Hank: Drowning On Dry Land News

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Today we'll tell you about the game we had the pleasure of creating this year. We wanted to break away a bit from Hank's dark vibe and try our hand at something more fun and perhaps a bit goofy, and that's how Tales From The Arcade: Fartmania came to be.


The plan was great at first, but very quickly there was such a... small... tiny... problem. We had absolutely no experience with platformer games. We had to re-test new mechanics and solutions, we often got lost and that's why it took us a little over... a year to produce the whole thing. Yeah. We know, it's a bit long for a simple platformer.



However, we wanted everything to be in it as we had planned. We decided that our project needs that extra time. In the end we are satisfied with the result. While playing Fartmania, you take on the role of Pinky, a little piglet with a farting problem. The whole village makes fun of him, but soon the inhabitants are kidnapped by aliens, and the only person who can save them is Pinky. The player must watch out for spikes, rescue the pigs, collect beans and finally defeat the aliens with his unusual powers.



We published the first version of the game for free on Newgrounds, GameJolt and other such sites. We wanted to see what players felt about it and whether our game is simply fun to play. The results exceeded our wildest expectations, as Fartmania was fired up more than tens of thousands of times, the feedback was also very favorable, so we refined the game, fixed bugs and then it was time for the real launch. We chose Steam and Nintendo Switch as the target media, because we like Nintendo Switch, and we always wanted Fartmania to be available on Nintendo Switch. It was a bit of “fun” to do this, because Nintendo's policies are terribly convoluted, but in the end everything worked out and Fartmania is now available in almost all regions of the world on Switch.



For the launch on Steam, we even held a contest in which the person with the highest demo highscore had the opportunity to become... an in-game character! The fight was fierce, but in the end the player with the nickname WikVenture won, and this is how his character, which you can meet in the game, looks!



A few months after its release, Fartmania sold in... 75 copies on Steam. After 900 wishlists. And 165 copies on Nintendo Switch overall. Whether that's a lot or a few, that's a question you can answer for yourselves, we are quite satisfied with this result and would definitely commit in this madness once again if given the chance.



As I said, Tales From The Arcade: Fartmania is now available on both Steam and Nintendo Switch, if you'd like to check it out for yourself you'll find a link to the game below, show it to your friends and compete with them for highest highscore, and remember: never give up. See ya!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2883610/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Fartmania/

Today is a big day, because… Tales From The Arcade: Fartmania is officially out!

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Play the game and help Pinky rescue his friends from evil aliens! Avoid spikes, collect pigs and use those delicious beans to fly right into the sky.

Tales From the Arcade: Fartmania is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.



But that’s not all!
Some time ago we started our Highscores Contest in Fartmania Demo and today we come to you with the results.

First - thank you all for playing! So many of you finished our demo and it definitely surpassed our expectations. We hope you will have even more fun in the full version of the game and that even a thought of Fartmania would bring a smile to your face!



And finally, let’s meet our winner. Congratulations NOT_WIKVENTURE! Your farting skills are immaculate and the whole village is grateful to you! That of course means that we will contact you to talk about the details of your own Fartmania character!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/2883610/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Fartmania/

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Hey you, yes I am talking to you! I have to ask you, have you ever been to a rizz party with looksmaxing and edge.... Jesus Christ, who wrote that script? Never mind. The thing is, Fartmania is about to be released, and YOU can become its character! You can become a.. princess... or... a war veteran... or even… Drake. How? You won't believe it, but it's so, so easy. All you have to do is find Fartmania on Steam and download the demo version, which is, of course, free! In order to become one of the characters possible to meet on the map, you need to achieve the highest possible score and stay at the top of the highscores for two weeks. And that's it!



The winner will be contacted after Steam Fest and we'll make your piggy character come to life! Just remember that...well.... We will not give it a square mustache or an obscene object in its hand.... But other than that, anything is possible!



If I could give you any advice, I would definitely say - keep trying. Again and again, look for the best routes on your character, analyze which pigs are best to collect first, or maybe which ones are better to avoid completely, so you don't risk bumping into spikes and losing many precious seconds.



I'll also tell you a secret, but don't tell anyone. Well, during boss fights, if you are fast enough, you can press the spacebar twice to deal damage to the boss twice. But... whatever, I didn't tell you anything!



You can also add your runs on social media with #fartmaniacontest and #fartmania, gather your friends to play and together fight for the first place in the ranking!

So don't wait, just download the demo, buy the game and.... Fart to the top!

Download the demo here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3041970/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Fartmania_Demo/

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.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2277670/Hank_Straightjacket/

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 Unravelling" (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!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1937880/Hank_Drowning_On_Dry_Land

A month ago we published our new indie game. So far we've been focused on games in the Hank series, such as Hank: Straightjacket and Hank: Drowning On Dry Land, we've also created an experimental roguelike game Starship Murder, Dragon Snakes, Dead Horizon, Yolk Heroes and Soulblight.



This time, however, we decided to move away from the previous darker atmospheres and bet on something pleasing to the eye with a light comedy twist. This is how Tales From The Arcade: Fartmania was made, being a platformer in which we control a small piggy character Pinky and, traversing higher and higher levels of the skies, we have to rescue his friends kidnapped by aliens.



So how much money did we make? ... Zero. That's because we decided to publish our new production on platforms such as Newgrounds, GameJolt, and Congregate, where all games are free. It will still come to Steam later this year, but let's move on to how Fartmania went on these websites. In total, our game has been played almost 25,000 times, which is a very good result for us. From the 5th of May on Newgrounds, gamers played Fartmania 14,000 times and it received a total rating of 4.17, which we also consider quite a success. On Kongregate, on the other hand, starting from the 22nd of May, we collected almost 10,000 plays. On GameJolt we still have to wait a little longer, due to the fact that we published Fartmania there only a few days ago.



We're certain that such a high number of impressions on Newgrounds was contributed to the contest we organized, in which the person in the first place of high scores won a personalized pig character in our game, which will appear in an upcoming update. Congratulations Hockdihi, thanks for taking part and earning a score of over 178,000 points. We are planning a similar contest in the future on the occasion of the game's launch on Steam, so keep an eye on us so you don't miss it. And we're now back to work on Hank: Drowning On Dry Land, because there's really not much left to finish, and we'll just tell you that it'll be the best thing we ever made! See ya!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2883610/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Fartmania/