's got and here's here's like the biggest selling point that i can give out it has couch co-op yes yeah and it's kid friendly so like even just for that alone

[00:45:43] just for something else you can pop in when your kid just wants to do creative mode of minecraft and you'd rather pull your hair out you can play this instead with that ladies and gentlemen

[00:45:55] if you like this episode please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice really helps people find the show you can also support us directly on patreon.com slash period or cast on our newly

[00:46:05] revamped patreon we have multiple tiers to serve whatever way you want to consume our content and support us just going to reiterate these once again you've got jakes indian pressions you've got special topics episodes you've got early access to our regular episodes and then you

[00:46:27] have extended editions so a whole bunch of content and what we've done on the patreon is we formulated different tiers for whichever one of those you like the most or you can just get

[00:46:38] all of them or you can get a couple of them so not super complicated we try to make it as flexible as possible go check out the new patreon if you're not a patreon member yet and would like

[00:46:48] to support the show you want access to all those extra goodies you're going to be consistently pumping out those extended editions once monthly and then special topics once monthly and then jake is constantly dumping out the indie content he is playing more indie games than you can

[00:47:06] possibly imagine so please go support him you could support jake directly with the indie pass which is also on patreon just to throw my two cents here please i would love for you to hop in on there to

[00:47:17] help feed my addiction but also there are so many indie games and i've recently changed that too where i'm going to be able to talk about more of the indie games that i am playing so please

[00:47:29] yeah consider consider that please consider that you can also join us on discord link to the discord the pre-order bonus discord is in the description the podcast notes thank you so much for listening and have a great night