The star of Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero is “a feisty combat wombat making her way in the world,” according to Tyson Butler-Boschma, co-founder and creative director of Toybox Games Studios. As far as protagonists go, you can’t deny that the description is sticky.
Designed by a team of friends who’ve known each other since university, Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero has gone from strength to strength, last year winning the People’s Choice Award at PAX Australia. Recently, GamesHub had the privilege of sitting down with Butler-Boschma to chat about wombats, lore, and the best part about working alongside your mates.
Read: PAX Aus 2023 Indie Showcase – People’s Choice Winner Announced
Creating a context
Per the team’s website, Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero ”tells the tale of Brunt, Oak-Hide, the Hollow Hero who journeys into unknown lands to save her people.” An anthropomorphic wombat, Brunt is a misunderstood and imposing character, seeking to prove herself in the detailed world of Eridal.
When it comes to indie games, you don’t necessarily expect that they’ll come equipped with reams and reams of bespoke historical context and lore, but Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero certainly bucks that trend.
”We have 100,000 years worth [of history] established in our universe,” said Butler-Boschma. “In the first original project that we created, Brunt was already a character that existed – she was so cool out of the gate, and with us being Aussie developers (and wombats being pretty much my favourite animal), we thought it’d be really cool to do her origin story.”
But where Brunt’s story is just a snapshot of this universe, there’s still the question of how in-depth you go with the background. How far back do you write? How much history paints the context? How deep do you really need to go?
”What we’re keeping track of is, at its core, a linear timeline,” he said. “But for those who are more invested in uncovering lore, there’s heaps more to find under the surface – and in order to establish that, we needed to have key events that have occurred within our world.”
Studios behind games like Elder Scrolls and World of Warcraft often have loremasters who are employed specifically to keep track of these sorts of stories and timelines, tracking information across years of development. For Toybox Games Studios and Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero, however, this is something that they’ve developed out of a care for context, regardless of how big the undertaking might seem.
“It’s a weird analogy, but you think about key events that have occurred during human history – Roman Empire, Greek Empire, World War One and Two,” said Butler-Boschma. “We don’t need to know the individual story of each person in those events, we just know that they were critical events.”
Being straight up with each other
Having been friends since the early 2010s, the team at Toybox Games Studios have the luxury of being incredibly honest with each other – whether things are going well or otherwise. It’s a straight-up kind of culture, and that’s made a big difference when it comes to dealing with both the highs and lows of the rollercoaster that is video game development.
”The beauty of us being friends as well as colleagues is that when we need to be friends, we can be,” said Butler-Boschma. “We can be like, ‘yeah look, this sucks,’ and there’s no other way to put it, but it’s fine. It’s allowed, you know?”
He describes the team as having a tenacity that often surprises people – especially when they ask how the team has achieved so much without investment backing.
”We have each other to bounce off of, and that support structure,” he said. “When we started working on Hollow Hero – all the way back during Covid – we made the decision together that if it came to it, we would make this game ourselves. If we had absolutely no support and no one liked us, we would deal with that, and we would work around it.”
Because the tricky side of being a game of Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero’s production value and length, is that it slots into a bit of an awkward middle ground when it comes to publishers.
”Larger publishers have seen us at face value and been like, ‘Damn, your production value is incredible, what are you working on?’” said Butler-Boschma, but expressed that then when they hear that the game is a linear experience at around 10-15 hours, there’s resistance.
“They’re like, ‘we wanted something a bit bigger than that,’ and it’s like, shit. It’s this weird middle ground where we’re too big for small, but too small for big,” he said. It puts the team at a bit of an impasse, but that’s not to say they’ll be slowing down anytime soon.
The future of Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero
Now, the team at Toybox Games Studio are focusing on getting everything in line for another year of PAX Australia, as well as a big year ahead as they continue to keep an ear to the ground for further support.
“We’ve kind of gone back into our wombat boroughs a little bit and just focused on getting stuff done,” said Butler-Boschma. “Publishers aren’t so much on board, but it’s very reassuring to know that there’s a community out there that are super excited about the game itself, and that can be enough to get us across the line.”
If you’re keen to delve into the adventures of Brunt and the surprising depths of history and lore of Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero, it’s well worth checking it out on the show floor – having won the People’s Choice Award last year, and after hearing about the depth of lore it has within its story, we can’t wait to see where the game goes next.
