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| Director Chris Wade and Hop star in the Dev Dive documentary 6 Years to Build BIG HOPS. |
By Jon Scarr
Luckshot Games has released a new documentary, 6 Years to Build BIG HOPS, tracing the six-year path from a small frog platformer prototype in 2019 to the finished game that launched earlier this year. It mixes team interviews, development footage, and launch-day reactions into a single look at how Big Hops went from an idea to a shipped game.
From After-Hours Prototype to Full Indie Team
The documentary introduces director Chris Wade’s route through the games industry, then shifts to how Big Hops began as a spare-time experiment built around a frog who can jump, climb, and use a tongue that works like a toolbelt.
For the first couple of years, Big Hops stayed as an after-hours project. Once the movement and tongue ideas felt strong enough and early clips began to circulate online, Wade left his studio job to focus entirely on the game. Publisher interest followed, funding helped the project grow, and Luckshot Games turned into a small remote team.
You hear briefly from artists, designers, and audio leads about joining the project and helping turn early prototypes into something that feels like a full adventure.
Setbacks, Kickstarter, and Finishing the Game
The documentary doesn’t skip over the rough patches. Partway through development, the team’s publisher walks away, leaving Luckshot Games to figure out how to finish Big Hops on its own.
Wade talks about having a backup plan ready for exactly this scenario and about the stress of trying to lead a growing team through that shift. From there, the documentary moves into the Kickstarter chapter. Big Hops raised over $50,000, with the campaign built around bringing in a community who could test the demo, send feedback, and be ready to spread the word once the game was out.
Design Choices You Notice While Playing Big Hops
One of the most interesting threads in 6 Years to Build BIG HOPS is how it connects design decisions to what you actually do in Big Hops. Wade talks about studying 3D platformers and noticing how often combat takes up space without really matching the feel of the movement. For Big Hops, the team wanted to see what happens when almost everything is built around movement, problem-solving, and exploration instead.
The documentary breaks down three pillars in particular. Hop’s tongue lets you grab, swing, and interact with the world in different ways. A flexible movement toolset treats many surfaces as something you can climb or use to change routes. Vegetables reshape paths and let you improvise new ways through areas.
References to games like Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Spelunky briefly show where some of those ideas came from.
The documentary also shows that Big Hops’ forgiving approach to missed jumps and experimental movement was intentional from the start, not something that just happened along the way.
For a closer look at how all of this plays out in-game, you can also read our Big Hops review.
Launch Day Nerves and a Documentary Worth Seeing
The final stretch of the documentary follows the ramp up to launch, from last-minute tasks to the moment Big Hops appears on digital stores. It does not dwell on every detail, but it gives you enough to understand what was at stake for the team.
If you’re interested in platformers or indie development, 6 Years to Build BIG HOPS gives you a clear look at how an idea centred on a frog, a tongue, and a bag full of vegetables grew into a finished game. The focus stays on the work and the people behind Big Hops, so you get more context for the game without the documentary spelling out every step of production.
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