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HAL discusses the creation of BOYBOY! + BOXGIRL!, the series' future, and their CircleBoy April Fools' Day joke

HAL might not be done with the franchise just yet
by rawmeatcowboy
16 June 2019
GN Version 5.0

BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL! is available on Switch right now, and Famitsu wanted to learn more about how the title came together. They sat down with HAL Producer Yasuhiro Mukae, art director Akiko Horiuchi, director Taku Koinuma, and level design director Yutaka Watanabe to talk about how BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL! came to be, where the franchise will go next, and the April Fools' Day joke of Circleboy. Translations courtesy of NintendoEverything.

F: The third game completed the trilogy, so could you tell us why you decided to make this fourth game?

Koinuma: I think the release of the Switch was a big factor. The previous game offered a conclusion, but with the Switch we are able to bring the game to those who have not had a chance to play the series before and, when we then thought about the sort of things we could accomplish with the special features of the hardware, we decided to start development.

F: Can you give us a hint as to what is next for the series?

Mukae: At the moment things are just settling down after this current game and we are mainly concerned at the moment with releasing onto the Switch smoothly. After that the team will start discussing what we want to do next. Whether that’s another BoxBoy! or something different… that’s something we haven’t talked about in certain terms, but in order that BoxBoy! remains a series that can be appreciated for a long time I think I’d like it to continue, and I’m happy to be the one overseeing it.

F: For April Fools’ Day there were designs released for a CircleBoy and also a Square Kirby, but are there any plans to release anything officially?

Mukae: The response we got from many people after that was positive, which I was really pleased about. In terms of merchandise, I’m sorry to say that I haven’t heard anything… but if they were being sold I would definitely want to buy them! This is a bit of an aside, but I was thinking quite seriously about the basic layout of a CircleBoy game at the time of creating him. (laughs) At least all that work was worthwhile!

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