Hyper Hippo Games

About the Company

Hyper Hippo was born in 2012, when Lance Priebe, one of the founders of the hugely successful Club Penguin, led a team of elite game designers on a quest to create something even bigger. Expectations were high; the new pod of Hippos were ready to deliver something massive. We emulated the large game houses by extensively designing, developing and playtesting the vast new world of Mech Mice. There was just one problem: we were so busy thinking big that we forgot to think small.

As the success we’d envisioned failed to materialize, we gradually came to realize that the success of Club Penguin was built on moments, joyful moments that added up to a great experience. When it became clear that Mech Mice was not the hit we were looking for, Lance took a step back and threw down the gauntlet: Six months. Anything goes. Every idea counts.

That’s how our breakthrough game AdVenture Capitalist changed the course of our company and pioneered the genre of Idle gaming. Talk about thinking small! Originally conceived as “Progress Bar: The Game,” it was about as complicated as it sounds. Most of the team expected it to be one of our fail-fast experiments—until we discovered we couldn’t put it down.