Early Hook Champ and SQH Design

We've been getting asked if we ever plan to make an "endless gameplay only" style of hook game. Below is a long, thought out response that I previously posted to the Toucharcade Forums:

It's funny, SQH was originally just going to be Avalanche Mode and that's it, for 99 cents. Hook Champ, waaaay back in its early design, was going to basically be what's currently known as a "runner" game... you'd automatically run to the right, you'd be able to latch things with your grappling hook, and there'd by powerups to grab while running.

Hook Champ's design changed to a level-based/adventure sort of game, simply because we couldn't figure out a good way to handle the level sections. This was before Canabalt, which really set a good example of splitting your endless mode into "slices". This is a really clear and easy to rip off way of handling an endless mode, arguably leading to the current Runner genre Though there were runner games before Canabalt, they didn't use the "slice" concept, leading to pretty muddled levels.

SQH was going to be Avalanche Mode, and like 4 racing levels, then the tutorial. It was also going to be 99 cents. Fans of Hook Champ spoke up and really didn't seem to want this. They wanted way more racing levels, and then an Endless mode on top of that, making it more like a Hook Champ true sequel than our original plan of making it a "spiritual successor". With these changes, we also had to make it more expensive.

The changes to more substantial games, for a larger amount of money, actually worked out for the best. It's true that the top games are always simple 99 cent games, but what you don't see right away are the hundreds of 99 cent games that are fun to play, but commercial failures. Making a game over 99 cents is much safer... if you're not in the top of the charts, you can still make a pretty decent salary if your game is 2 or 3 dollars. The flip side, of course, is that if your game makes it to the top 10, it will stay in there much, much, much longer if it is a 99 cent game.

I do still kind of want to make a 99 cent "casual" version of Hook Champ. Run-to-the-right gameplay style. I'd just want to do it in a way that wasn't a disappointment to fans of the series. We want to explore some other genres, first, anyway.

Some Update 3 Screenshots

Update 3 is running quite late. To help pass the time, here are some screenshots.


As soon as it's submitted, I'll post a full changelog in this blog. There's a large amount of stuff in this update. We're working on adding some extra features, since it's delayed at this point, anyway.


Yes, Gnomey's grappling hook is made out of rainbows. Yes, that's a backwards baseball cap on him. Yes, he does have a rap song about rainbows he'd like to share with you.


Hookbot with the Magnificent Golden Helmet. He's buried among the paid-DLC characters, but he actually costs nothing if you go on his character page in the Rocketcatalog. Hookbot, Gnomey, and Aldora are free. Gunny and Jake cost 99 cents each. Super QuackHook costs $1.99, being more expensive since it's a duck that can wear hats.

Update 3 Snippets Part 2

Behold! More Update 3 images, including the concept sketch for Aldora, one of the new unlockable characters to be added in the patch.

Update 3 Snippets

Update 3 (in addition to other mysterious things) is still underway. In the meantime here is some of the new art that will be included in the update.

Update 3 Lineup

Here's the roster for the upcoming third update to SQH. The last character is a mystery!

Making SQH Levels

Above is a small picture of the level editor for Super QuickHook. Hook Champ and SQH more or less used the same level editor that we made. It's a tile-by-tile editor, you have to place every tile or delete every tile manually. Entities (steam jump vents, rocks you can kick around, coins) also have to be placed one at a time. The one nice shortcut the level editor has is that it converts the appropriate tiles to corner tiles automatically.

Even if you ignore the tile-by-tile nature of it, making levels for both hook-racing games is a difficult process. Each level takes a surprising amount of effort for something you can complete in two minutes, once mastered. This is due to a few reasons:

1. All the possibilities of where the hook latches has to be accounted for. Different people, of different skill levels and styles, have different latch patterns. A latchable ceiling made too short or too long can have people plummet frequently on a jump that is not intended to be difficult, or just feel awkward.
2. Due to the above point, each level has to be playtested and tweaked over and over. This repeats many times during the process of creating each level.
3. Each level has to offer something different, in terms of gameplay design. This is difficult without any sort of combat or enemies.
4. Each level has a "secret coin path" that must be designed alongside the normal path.

As we talked about last week, Super QuickHook will be the last strictly hook-racing game from us. This is mostly due to the difficulty of level design. You'll see us move more towards combat in upcoming titles.

Except for the next game (a quick, 99 cent experiment), we're not getting rid of the grappling hook. It's practically our trademark now. We're just making it more of a climbing tool, rather than an incredibly fast method of transportation.

Future Game Direction

We're going to move away from the genre of grappling hook racing. It's a pretty unique genre, but it has two problems. One is that the level design is rather difficult and time consuming. The other is that you're not blowing things up.

Our next two games will move towards a more combat related direction. We're doing an out-of-character game, first. It will be quick and most likely 99 cents. Then we're doing a much larger, story-driven, Bionic Commando reminiscent game. That is, grappling hook + combat. Besides that, the actual gameplay won't be much like Bionic Commando; it will be inspired by a different game. I'm not mentioning what game this is, because that would spoil the surprise.

More details on the quick, small game in about a month. In the meantime, we'll be working on the next updates to Super QuickHook. Update 2 is extremely close to being submitted. We decided to add some more stuff to it, rather than submitting it right away.

Update 1 and Future Update Plans

The first update to Super QuickHook was submitted last Monday, June 21st. It should be hitting the App Store any time now. The update includes 4 new levels, new hats, new secrets, tweaks, bugfixes, and more.

OpenFeint Saves are in this Update. You'll be able to back up your save in case of data loss, and also use it to transfer your progress between devices. We plan on adding a couple more OpenFeint features in the future.

We removed the developer score requirements to unlock levels. To unlock the next level, all you need to do is beat the previous level. The only major exception is the first nightmare level, which now requires a score of 2000 in Avalanche Mode to beat. This is a much better way to make sure that people are ready for the extra difficulty. The requirement to get 2000 in Avalanche to unlock Burn Alley was a bug, and was completely not intended.

This first big update is just a sign of things to come. As soon as this update hits the App Store, we'll be able to quickly submit our second update. This will add more content to the game. In the third update, we plan on adding a new chase-style mode called Eruption mode.

After the third update, our frantic update pace will slow down a bit. We'll be using the extra time to work on a massive fourth update. This update will be a surprise until it's almost out. I can say that it will add an entirely new gameplay style to the game, one that can enjoyed by players of all skill levels.

HC & QH Character Concepts

Some early character concept art for both the Hook Champ and QuickHook games.

Super QuickHook Lineup

In addition to the Hook Champ DLC portraits, here are the upcoming QuickHook characters immediately available at release. They are Jakob, Tara and the Hermit. One of them is related to Jake from HookChamp (can you guess who???).