BOXBOY! dev team talks game's origins, changes for the 3rd entry, potential for BOXBOY! on Switch & more

The following info comes from a Famitsu interview with director Yasuhiro Mukae, level designer Yutaka Watanabe, graphic designer Yusuke Ota, and programmer Takaaki Kawahara, as translated by NE...

- the first game came about from a planning document Mukae created as part of a competition within HAL
- Mukae ended up as the series director, and determined how the project would be and what content it would have
- Kawahara was in charge of the programming team, and lead the way on gimmicks and terrain detection
-. Oota has played a role in the series overall and was the lead designer beginning with BoxBoxBoy!
- Watanabe is brand new here and was a lead level designer and balanced the stage difficulty in Goodbye! BOXBOY!
- Mukae moved on to another project following the first game’s completion
- the positive response from players lead to a second game
- HAL was also set on creating a trilogy while working on BoxBoxBoy!
- Goodbye! BOXBOY! features special powers and planets
- Mukae points out how BoxBoxBoy! made use of two boxes, which allowed for a wider range of gameplay
- this also increased difficulty
- HAL wanted the third game in the franchise to use just one box similar to the original title
- the new powers did cause some issues, and programming them wasn’t an easy task
- the Box Bomb lets players destroy terrain
- balancing the difficulty for the different powers also took a great deal of effort
- the team intentionally made it so the powers would be limited to certain stages rather than throughout the entire game
- powers were meant to spice up the gameplay here and there
- had they been available everywhere, it would overshadow the series’ core concept of using boxes to move past obstacles
- BoxBoxBoy! was aimed at those who had completed the previous title
- it was pretty difficult and carried many challenges.
- Goodbye! BOXBOY! has gameplay similar to the original & aimed to offer newcomers a comfortable feeling
- even though it may not take a ton of effort to finish the main story, the subsequent levels after pose quite the challenge
- Goodbye! BOXBOY! was designed with multiple colors to better show the travel to different planets
- various patterns were tried so as to not ruin the general black and white aesthetic
- BoxBits were initially as big as Qbby, but the team decided to make them smaller after realizing players have to protect them
- Goodbye! BOXBOY! actually has the most stages in the series at 190
- BOXBOY! contained 173,
- Qbby also has a larger selection of costumes this time around, with returning costumes and brand new ones
- the team actually redid things for this game so that it would be easier to create new costumes
- this was starting to become an issue in the past due to the amount of costumes that were being added
- starting with the first BOXBOY!, HAL had ideas about making the protagonist in the image of Kirby
- with the collaboration comic between BOXBOY! & Kirby, they felt Kirby would need to be the star if amiibo support was added
- in crating theses costumes, the developers paid close attention to the placement of eye positions and colors
- the devs wanted to make it so that you could easily tell that they are related to Kirby
- they were made while referencing old Kirby pixel art
- King Dedede required special care since he sort of looks like a regular penguin without a hat
- BOXBOY! for Switch is something Mukae has thought about
- from the first BOXBOY! design document, Mukae was interested in including multiplayer, which could lend itself well to Switch
- for now, he has nothing really to say specifically about BOXBOY! on Switch
- even those who aren’t really that interested in puzzle games are apparently playing the BOXBOY! series
- it seems as though there is a split between players who think it’s easy and those who believe it’s too difficult
- Goodbye! BOXBOY! was developed so that the early sections could be cleared more easily for beginners
- a hint feature is here once included, though you shouldn’t assume that it makes the game easy
- Watanabe hopes that veterans of the series will give the challenge stages a try and enjoy the difficulty there