Hypercharge: Unboxed dev explains why battle royale mode is unlikely despite requests

Hypercharge: Unboxed players have been desperate for a battle royale ever since the nostalgic shooter arrived, but one of the devs behind the game has explained why it’s unlikely to happen.

Hypercharge: Unboxed, the indie shooter that puts you in control of an action figure, features a wave-based PvE mode and online PvP. The multiplayer component has evolved drastically in the years since it first launched in 2017, adding new playlists like Capture the Battery.

But after the game went viral multiple times on social media and caught the eye of fans, many have been calling for a battle royale mode. However, one of Digitial Cybercherries founders and Head of PR and Marketing, Joe Henson, told CharlieIntel in an exclusive interview why the addition of a BR probably won’t happen.

The biggest obstacle when it comes to introducing a large Fortnite-style playlist to Hypercharge: Unboxed is the strain it would put on the servers, as he mentioned the struggles of Palworld when that game initially blew up in early 2024.

“If we got that popular, we’d have to think about the server infrastructure,” Henson explained. “If we even got to 0.2% of [Palworld’s] playerbase, it’d still be tens of thousands of dollars per month. We can’t afford that.”

The dev also pointed out that they’d have to adapt Hypercharge’s business model to fit in with other battle royale titles, including microtransactions, which is something the team is reluctant to embrace.

“With a battle royale, you’ve probably got to do it free to play. But then you’ve got to think ‘how do we monetize it?’ You’ve got to think of monetization model, meaning in-game microtransactions,” he continued. “Season Passes, Battle Passes, it soon becomes more complex and you have to stick with it for a while. We don’t want to be the kind of game where we just abandon it after a month.”

However, Henson didn’t completely rule out the possibility of doing a stripped-back version of a battle royale in Hypercharge: Unboxed. However, he clarified that the player count would be much lower than the other games in the genre.

“If anyone could nail it I think we could, with the way we’ve nailed the FPS mechanics and the environments,” he added. “Maybe we could do a mini royale in Hypercharge, and I mean 10 players max on maps we already have – but the maps aren’t designed for that.”

Overall, it’s highly unlikely that Hypercharge: Unboxed will bring the action figure battle royale that many players are calling for. This may come as a disappointment, especially now that the game is hitting Xbox, but the devs clearly don’t want to spread their small team too thin.