This Week In Retro: BoxBoy!

January 15, 2015: He's a box! My boy's a box!

by Diamond Feit 

Since the first moment I picked up a crayon and tried to draw the sun, I've always held artists in high regard. It takes real skill to look at a blank page—or an empty screen in modern parlance—and fill it with life. I suppose what I do as a writer qualifies as a form of art, but I don't foresee any of the thousands of words I've typed in my lifetime hanging in a museum.

Yet as much as I wish I could craft landscapes and populate them without resorting to simple shapes and stick figures, I do not envy artists for theirs is a tough lot. Once you put ink or paint to paper, you must come to terms with receiving endless feedback on your work from those who refuse to undertake that same challenge. Those museums I mentioned earlier are packed with people passing judgement on every stroke and color choice, with the worst offenders smugly declaring "I could do that" when they have resoundingly not done that.

Amongst these belabored professionals, character designers have it rough—particularly here in Japan, where everyone from government agencies to the local herpetologist wants to sell their wares via an adorable munchkin. We're rapidly approaching the 30th anniversary of Pokémon, a series that must contain over a thousand focus-tested commercial-friendly creatures by now, yet I bet there's a dozen executives in Tokyo at this very second expecting gold from an underpaid artist working under contract.

Back in 2013, HAL Laboratories solicited proposals for game ideas that didn't revolve around Kirby, the company's beloved mascot and one of the all-time great character designs. An unproven staffer came forward and dared to suggest a video game starring a humble box. Given the high costs of development and level of competition, I consider it miraculous that BoxBoy! not only succeeded but kicked off a franchise when it debuted 10 years ago this week on the Nintendo 3DS.

Despite the eponymous sound of its title, BoxBoy! does not, in fact, star a character called BoxBoy. That term instead describes their species according to creator Yasuhiro Mukae and the walking, jumping box players actually control is called Qbby. In a 2020 post on HAL Laboratories' official site detailing the development of BoxBoy!, they explain the disparity came about when they realized the Japanese title, HakoBoy!, didn't sound right overseas. This led to the creation of a new international title and a distinct name for the protagonist that he retains across all regions.

Qbby doesn't have much to brag about as video game characters go. He lacks weapons or combat abilities, he perishes from contact with any hazards, and while he can jump higher than a human in proportion to his size, Qbby's no match for Mario, Sonic, or any other platforming hero.

Qbby's one talent ties directly into his literal squareness, as he can generate inert boxes identical to his own body. These protrusions serve as an extension of himself which he can retract even faster than he can produce them. Qbby can also shed his blocks, throwing them to the ground or tossing them across a gap. Once separated from his body, Qbby can safely tread or climb upon his blocks but the moment he creates a new box, the old ones instantly disappear.

BoxBoy! players assume control of Qbby and guide him through a series of chambers in a lo-fi monochrome world, one the designers deliberately left sparse. In an internal developer interview on the game's official website, Mukae said they spent months coming up with different color schemes and busier backgrounds to give BoxBoy! a stronger visual identity, but in the end they decided the bare black & white look actually did just that when compared to more lavish games on the Nintendo eShop.

The brevity of each stage also proves beneficial as the worlds Qbby explores contain six to eight levels, allowing developers to spend entire stages focused on one central idea or mechanic. If the opening area of a world introduces players to pressure switches that open doors, each following level can increase in complexity to gradually challenge players. A quick restart command also lets stumped players return to the last checkpoint should they need to calculate a new approach to an obstacle; in his review for USGamer.net, Bob Mackey wrote "this helped me soldier on through puzzles that would've left me stymied in similar games, and I'm hoping other developers take notice."

BoxBoy! debuted in a Nintendo Direct livestream on January 14, 2015 and launched at midnight in Japan after the presentation ended. Even though the game lacks dialogue or any meaningful text, international versions did not ship until months later; thankfully as a Japanese resident with a Japanese 3DS I picked up the game right away. The gentle difficulty slope and surprisingly cute characters—all of them quadrangles—kept me awake for hours past my bedtime.

BoxBoy! gets great mileage out of Qbby's powers by restricting the number of boxes he can produce at a time. This cap varies from level to level and fits perfectly within the demands of each area. While it might sound counterintuitive to ration access to Qbby's main asset, this prevents players from erecting massive block towers and forces them to work within their means to solve each puzzle.

Supplemental challenges add a second layer of intricacy to keep players' brains locked in. Qbby can spy a series of small crowns throughout the game, often in hard to reach spots. Players do not need to collect them but the game does keep track and certain endgame rewards require finding every crown. Each level also has a limit on the total number of boxes Qbby can create before reaching the goal and exceeding this guideline disqualifies players from gaining any crowns.

According to a 2017 Famitsu interview translated by Nintendo Everything, Mukae never intended for Qbby's life to go beyond a single game, and moved on to another project after completing development of BoxBoy! However, the tiny square clearly struck a chord with 3DS owners, so HAL Laboratories realized that the world needed more box-building puzzles and the company greenlit a sequel which begat a trilogy.

Unfortunately, the forces of digital distribution that made BoxBoy! games so affordable also makes it harder to enjoy Qbby's adventures today. The 3DS eShop closed in 2023 so unless you already purchased BoxBoy!, BoxBoxBoy! or Bye-ByeBoxBoy!, you cannot download them. In 2017, Nintendo did publish a collector's edition featuring all 3 games on a cartridge—along with a Qbby Amiibo and a soundtrack CD—but only in Japan. You don't need to read Japanese to enjoy the hundreds of puzzles in that collection but due to the console's regional restrictions, you do need a Japanese 3DS if you intend to play it.

The good news is that the launch of the Nintendo Switch opened the door for Qbby's return in BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! Freed from the restraints of an exclusively handheld machine, this fourth game flexes its muscles with higher-resolution graphics and visual flourishes, even if it retains the same basic look of the first three.

As suggested by the title, BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! takes full advantage of the Switch's built-in twin Joycons to include a multiplayer mode where one player controls Qbby and the other controls Qucy, his feminine counterpart. Director Taku Koinuma told Famitsu (again translated by Nintendo Everything) that "we always thought playing with two people sounded fun and we had the idea of multiplayer right from the first game." Lacking an interested cohort, I never actually tried the two-player mode at the time but imagine my surprise this week when I discovered that I can swap between Qbby and Qucy and just solve the puzzles by myself.

At present, I don't know if HAL Laboratories will return to the BoxBoy! well. The company blessed us with four Qbby-licious games in five years but after a now-six-year silence I do fear that the square cupboards may be bare. After all, how can one self-replicating cube hope to compete on an eShop flooded with other puzzle games both large and small, especially when HAL can call upon the far more flexible Kirby to fill virtually any role?

Kirby can eat a car, for heaven's sake! Qbby could never.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.