Meet the developer of Hapunan, the viral balut vendor horror game

You’re a balut vendor. The sun is down, you’ve had your dinner, and you’re about to head out for another night of selling duck eggs and chicharon. “Don’t stay out too late,” your mother tells you. “It’s dangerous.”

You both heard the news on the radio: There have been killings in the area—and they only happen at night. But you have no choice but to go out, you have balut to sell. You traverse the train tracks in the dark, armed only with your basket and your flashlight.

This is Hapunan, the Filipino horror game that’s gone viral for its jump scares and its very Pinoy flavor. It’s been available to play for only about two months and yet some of the internet’s most popular streamers have already played it—and millions have watched.

We wanted to meet the team behind the game and get to know their story, and were surprised to discover that Hapunan was created by one guy: Yikon—real name Josef Yenko—a 21-year-old with a lifelong passion for video games.

Yikon is a name he’s been using since he was 12. “That’s what I use in all my online games,” he told Lifestyle. It has also become his brand as an indie game developer.

We interviewed Yikon via Zoom. The indie game developer grew up in Metro Manila—mostly in Muntinlupa, and now lives in Marinduque with his family.

It was his father, Alvin Sotta Reyes, a fan of pinball and other classics, who introduced Yikon and his five siblings to the joys of playing video games.

Yikon was just 8 when he started playing Dota, then Diablo and then, League of Legends. “That became my favorite game. I’ve been playing it since 2014,” he told Lifestyle.

His older brother Stephen Nathan Yenko got into game development and showed Yikon the ropes. Eventually, his kuya lost interest in it, but not Yikon. “Ako na ‘yung sumalo ng passion niya (I continued his passion).”

Mini games

Yikon has been creating mini games since he was 12. “Those were really simple games but they helped me learn. They brought me to where I am now as a developer.”

Some of them are still available on the indie game platform Itch.io. “It’s where indie game developers can post their games for free. There are bigger companies like Steam but for you to upload, there’s a developer fee that you have to pay,” he said.

The first game he ever posted was Wall Box. Yikon said, “You collect coins when you dodge obstacles. It’s a really short, really difficult game. It’s impossible to finish,” he said. It got a total of three downloads, but “I was so happy because I had made my first game ever.”

He also joined game development competitions as a way of practicing his game dev skills.

Yikon really likes watching horror games—watching, not playing, “kasi matatakutin ako (because I get scared easily).” He watches streamers play horror games on Twitch or YouTube.

“There are so many indie horror games … So I thought, ‘What if I created a horror game that was based on Filipino culture?”

That’s how Hapunan started. Yikon thought about all the things that usually scare him when he watches horror games and implemented them in his own game. He created it using the game engine Unity.

No graphics card

But working on his game had its challenges. “The problem with me is I get distracted,” Yikon said. “I would think, ‘This won’t go anywhere,’ ‘If I do this, it’s just going to be a waste of time.’ I overthink a lot. I’d stop working on it then return to it and I’d disappear again. It was really on and off.”

Another challenge? What he calls his “potato PC.”

“I used a laptop, an office laptop. The memory is high—16 GB—so it’s enough to make a game. But it doesn’t have a graphics card. I would stop working on the game for a month, two months, because the laptop couldn’t handle it. It took a long time to open, it kept crashing, it kept lagging. Eventually, I thought, I’ll make it low-quality. So while I was developing the game, all I could see were pixels … Pero pinagtiyagaan ko … Lumaban pa rin at nakagawa ng final game (I persevered, I fought, and I was able to make my game).”

Another challenge Yikon faced was juggling school and game development. He had been attending Muntinlupa National High School, under the Information and Communication Technology strand. “I was in Grade 11—hindi tugma ‘yung age ko kasi ilang beses ako nag-stop (my age doesn’t match my grade because I stopped going to school several times). I was stressed because of my thesis. There were so many theses.”

It was a relief when the school year came to a close. During the break, he was able to devote his time to developing Hapunan.

But with school about to start again, he had a big decision to make. “I thought that if I went back to school, I wouldn’t be able to continue working on it. So I took the risk of not going to school the following school year. I decided to focus on the game.”

He talked to his parents who were supportive and gave him permission. Not wanting to be a burden to them, Yikon got a job at a printing shop and spent the rest of his time working on Hapunan. “I already quit school. If the game fails, where will I end up? I didn’t want to waste that year. So I told myself to keep going.”

In between intense programming sessions, he relaxed by playing games like League of Legends, Risk of Rain, and Valorant. “Game developing can really stress you out. Sobrang sakit sa ulo gumawa ng games (Creating games can be a headache) so I play games and I go biking to get rid of stress.”

He’s also passionate about biking. “I’ve always loved computers and bikes. It’s my exercise … It’s relaxing to bike especially here in Marinduque. There’s so much space because we’re on an island.”

Protagonist

Why did he choose a balut vendor as a protagonist? Does he love balut? “To be honest, sa buong buhay ko po, isang beses pa lang ako kumain ng balut. (In my whole life, I’ve eaten balut only once).”

The idea of having the player be a balut vendor “came out of nowhere,” said Yikon. But he grew up seeing balut vendors in his neighborhood, and so he built the story around a balut vendor.

“I didn’t use a storyboard. I created the story on the fly,” he said.

The house in the game is inspired by his grandma’s house in Los Baños, Laguna. “Ganun po talaga ‘yung itsura, sa riles talaga sila nakatira (That’s really what it looked like, they really live by the train tracks).”

The neighborhood in which the player sells balut is a recreation of an area in Alabang. “‘Pag daan ng riles, may batuhan tapos may gate—ganun na ganun siya (once you pass the train tracks, there’s an area with rocks and then a gate—that’s exactly how it is).”

Some of the characters are based on his family members—he mapped their faces on 3D models. Easiest to convince was his youngest brother Nixon, 7, who really, really wanted to be part of the game. His sister also had no issues with becoming Ashley in the game.

It was his parents, Alvin and Cheryl, who needed more persuading. To be able to turn them into characters, Yikon needed to photograph them in different positions and he needed to capture their skin tone, and the texture of their hands.

“Nung una talaga, ayaw nila. ‘Saan mo gagamitin? ‘Baka kung anong mangyari sa mga mukha namin,’ baka ma-expose daw sila… ‘Baka sumikat ‘yan ha, makilala kami ng mga tao sa labas.’ (At first, they really didn’t want to do it. ‘Where will you use it?’ ‘What will happen to our faces?’ They were worried they would be exposed. ‘Your game might become popular, we might get recognized by people outside.’)”

Eventually, they relented, with Yikon promising to alter their faces a bit by stretching them. “In the end, they said yes because they support me fully.”

The mom in the game is his mom and the dad his dad, and his parents also lend their voices to multiple characters in “Hapunan.”

Sound design

Yikon was smart about his use of sound in the game. “I studied the sound design of horror games, how to make it creepy… When a horror game is quieter, it’s scarier.. That’s why I didn’t overdo it. I just added ambience.”

People have been loving “Hapunan,” but one thing they’ve said is that the game is too short—gameplay is about 30 to 40 minutes long. But there’s a good reason for that.

Yikon said, “I didn’t want to create a game with two hours of gameplay and then have no one play it. Sayang lahat ng pinaghirapan ko (It would be a waste of my effort). So I decided to make my first game short and then look at the feedback of players. Okay ba? Maganda ba yung game? (Is the game good?) If a lot of people play this, then I’ll create a game with longer gameplay.”

The first one to play “Hapunan” was Yikon’s classmate, best friend, and fellow gamer Marcus. He and his family watched Marcus play it on Discord. “He liked the story, the jump scares, the chase scene. And I said, ‘Okay, the game is ready for release.’” Yikon had worked on “Hapunan” for two years, on and off, and now, people were finally going to be able to play it.

He uploaded the game to Itch.io in mid-December, making it available for $3.99. Knowing that not everyone has a credit card or a Paypal account, he also added a GCash option for Filipino players, making the game available to them for just P200. He then posted on Facebook and Reddit that “Hapunan” was now available.

But one week, two weeks, three weeks passed and no one was downloading the game. “Nabawasan ‘yung confidence level ko… I started thinking, ‘Okay, I need to make another game. Maybe they’ll like my next game.’”

But four weeks in, Murushii, a Filipino content creator and game developer with 1,000 subscribers, posted his gameplay on YouTube. “My family and I watched it and we were so happy that someone was playing my game,” Yikon said.

Murushii was the first content creator to play the game and only the third person to download it. “But every payment made me so happy. I couldn’t believe it,” Yikon said.

Murushii also shared clips on TikTok. One of them, the jump scare featuring Madonna, got 500,000 views in just two days. More people started buying “Hapunan.”

But then, the downloads plateaued. Yikon said, “I thought that was it, that’s as far as ‘Hapunan’ was gonna go. And I thought it was already successful. I had earned about P2,000 and I was so happy because I had never earned that much money from creating a game.”

But “Hapunan” was just getting started.

In January, PaylStation, a streamer with almost 350,000 subscribers on YouTube, played the game. More people bought the game, and a number of them played it on TikTok Live. “It was around this time that there was a game-breaking bug. I panicked but I was able to fix it,” Yikon said.

After five days, things became quiet again.

But then Kristian PH played it. Kristian PH is a popular Filipino gamer with 4.16 million YouTube subscribers. “At that time, ‘Hapunan’ had been downloaded around 1,000 times. After Kristian PH played it, it spiked from 1,000 to 20,000.”

International gamers also started playing “Hapunan.” Yikon’s dream was for CaseOh, his favorite streamer, to play it. “I watch all his videos… It’s so much fun to watch him play horror games.”

When CaseOh started livestreaming the game, Yikon literally jumped for joy. “Sobrang tuwa,” he said.

CaseOh has over 7.14 million YouTube subscribers and, in just two weeks, his video of “Hapunan” had gotten 2.5 million views. (Watch it, it’s both scary and hilarious.)

200,000 downloads

The downloads went from 20,000 to 100,000. Today “Hapunan” has been downloaded 200,000 times. It’s now the no. 1 top-selling game on Itch.io. Yikon said that 70 percent of people who buy his games are Filipino, but “Hapunan” has a lot of international players, too. Some of them pay more than the amount he’s asked for—like a Filipino living abroad who GCashed P1,000 instead of P200 and a gamer who paid $20 instead of $3.99. “They tip me and say ‘Thank you for showing Filipino culture.’ I’m grateful to them.”

More gamers continue to post their videos playing “Hapunan.” “These YouTubers I was watching in my childhood are now playing my game. Kakaiba. I was just a random person watching them on the internet and now nag-boom ‘yung laro ko.”

Hollow, one of Yikon’s childhood favorites, said on his video after playing the game, “Job well done, man. Make another game or something. That was really good. Not only was it a horror game that had suspenseful moments, the story had its plot twist… it just made it more enjoyable. It wasn’t just jump scares or being creeped out.”

But the jump scares are hella fun. In fact, when Yikon watches people’s gameplay, he skips straight to everyone’s favorite jump scare—that scene with Madonna—before watching the entire thing. “It’s so funny. Some of them jump out of their seats.”

Yikon admits that he had also been a victim of Madonna—she scared him multiple times while he was working on the game.

Madonna’s crooked body wasn’t designed that way originally. “It was a bug and I was trying to fix it… but I realized, hey, she looks creepier this way.”

Mang Berto is another fan favorite and Yikon’s dad is proud to have voiced him. Meanwhile, Little Nixon has been wondering why so many streamers like making fun of his character. “Nagtataka siya bakit daw siya pinagtitripan. He really watches all the content about ‘Hapunan,’ he loves it. My father is the same, he likes all the posts about Hapunan, he comments. They’re really, really proud. Even old classmates are messaging in group chats, ‘Uy, sikat ka na!’ ‘Sumikat daw yang laro mo?’”

Making it big

“Hapunan” has made it big. Even Yikon’s mom’s coworkers have been talking about the game not knowing it was her son who created it.

He said, “I’m so happy. I’m so glad I made the right decision. But now, I’m wondering if I should go back to school… I’m in the middle of thinking about it. I don’t know what’s next. I’ve been asking for advice. This game became popular so I really need to think about what I’ll do next. But I’m really, really happy because everything was worth it.”

Right now, “Hapunan” can be played on Windows and Android computers and devices. A lot of people are asking for it to be available for Apple and iOS as well but Yikon can’t release the game for those platforms yet. “Wala pa akong Apple or iOS, nakakalula yung presyo (I don’t have Apple or iOS [devices], the prices are overwhelming.)”

But he did have some good news: Goodbye, potato, he finally has a new computer—”a simple PC,” he said—thanks to people who have supported the game. He bought it just three days before our interview.

We asked: Does it have a graphics card? “Yes, I have a graphics card now, sa wakas may graphics card na,” he said, laughing. “So next game, I’ll improve the graphics a bit. But I won’t change the style.”

He is currently working on what he calls Episode 2 of “Hapunan.” No spoilers, but, “It will tell the story of Mang Berto. A lot of people want to know more about him… and the back story of the killings.”

He hopes to have it out sometime this year.

Finishing Episode 2 of “Hapunan” is just one of his plans. Yikon wants to do more horror games. “I have plans to do a series called ‘Gabi Ng Lagim,’ I will create a lot of games under that title.”

For Yikon, “Hapunan” is more than just a horror game—it’s a big step toward achieving his goals.

“My dream as a kid was to work for a game dev company. But now, I want to make my own games, be my own boss, be in control of my time.”

‘Hapunan’ is available only on https://yikon.itch.io/. Follow Yikon Dev on Facebook and @yikon on YouTube for updates.