Hypercharge Devs Reboot Voice-Chat Horror With Co-Op
- Digital Cybercherries reveal a four-player co-op sequel where one scream restarts the game or turns the screamer into the hunter.
- The five-person team says co-op and proximity chat made it a new game, not just an update.
- Despite low player counts, the studio stays active with its community and plans a major Hypercharge: Unboxed update.
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It’s Oh So Quiet
Digital Cybercherries, the UK-based studio behind multiplayer action figure shooter Hypercharge: Unboxed, has revealed Don’t Scream Together. This is a new game that builds on the studio’s 2023 voice-chat horror title, Don’t Scream, where the game restarts if the player makes a loud noise.
Chief among the changes is the addition of four-player co-op, which relies on proximity voice chat to co-ordinate an escape from spooky woods. As with the original game, loud noises can end the game, but this time an added twist is it can also cause the loud player to become the entity stalking everybody.
“Our next project is designed to ruin friendships,” Digital Cybercherries said in an X post revealing the game. “Don’t Scream Together is our four-player co-op horror game with proximity voice chat. Escape the forest together, but one scream or loud voice restarts the game for everyone, or the screamer returns as the hunter!”
It’s Oh So Still
The announcement was made on Oct. 23, and has already caused confusion between gamers as to why the studio’s going to charge for a brand new game rather than update the original. Digital Cybercherries’ lead dev, Joe, responded to player complaints via the original Don’t Scream’s Steam page:
“We are a team of five indie devs, and Don’t Scream Together is a new product, not a simple update. The technical challenge of adding stable, robust four-player online co-op with synchronized voice mechanics and proximity chat is a massive undertaking.”
The original Don’t Scream was last updated in September, which included adding creepy Symbols to find, that are attached to weird locations and objects ranging from a plane crash to a hellscape. Hunters (which also appear in Don’t Scream Together) were added to the first game last year in time for Halloween, but last month’s update made them optional.
All-in-all, the two games are very similar; the sequel even includes a straightforward Don’t Scream mode that restarts the game if someone screams. However, Digital Cybercherries has pointed out that the sequel has a lot more content, including customizable characters and the Hunted mode, that turns a player into a Hunter.
It’s All So Peaceful Until…
Gamers have also questioned just who Don’t Scream Together is targeted at; at launch, Don’t Scream peaked at 974 players, which then experienced an extremely sharp drop-off to an average of 50 a few months later. Now, it averages 19 players at peak time, with typically just 10 people in the game at once.
Digital Cybercherries have been here before, though, and weathered the storm. The studio initially launched Hypercharge: Unboxed in April 2020. Players control action figures and fight in locations ranging from backyards to toy stores. Despite featuring online (and local) co-op, the studio has always been adamant that it won’t incorporate microtransactions, battle passes, or any other kind of feature typically associated with live service games.
Digital Cybercherries made a big push behind Hypercharge when they managed to release it – by themselves, without a big publisher – on PlayStation 4 and 5 in May this year. Although it racked up over 125,000 wishlists before launch, this didn’t translate to many sales nor a lot of online players (a similar issue was recently reported by the developer of Katanaut).
In response to gamer comments about Hypercharge being “dead on arrival,” Digital Cybercherries took to social media to defend their ethos, which also included pointing out that “We made the game we always wanted as kids. And we did it. That’s our success.”
Subsequently, the game sold over 40,000 copies as people appreciated seeing a studio stick up for its work by making it clear that earning big bucks is not the name of the game for them as developers. And, although Hypercharge averages 24 players on PC at peak times, the game’s dedicated Discord channel has over 9,000 members, with just over 1,000 online at the time of writing.
Ahhhhh!
The general chat over on Discord involves people looking for matches, as well as asking why there are no dedicated multiplayer servers – a fact that seems to escape a lot of gamers criticising Digital Cybercherries is that it’s a small team with no publisher or big funding behind it to run this kind of thing, and that it released a game as feature-complete.
However, that’s not to say the studio isn’t listening to players. With recent comments in the Discord asking if the game is dead, or why it’s hard to find other players, the devs have clarified these points as well as given a hint of what’s to come.
“It was developed with co-operative and split-screen with friends mode in mind. We added public ways to connect with people as a later addition. Most people play 1-2-1 with private lobbies,” said Dec, on behalf of Digital Cybercherries. “Around the time of major updates, console patches and announcements, the game usually picks up a bit.”
The devs have also been busy posting on Instagram about Don’t Scream Together, including the reveal that if someone mutes their microphone, their character gets a clown head and footsteps that sound like squeaky clown shows.
When asked on there why they’re focusing on the new game and not Hypercharge: Unboxed, the devs replied: “We’re still working on Hypercharge, just needed a little break working on other things. We’ve spent years on Hypercharge, did the impossible with it (launch on all platforms with cross play as a team of five indies is not easy) – but we do have plans for a major update/new game mode!”
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