Henchman Story [BxG] [Superhero, Comedy/Drama] [Demo] [Commercial]

[Silken Sail]

Henchman Story is a visual novel where you play as a beleaguered henchman working for a bumbling supervillain.

It’s thankless work. Week in and week out, you put on your purple spandex and get the crap beaten out of you by much stronger, much cooler people wearing much fancier spandex. But the checks clear, and Lord Bedlam offers healthcare, so a job’s a job, right?

Even henchmen have bills to pay, and sometimes, even henchmen can make choices that change everything.

[WISHLIST US AND PLAY THE DEMO ON STEAM]
Twitter | Website | [ITCH.IO]

Superhero Satire: A comedic take on the world of superheroes that revels in the ridiculous nature of its setting, and showcases a colorful, comic book aesthetic.

Colorful Characters: Find friends, enemies and even romance amongst a lively cast of villains, heroes and fellow henchmen.

Meaningful Choices: Your decisions directly influence the story - leading to over a dozen endings, determining the fate of its characters, and if you play your cards right, you might even earn a promotion!
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Characters

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Kickstarter Trailer (2020)

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Credits
Writing and Game Direction by Marc Soskin
Character Art by Simon Adventure
Background Art by winsbuck
Scenario Coding by Arizona Identities, Nathan "Nighten" Guilhot and Marc Soskin

Starring
Anairis Quiñones – Kate
Anthony Sardinha – Dave and Chef Antonio
Daphne Nitsuga – Miss Dynamo
Elissa Park – Madame Scorpion
Marc Soskin - Stan and Lord Bedlam

Voice-over Direction by Howard Wang and Caitlyn Elizabeth
Voice-over Editing and Mastering by Sound Cadence Studios
Additional Voice-over Editing by Daphne Khoo
UI Design and Coding by Marc Soskin
Original Soundtrack by Cliff Keller
Music Mastering by Erik Peabody
Ending Theme Vocals by Elsie Lovelock
Sound Effects by Alec Shea and Marc Soskin
Itch.io and Kickstarter Graphics by Sasquatchii
Game Logo by atomic-invasion

Developer’s Notes and Questions
Hi, everyone! Henchman Story is a project that I first conceived of back in 2016, but my game development career put it on the shelf for a while. Now, after shipping titles like ARK: Survival Evolved, Lone Echo and The Outer Worlds as a writer and designer, I’ve decided to make a return to VN development and give Henchman Story a proper go.

The Lemma Soft Forums have been invaluable as a resource for information and as a community while I’ve been developing the game, so I’m very excited to finally reveal it to all of you!

If you have any feedback about the demo, the preview images or the general concept, please let me know. I value the opinions and experience of all the talented developers that make up this community. If you’d like some specific questions to go off of:

• Based off of the concept, preview images and/or demo, how do you feel about the overall concept of the game?

• Do you have a favorite character so far, or one that you’re most interested to learn more about?

• If you played the demo, how do you feel about the cadence of player choices so far?

Thanks so much for checking out the game!

[parttimestorier]

This looks really fun! I love the aesthetics of the costumes. I'd definitely like to learn more about Madame Scorpion!

[Silken Sail]

This looks really fun! I love the aesthetics of the costumes. I'd definitely like to learn more about Madame Scorpion!

Thanks, I'm glad you dig the look! Simon Adventure consistently wowed me with how she took the outfit concepts to the next level, it was really fun seeing them take shape. And there's going to be a lot to unpack with Madame Scorpion for sure (some of which Stan may wish to re-pack for health reasons) so it's neat that she's one of the character's you're intrigued about.

[Silken Sail]

The Henchman Story Kickstarter is here!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/si ... man-story

And we have a brand new trailer! We hope you’ll check it out:



Thanks again to everyone in this community for helping to make Henchman Story possible - whenever I needed RenPy help or motivation, it was the first place I looked. Any support you can give would be appreciated, whether it’s donating or spreading the word.

I’ve also updated the thread with our brand new, fancy character sheets courtesy of Sasquatchii, who did all of our Kickstarter graphics as well, which should help give you a better picture of the game.

[Silken Sail]

We're a little over two weeks into the Kickstarter, and things are looking good! We're up to over 200 backers and 67% funding, but we've still got a ways to go!

In non-Kickstarter news, Henchman Story's page on the Steam Store went live today! If you're interested in the game but can't back the Kickstarter, we'd really appreciate it if you could add us to your wishlist. It's a great way to support the game!



And lastly, we had a couple sites cover the game, which was pretty cool to see:

• VN Games Den gave a lovely review of our demo

• And Operation Rainfall wrote a nice piece on the game last week

Also, in case you haven't seen it, here's some fun GIFs of our in-game menus, which we did our best to stylize in a way that supports the game's comic book aesthetic:





Thanks for checking out the game!

[SupersizeMyHeart]

Duuuuude! I worked with Simon Adventure before. Fantastic artist. Glad to see this game is going so great! Best of luck on the Kickstarter! You definitely deserve it

[Silken Sail]

Duuuuude! I worked with Simon Adventure before. Fantastic artist. Glad to see this game is going so great! Best of luck on the Kickstarter! You definitely deserve it

Yeah, Simon Adventure has been amazing to work with for sure! Really helped establish the aesthetic of the game as a whole.

And thanks! Hopefully it keeps up the momentum!

[Silken Sail]

Gaming on Linux wrote a nice article about Henchman Story recently, which was cool to see:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/w ... y-the-demo

People seemed to respond well to it to, so remember - RenPy works on Linux out of the box, so make sure to mention that wherever you're advertising your game! Linux has a great, dedicated user base that is really worth engaging with.

Meanwhile, the Kickstarter is steadily marching towards its goal after a nice push earlier in the week. Just a little over 10% to go with 5 days remaining!

[Silken Sail]

So since our last update, our Kickstarter came to a close, leaving us with 124% of our funding goal! That was enough for us to hit our first stretch goal and more, so we're really happy with how it went. Since then, we've been going full speed ahead on development, and we managed to secure a Mac for testing and notarization, which means the Mac version of the demo is now available on Steam and Itch.io.



So if you haven't tried the demo yet, now's a great time! We'd still love to get your feedback.

[Silken Sail]

Well it's been a long journey, but after a year of development, Henchman Story finally has a release date - October, 14th 2021! And on top of that, it's coming out on all major consoles thanks to the efforts of our console publisher, Top Hat Studios!

Check out our announcement trailer for more info, and be sure to follow along by wishlisting us on Steam!
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We were fortunate enough for the announcement to get picked up by a few sites like PC Gamer, PC Invasion and GameSpew, so now we're charging along to get this game released. Can't wait for everyone to get the chance to play it!

[SupersizeMyHeart]

Your trailer is FUGGING HILARIOUS.

I literally laughed out loud several times. Wishing you all the best! I will absolutely buy when it drops!

[Silken Sail]

Appreciate the compliment, the trailer was really fun to make! Hopefully it convinces folks to give the game a shot.

[Silken Sail]

Henchman Story is out now! Check out our launch trailer below, and our new thread in the completed games section for more details: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=63333