Pop Idols: Funko Fusion Brings Some Iconic Heads Together

Question: If an IP hasn’t spawned a Funko Pop, has it really made its mark? The beloved bigheads are a badge of honor: Jurassic World, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Back to the Future, Shaun of the Dead, The Mummy, The Umbrella Academy… They’ve all been immortalized with Funko Pops, and, now we think of it, if we were recruiting a dream team to fight off a deadly threat, we could really use some of them. All of them, maybe. The soon-to-be-released Funko Fusion agrees. Intel Gaming Access sat down with one of the brains behind the heads to talk about the game.

Funko Fusion is the first release from 10:10 Games, an independent studio based in Warrington, England. Arthur Parsons, Head of Publishing at 10:10 Games, is a veteran games developer who brings a 20-year history with popular licensed games, and the experience of delighting millions of fans, to the title. “Funko Fusion is a game built by fans for fans,” he says. “It is a third-person action-adventure game that brings together over 20 different movie, TV, comic-book and video game franchises, and blends them into an incredibly fun video game experience.” Arthur and his team realized that this kind of blending wasn’t really being done. “We wanted to bring multiple franchises together and create something that was authentic to the source material, but [that] also celebrated mashing up different properties. We have created a game for an incredibly broad audience, anyone that loves the franchises we’ve added.” 

Fan Fusion

Franchise or fan affection is not always easy to transfer from IPs to the games they inspire. “The core senior team here at 10:10 Games have all got decades of experience working on some of the world’s biggest movie and TV franchises,” Arthur explains. “Knowing what will resonate with the fanbase of a particular franchise, and how to treat intellectual properties, is a huge help. In terms of any additional inspirations and influences, they have largely come from us doing a lot of research work on exactly what gamers want to play, and what gamers want to experience.”

“Not only are we bringing over 20 different franchises to the table for players to enjoy,” Arthur went on, “it’s the way that the game structure unlocks that means players will be constantly getting new surprises and new content the more they play the game. There are hidden cameo levels and hidden cameo quests that players will come across that keep the excitement and entertainment levels high, and the joy of finding new characters, and new mechanics should really engage players.”

Intel in the Mix

With over 20 different properties, how did 10:10 Games find the perfect recipe for fan contentment? “Creating a game like Funko Fusion that blends so many different movie and TV franchises is a challenge from a design standpoint,” Arthur confirms. “We wanted to be able to give players the opportunity to enjoy their favorite things right away … The solution we came up with is that the first thing a player will do is choose from a selection of franchises, giving the player the choice of what order to play the game in.” Player-driven choice extends to platforms. “Funko Fusion is an Unreal Engine 5-powered game,” Arthur notes. “Unreal allows us to make our levels and characters shine, and there’s no place like PC to push graphics to the limit. We’re happy with how we were able to scale performance, too, so that PC players can have a great experience whether they are running it on high-end rigs or more budget set-ups.”

“Integrating Intel® X^e Super Sampling (X^eSS) was a breeze,” Arthur continues, “thanks to the way Intel allows for X^eSS integration with Unreal. It was super helpful, however, to have a dedicated Game Developer Relations manager from Intel whom we could ask any questions at any time, with rapid turnaround for answers … We are grateful for Intel for offering us a super-smooth solution for working together. The Intel team provided us with the necessary hardware and documentation to allow our programmers to replicate the player experience. Intel also helped us test performance and compatibility, which as an independent studio means we can spend more of our dev resource on making the game as polished as possible, so from our perspective it’s like having an extended development team.” 

Unboxing Day

Gamers don’t have long to wait until they can get their hands on Funko Fusion: September 13^日 is the scheduled release day. “The entire studio is incredibly excited,” Arthur admits. “We’ll be closely watching the launch of the game and listening to our players, and then plotting secretly for the future.” And we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Pre-order Funko Fusion on Steam.