With the recent retirement of Version 1 of Hatchlings, we turn our attention to Version 2 of the online, social egg-gathering game. Brad Dwyer, the Panora, Iowa-based founder and CEO of Hatchlings, sat down with us at Big Omaha in May during beta testing for Version 2 to demo Hatchlings’ new user interface, which is HTML5-based, is more graphically oriented than its predecessor, and contains a slew of new characters.

A large impetus for moving forward was that the catalog of Easter eggs was growing by a dozen or so each week. After three-plus years, Hatchlings was growing beyond usability for most casual users. The redesign allowed the company to “reset” the game play, which the Hatchlings team hopes will allow both novice and advanced users to enjoy the game for years to come.

Hatchlings began in 2008 as a Facebook application and quickly utilized the native disoverability of the platform to grow to more than 3 million users. Today, the game has moved from the small egg icons and textual layout of the past to a full-screen, rich graphical layout. 

Dwyer showcases those enhancements and more in the video above. 

Credits: Video by Christopher New.