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Hi everyone, welcome to the Happy! the Hippo website! This is where I’ll be sharing news about the game, as well as archiving things from its development. Check out the trailer and game demo below!

I started this project in 2022, when a friend shared with me several boxes of documents, hard drives, and other materials for a cancelled PS2 game called Happy! the Hippo. From the incomplete source code, design documents, and various builds I’ve found, I’ve spent the past several years trying to reconstruct the game as faithfully as I can, porting it to PC so it can finally see the light of day after over 20 years.

I’m a huge fan of early 2000s platformers (especially the lower budget, jankier ones) so this project has been super special to me. While I could try to fix the many bugs the game has and create some of the planned content that never got made, I want to preserve the game as close to it was 20-something years ago as possible. The jankiness is a huge part of what makes these games memorable to me, so I don’t want to polish that away.

Expect this site to change quite a bit as I continue working on the port! I’ll update it every now and then when I have new updates to share or new things worth archiving. Thanks for visiting the site!