Big Hops has been on our radar for some time. Its mix of bright, colourful visuals, 3D platforming and unique speedrunning mechanics has kept our interest in the title for much of its development. Chris Wade, the games director, and the team have had a rough ride of it with being dropped by their publisher and having to go it alone through a, thankfuly, successful Kickstarter campain.
With the game now just around the corner, we thought it would be a good time to catch up with Chris to find out more on the development of the game, its inspirations, how the world of Big Hops has been structured and more on dealing with that turbulent time after being dropped.
Some questions were contributed by Jacob Price.
Can you give a little introduction to yourself and your history in game development?
Hey, I’m Chris Wade, the director of Big Hops. As a game designer I’m interested in making emergent and non-violent action games. I live in Austin, TX, and like rock climbing, crosswords, and old movies.
What is Big Hops, and what’s the basic narrative around it?
Big Hops is a 3D platformer where you play as a frog and use your tongue to swing around, grab things, and solve puzzles.
The story follows Hop, who’s been kidnapped from home by an angsty spirit called Diss to help with some mysterious mission. To get home, Hop will need to track down airship parts from different worlds. I don’t usually talk about this, but since we’re in a written, long-form format: Each world has a standalone story with a different perspective on the question: how do we balance individual pursuit vs social responsibility?
Where did the idea of Big Hops come from?
Big Hops was a gameplay idea first. Back in 2019, after the release of my previous game, Sausage Sports Club, I had been struggling to find a new idea that felt right. My design process then was bottom-up. I would build a ‘toy’ first (basically a fun prototype of some mechanical idea) and then try and come up with a bigger structure to wrap around that. I had made a handful of toys that were each interesting but didn’t have enough legs for a bigger, commercial game.
So in response to that, I pulled back and tried to design more top-down with an experiential question: What would a 3D platformer look like with emergent design?
I had played both Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey recently and was feeling inspired by both and also felt a strong desire to play something that mixed their ideas together. Mario’s moveset was amazingly deep and allowed such a high skill ceiling. And BOTW’s reinvention in giving you all the gadgets right away and interconnecting so many of the dynamics and systems opened this huge sandbox of emergent interaction.
Those ideas swirling around in my brain as I was trying to find a bigger project to sink my teeth into were the impetus for Big Hops.
Big Hops seems to have much freedom in its traversal. How was it mapping out all the different routes? Were there any spots that caused you much trouble?
This was a tough game to do level design for, especially early on. For the first few years there weren’t very many constraints – Hop could climb for much longer, he could climb on ceilings, eating veggies would give you a ton of extra stamina, etc. Back then we didn’t have any tools to limit where you could go, and so the game was boring. The big level design lesson we learnt is that it’s more fun when you have to choose your route carefully.
We invested pretty heavily in tools for this game so the actual process of making levels could be very flowy and all happen in-engine. A lot of game designers talk about grayboxing, and that is a good process for a lot of games, but we tended to work and think about level design and environment art as connected, and the same people did both a lot of the time.
From the game’s prologue as featured in the demo, there’s a fairly abrupt shift in the storytelling and general platforming mechanics. What inspired such a drastic change right off the bat?
I think you’re referring to Diss kidnapping you to The Void and the weird gravity stuff that happens there. One of my experience pillars for this game was ‘Going Places’, which means that the player should feel like they’re going new places, seeing new things, and doing new things very often. We overscoped the hell out of this game by making 4 different worlds, each with at least 2-3 different subworlds with their own art kits. It made the game take a long time, but the sense of adventure you get from having things change so much every hour or two is one of my favourite things about the game.
As far as the changeup early on, we wanted to get to the inciting incident quickly and make it really memorable. Diss is changing your life and shaking things up (Diss-orienting you, to be very on-the-nose), and so that should be true in every way possible.
There’s also a big emphasis on speedrunning in the game. Was this always planned, or was this an accidental discovery?
We’ve always had it in mind that Big Hops would be a good speedrunning game but didn’t want to overly emphasise that and turn off casual players. All through development some of the most common feedback we’ve gotten is ‘I can’t wait to see people speedrun this; it’s going to be crazy,’ and that’s one thing I’m especially excited for post-launch.
Is speedrunning an important part of the gameplay, or is it its own separate thing? Are you actively trying to support a speedrunning community for Big Hops?
You don’t need to be a speedrunner to enjoy the game casually, but there is a lot of stuff in there that acknowledges and encourages going fast. The settings menu has a handful of speedrun-related options; there’s a trinket for measuring your speed with an on-screen speedometer, and when you find challenge rooms, they’re unlocked for access on the main menu, where you can find leaderboards for completing them.
Can we expect to be hunting for collectibles or secret areas in the game?
There are quite a lot of collectibles and secret areas to find, yes!
Veggies, Bugs, Costumes, Mixtapes, Dark Drips,
Challenge Rooms, Trinkets, Dark Bits, Gadgets
I think that’s all of them. One thing I’m really excited about is that all of our collectibles have a gameplay usefulness rather than just being a number going up. You get meaningful rewards for collecting Bugs; you can listen to Mixtapes on a cassette player, Dark Bits reward you with Trinkets, etc.
I personally am not motivated by collecting all the things unless there’s something meaningful on the other end, so we put effort into that.
How is the world of Big Hops structured? Are there separate themed islands, and are there bosses to defeat to gain access to them?
Big Hops is made up of 4 worlds: Forest, Red Desert, Open Ocean, and Shattered Mountain. Each of those is its own episode narratively, where you get to know the characters, get embroiled in their conflict, and eventually find your airship part before moving on.
Each episode is a mix of open and linear, sort of like a pre-BOTW Zelda game where you have a clear mission that will lead you to a dungeon with space to wander in-between.
The end of each world has a climactic final encounter – two of them are bosses, and one is a dramatic, multi-stage minecart ride.
One thing that really stuck out from the trailer was how you can use the frog’s tongue to pick a lock. What other fun frog-based ideas can we look forward to using in the game?
There are a LOT of ways to use your tongue in the game: levers, switches, grapple swings, wheels, hookshots, DK-style barrel launchers, grave robbing, slingshots, and spraying graffiti.
There’s a large toolkit of abilities, mechanics, and items available in Big Hops. What inspired you to create a huge list of ways to interact with the world? Any specific reason to not stick with what players would expect?
Early on, I replayed and studied all the best 3D platformer games from history and made an unhinged spreadsheet of all the features that every game had. One thing I noticed was that every popular game (literally every one) had combat, and specifically dispatching enemies, as a big part of the game loop.
The reason to do that makes sense – over 20 hours or however long your game is, you want to engage the player and give them something to do every 15 seconds, and placing combat encounters is pretty economical. But I also find most platformer combat is pretty middling and feels repetitive both within a game and as a genre player.
So knowing we had this frog tongue gimmick and finding it really easy to brainstorm loads of ways to use that mechanic for puzzle-ish interactions, I decided, ‘Let’s avoid combat, and by leaning in a different direction, we’re going to inherently feel pretty different, and puzzle-ish stuff will be our flavour.’ We had to check our pulse on this a lot during development and make sure our tongue interactions and puzzle stuff were paced well enough to not get stale, but I think the story/puzzle combo ended up feeling pretty fresh.
You’ve been quite open about being dropped by a publisher during development. It must have been a hard moment for you and the team. What advice would you give to fellow developers who may find themselves in a similar position?
Make sure to read your contracts and know what happens contractually if you get dropped. If the terms for that case are very bad or will leave you unable to finish the game, ask for a revision or don’t sign that contract.
Even when things are going well, you should consider the worst-case scenario and make a plan for what you would do in that situation. I had planned ahead and was able to start executing our Plan B immediately because I had prepared thoroughly 6 months earlier.
Get creative! As indie self-publishers, one of our greatest strengths is that we can try weird things without it being a huge brand risk and without anyone stopping us. I think the music industry has some of the best examples of small artists being insane on TikTok to build a brand for themself with no budget, no time, just ideas, and creative energy.
Find a community of peers to talk privately with so you can check if you’re getting ripped off. There’s basically no downside to peer reviewing every contract, email, offer, TikTok, Steam page, etc. And all of you will grow together and eventually be able to offer each other opportunities.
It’s been inspiring to see how you have picked yourself up from that moment to self-publishing and receiving much positiveness from the community. It must feel like the struggle was all worth it?
Thanks! It’s been awesome having a community form around the game with the Kickstarter, and as we keep posting and making announcements, it’s more and more clear this is a game that resonates with people. Our team is really encouraged by all the positive feedback.
Big Hops is due to be released on the 12th January 2026 on Steam, Nintendo Switch and PS5. We’ve also been told the game runs great on Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam Deck.
Keep up to date on Big Hops on the game’s website or through Chris’s BlueSky account.
