Minnesota-Made Game HyperDot Is Coming as an Xbox Exclusive

The first time I played HyperDot, it was sweaty-palms, button-mashing fun. In this fast-paced action arcade game, your only task is to “dodge everything.” Play and navigate a tiny triangle through a myriad of colored shapes flying at you on a circular field. The games comes with an entire slew of modifiers and ways to play. I didn’t win very many times, but that didn’t stop me from playing round after round.

Developed by Twin Cities–based Tribe Games, a one-man studio founded by Charles McGregor, HyperDot will be published by the new independent games label of local nonprofit GLITCH. The team recently announced that the game will launch as part of an official partnership with Xbox ID, a program that works with independent developers to launch their games on Microsoft platforms. The game will come first as an Xbox One exclusive but is an Xbox Play Anywhere game—once you buy it on Xbox One, it is available on Windows 10 with cross-saves.

Although the partnership was officially announced in April, the team demoed the game at the Xbox ID Developer Showcase during the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco in March, one of 14 new titles announced through the showcase. I sat down with McGregor to talk about demoing HyperDot and how it felt to represent Minnesota developers at a national level at the conference.

When I asked how the conference appearance went, he told me, “It was largely people coming through, playing the game. Everybody who was coming through was press. At the event, most setups were was a TV, banners of there game, a [single] controller, and headphones to hear. [. . .] We were the only multiplayer setup.”

That setup required a lot of last-minute work to get press ready. McGregor said, “It felt weird to be the only four-player setup. I could definitely tell that the event was more set up for single-player games. The day before, the setup day, we spent a total of six hours trying to figure out audio. We ended up using a super hacky way to split up the audio because Windows doesn’t like that.”

Splitting audio and making sure headphones work may seem like small details. However, for McGregor, there was a lot riding on this day. The event was the opportunity to show his game to a large audience for the first time after three years of development and demoing the game at local events. “I was showcasing my game to the world. I saw people who I’ve been following for a while, in the press. I just hoped people would like it. I hoped that nothing would break,” he said.

McGregor with HyperDot at GDC. GLITCH

Showing the game had not only professional stakes but personal stakes as well. “This is me fulfilling childhood dream of making video games. The fact that it’s even on Xbox, the Xbox thing, reminds me of my 13 to 14 self, when I was playing all the time,” he said. “This is probably the most nervous that I’ve ever been. [. . .] I played alto saxophone, and I was in concerts. I had to do solos, and I was nervous then, but this was a different level of nervous, because it was a whole bunch of things at the same time. Having all that stuff culminate to this one point was nerve-wracking on another level.”

Despite the nerves, the day well. “After first the 10 to 20 minutes of doing things, I got into my routine,” McGregor said. “I’ve talked about my game before. I’ve done all this stuff  before. It’s not completely new to me. I started calming down. Anytime I talked to someone, it seemed to go well and we got cool contacts. People liked the game and understood the game.”

He even made personal connections with people whose work he admired. “My favorite moment was probably meeting What’s Good Games. I’m a huge Kinda Funny fan; the host Andrea Rene was there and played and liked my game.”

HyperDot will be released sometime in 2019. Stay up to date with the latest news by following Tribe Games and GLITCH.

Gameplay from HyperDot. GLITCH