Hypercharge, a whimsical action figure shooter, just went from near-obscurity to becoming one of the top 10 sellers on PS5 over the weekend, and it’s all thanks to the developers’ honesty. Every day, thousands of new games are released on major storefronts, and the sad reality is that most won’t make it. Live service titles like Fortnite already hoard most of the user base on any given platform. Some games earn well below whatever it took to make them in the first place. And so we arrive at Hypercharge: Unboxed, a third-person shooter where players control action figures, which was ported at the end of May to Xbox and PlayStation.
Originally released in 2020 on Steam, Hypercharge arrived on the scene with plenty of fanfare. Footage of the game periodically went viral on social media as onlookers were delighted by the prospect of a game that looked straight out of Pixar’s Toy Story. Steam users have granted Hypercharge a “Very Positive’” rating, with one top review on the platform declaring the experience “pure childhood joy.” Not bad for a game made by a team of 5 people.
But that was years ago. In 2025, the shooter landscape is more competitive than ever, which means that success was not assured for Hypercharge. Despite launching with cross-platform support, it seems that interest in the game was minimal at the start of 2025. On Steam, the top-voted review posted on May 12th of this year declared, “Game is dead.”
Players on console soon realized this was the case, with at least one player taking to social media to voice their dissatisfaction. This player claimed there weren’t enough players to form a full lobby, and that there were “literally 5 people online.”
This prompted developer Digital Cybercherries to respond, and the post was surprisingly earnest. The makers of the action figure game acknowledged that there weren’t many people enjoying the game, but that they were OK with that so long as the game brought someone, somewhere joy.
The developers followed up this post with a longer explanation where they said that ultimately, they had made the game they would have wanted as children.
“Making games has never been about getting rich, becoming famous, or having the most concurrent players”
“Making games has never been about getting rich, becoming famous, or having the most concurrent players,” the post reads. “To us, being rich means waking up every day to do what we love with the people we love […] as long as we can pay the bills, feed our families, and keep creating what we care about, then yeah, in our eyes, we’re already rich.”
The devs’ display of vulnerability exploded on social media, where the post has accrued over 600,000 views. This attention was enough to catapult the game into the top 10 sellers on PS5 over the weekend.
“Picked it up yesterday to support you guys on PS5 myself!” one response reads. “I’m gonna get this game when I get paid again,” another says.
While Hypercharge seems to have fallen out that bestseller list now, it’s still at number 5 in the bestselling new releases for PS5. The whirlwind of attention was still welcome by the small developer.
“To be honest, it has been surreal,” Joe Henson, head of marketing for Hypercharge, told Polygon over email. “We are a team of five, with no publisher, no outside funding, and no big marketing budget. Just five friends who grew up loving games and wanted to make one that meant something to us. To see Hypercharge go viral and now stand alongside major AAA titles as the #5 bestselling new release on PlayStation is something we never anticipated. It has genuinely touched us.”
Henson did not share specific player base numbers with Polygon, only noting that the game doesn’t have a “huge” player base but that there are thousands of players across all platforms. He also reiterated that the developers consider the game more of a co-op experience, and the online functionality is more of a bonus.
“I completely understand it can be frustrating if you’re trying to jump into online matches and can’t find anyone,” Henson says. “I hear that. But I don’t think it’s fair to call a game a failure when it’s doing exactly what it set out to do: offer a solid offline and local co-op experience, with online as a nice extra, not the main focus.”
As for what’s next, it’s business as usual. There are bugs to fix, and updates to dole out to ensure cross-platform is working as intended. But the team is still taking some time to bask in the accomplishment.
“It has been a monumental task, but one we are incredibly proud of,” Henson says.
Hypercharge: Unboxed is available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
0 Comments