HAL Laboratory on its new HAL Egg brand, Hataraku UFO, overseas interest
Under its new “HAL Egg” brand, HAL Laboratory released its first mobile game Hataraku UFO. It arrived on iOS and Android in Japan last week.
Famitsu spoke with HAL Laboratory about Hataraku UFO and more in its latest issue. The conversation started with the topic of how HAL Egg started, to which brand manager Shigefumi Kawase explained:
“When you hear HAL Lab, you probably think of the Kirby series, but as a creative group we come up with many ideas daily outside of the Kirby series. In order to provide these sort of new sources of fun, we created the ‘HAL Egg’ brand.”
Teruhito Suzuki, producer of Hataraku UFO, also commented on the process of creating the project. Suzuki told Famitsu:
“Hataraku UFO was planned as an action adventure game that utilized a physics engine. Originally, it was being developed as a difficult sidescrolling action game where a crane arm was used to evade obstacles and traps while bringing back treasure, but we realized that the best motif for a character using a crane arm was a UFO. (Crane games are called ‘UFO Catchers’ in Japan) As a UFO, you would be able to fly around freely, and it was easy to picture a UFO picking and moving objects around. This is why in the end the cute character Mr. UFO was created, and it became a casual game about challenging different tasks.”
When asked about worldwide expansion, Kawase said that “of course we plan to expand abroad.” Hataraku UFO itself can also be expanded, so HAL wants “to be more active in this regard.”
