Superhero genre was a huge part of my childhood. There was no day without watching some Batman show or reading comics. I was so absorbed in those series that I could recite any line, from any episode and at an exact accurate timestamp. I think saying that I wouldn't be the same person as I am now without "Batman: Beyond" is not so far from the truth. But even though I love DC's universe with my full heart, there was always something I wished was made differently. Some characters' traits, plots, villains, settings - all of those were just little nuances, but in general I felt like there was still so much unused potential. That was also the time when I started thinking about making something by myself. I had a whole ton of ideas for superheroes and villains, and the world itself, and the conflicts, and everything, so I started the process.
First sketches were drawn and a few crumpled sheets of paper further my main character was slowly coming to life and everything went great. Yeah... I wish it did. Every little drawing I made was awful and just straight up garbage. Nothing made sense anymore, the villain's motivations were plain and stupid and my hero didn't have any potential for being as iconic as, for example, Spiderman or Batman. You might say I'm exaggerating, but that's how I felt at that time. I felt like my ideas were only cool in my head, and in reality they were the dumbest shit you've ever seen, I promise you!
But the one thing that helped me get through this was my stubbornness. One can say it's a bad trait, but in my situation it was my last line of hope. And I'd really love to tell you that it helped me fix everything in just a few days, but... unfortunately no. It wasn't even a week, a month, hell, that wasn't even a year! Outside my job, all of my free time I spent on thinking, and testing, and looking for inspirations and if I count it right, the first time I felt proud of my work was exactly two and a half years after the starting point.
But outside of the brainstorming progress, one thing that I'm really glad happened, was the moment I met Witek (@cioncept). By that time he was drawing his own comics and was also interested in making something with superheroes and it automatically clicked. We started working together, clashing our ideas, giving ourselves feedback on our work and I can tell you, that nothing helped me more than this. If I can give you one piece of advice in this article, I want it to be "Find people interested in the same things as you, and work with them!" You'll be amazed how many awesome ideas can other people have and how refreshing it can be to just look at their drawings, story concepts or even music samples! Because I guarantee you, that sitting so long as me in my own bubble was the most devastating thing for my work. And to move forward, I just had to... pop it. Go outside my own space and explore indie projects, which to be fair sometimes entirely blew my mind.
But that's the long story short of how me, Kuba and my friend Witek started working together on Hank. Wait... who the hell is Hank? Ladies and gentleman, meet our superhero!
His name - Hank Bukowski. But he just goes by Hank. In his prime-time he was an illegal wrestler and was the best in the town. Everyone in the criminal underworld knew the story about how one time he knocked out the whole gang of over 20 people with his own fists, after the masked owner of the underground arena betrayed him and wanted to take all of his money earned in the tournament. Hank prevented his own death, but unfortunately the other half of this incident went as planned. His fight allowed other gangsters to break into his house, torture his family and steal all of his savings. Hank was a strong man, he could've managed with that, if only... the truck with his loved ones and money didn't crash into the petrol tanker, causing a devastating explosion and death of over hundred people.
Hank's life got ruined in just a few seconds. He lost himself in gallons of alcohol and started roaming the city streets drunk as a swine, looking for the last spark of hope. That one spark happened when he drinked the seventh bottle of vodka and passed out. When he woke up the other day, he realised he came in possession of a powerful superpower - time-travelling. From that moment he felt like he truly got the second chance and that his life finally has its meaning. He started using his power to chase criminals and protect the city from the bad guys.
And that's basically our hero! At first his name was Mayfly, we had many ideas of how he should look, we thought about this big red cape and big glass eyes, but we realised that this final design represents him the best. He's not your ordinary superhero looking perfect and badass in every second of his existence. He went through so much dark shit that he doesn't want to look good, he doesn't want to make headlines, he just wants this city to be free from bad people. People, like the Unraveler. Hank's Nemesis.
Any superhero wouldn't be himself without his nemesis. The most dangerous man in the world, A perfectionist, a mastermind, the composer of chaos - yup, all these terms perfectly describe the Unraveler. He’s able to consider even the most unpredictable scenarios just to not let anyone ruin his performance. The Unraveler wants to see the world descending into total chaos by his single push, creating a frightening domino effect. He is someone who can go inside another man's mind and use his inner demons to destroy him from the inside. By the virtue of overrunning Metro City Asylum, he’s willing to negotiate before he starts killing the hostages but on one condition. He will only speak to one person - Hank, his captor. He loathes Hank who thus far has been the only one who managed to put a stop to a plan that's already been set in motion. Ever since that moment, he is obsessed with figuring out how Hank managed to pull such a stunt. With the power of illusion and trickery the Unraveler tries to get inside his opponents’ heads and subjugate them to his will. He’s using their fears as a weapon against them and proudly watches the show.
The criminals’ crew is still getting bigger. Right now the most interesting ones are definitely gangster Sammy the Fish, Bloody Mary and Krupp, being a more bulky version of Iron Man. Each of them has its own backstory and iconic skills, which... I can't tell you about right now, because that's too much for just one article.
There is also someone (or should I say... SOMETHING?) drastically more powerful than any of the characters can imagine. A living incarnation of pure evil and darkness. The true bad omen and destroyer of worlds. But, that's the main theme for another game.
WAIT! A game? Yup, that's right. While working with Witek we thought - hey, he's the graphic designer and I'm the programmer, we're pretty sure there couldn't be a more perfect scenario for turning our ideas into a video game than this one. We knew this would be a whole new gigantic amount of work, but hey, if you gotta chase your dreams, make sure they're the prettiest ones! But yeah, we started slowly. Step by step. We released some other games, which were ok, but we treat them rather as lessons than failures, every one of them taught us something and we're happy with that! But as for Hank, his first game was a bite-sized visual novel where he got captured by the Unraveler and now has to look for the way out of this situation before this crazy maniac shoots him. We published it on Steam, on GameJolt, and on Newgrounds, and it gathered very positive reviews, which made us happy… and proud! ‘cause it was the first time when we saw that... we have a chance. HANK has a chance.
We decided that we don't settle on our small victory and planned the whole series of games, with the first one being titled "Hank: Drowning On Dry Land" and the second one titled "Hank: The Great Unraveling" (yeah, these long ass names were my idea. I think they're cool in their own way).
So what is “Hank: Drowning On Dry Land” about? Our hero went to a bar for a drink, and unfortunately got poisoned by the bartender. Why? Turns out it was Unraveler this whole time. He captures Hank and locks him in the cage of his own fears. The game has many mechanics, almost all of them in the theme of the time-travelling, the first one and the most basic is the rewinding time ability, which allows you to take back your mistakes when you get for example caught by the Gilgamesh, and thanks to that you can try different scenarios and ways to overcome every obstacle blocking your progress. The second thing are those magic mirrors, and that's where the real fun starts. If you watched for example the Avengers Endgame, time-travelling is powerful, but it has its cons. The biggest one being the fact that you can't create the space-time paradox, because that will cause the whole chain reaction of worlds being destroyed one after another. We wanted to keep this in mind and don't make Hank some overpowered dumbass who doesn't have to worry about the consequences. So, going back to the mirrors - when you come through them, you'll actually go back in the timeline, but as the other output of your character. Meaning that at this point in the timeline are TWO Hanks. And the second one is actually you, and you can see that he does every little action that you made just a while ago, before entering the mirror. Now when he deals with one problem, you can go and solve the other ones, making it possible to complete the Unraveler's challenge in previously impossible time.
But that's just one level, now the only thing we have left is the final showdown with the Unraveler with the whole epic sequence in the wagon of the rollercoaster with Unraveler shooting lasers and other crazy stuff and we're really close to the end! To be fair, we're already working on Hank DODL for quite some time now, I think it'll be something around two years? I gotta ask Witek about this, cause I don't even remember any more, but we want to make sure everything is set and done before we actually release it. We also don't want to make it an ordinary game premiere, we have some plans, which we can't tell you right now, but I hope you'll hear about this one somewhere. Right now we're finishing the game, working on the soundtrack, adding final touches, and, my absolute favourite... we're also making our OWN animated opening for the game in style of Batman: Beyonds intro with this badass music made by super talented people from this band called “cinemon”, and to be fair... I still don't believe it.
From just an idea, through lots of brainstorming, meeting new friends, lows and highs, tons of programming, tons of drawings, we're almost there, we're almost there… I know some of you would probably say that we're aiming too high, and that this whole thing may not be as cool as we dream about it, but you know what? “Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight, For the greatest tragedy of them all, Is never to feel the burning light". Thanks for your time guys, if you'd like to learn more about hank, or even try the demo we've made some time ago, here’s the link here to the Steam page, where you can find the "Hank: Drowning On Dry Land" wishlist as well as the "Hank: Straightjacket" visual novel, try it out, let us know what you think. And hey, see you at Hank's release. Peace!
