Disney and Hipster Whale have teamed up to create a Disney Crossy Road mobile game.
The new game was announced at a panel at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and it shows the two companies are trying to figure out how to survive and thrive in the $30 billion mobile game industry.
The deal between Disney and Hipster Whale is reminiscent of others that the Magic Kingdom has created over the years, such as Temple Run: Oz and Temple Run: Brave, which were based on Imangi’s Temple Run series of endless-runner games.
As with Temple Run, the Disney Crossy Road game marries Disney characters with gameplay mechanics that have been proven to be popular, said Chris Heatherly, the head of mobile games at Disney, in an interview with GamesBeat. Hipster Whale’s Crossy Road game, which is like a modernized version of Frogger, has been downloaded more than 120 million times to date.
The game will have more than 100 Disney and Pixar characters, who will have to try to cross the road without getting smashed by a car. Heatherly said that the Disney team met with Hipster Whale a year ago at GDC and they hit it off.
“They were big fans of Disney characters, and that made them a very good match,” Heatherly said.