Story behind Hank: Strightjacket

Hey, everybody!

Kuba from My Next Games here. How’s everyone doing in the new year? For us it’s been busy. Last month, we won a grant for a video game prototype! (I’m the guy in brown pants in the photo)The competition was organized by CRPK Poland and we entered it with a proposal for a small point-and-click game - Hank: Straightjacket. Here’s the story of how this little adventure game came to be:

We were about to start working on a new dialog system for our main project - Hank: Drowning on Dry Land - and we wanted it to be a bit different. In a regular game when the conversation starts the game pauses - you talk to the character and you’re basically unable to do anything else. We want to change this and allow players to interact with the world while still in dialogue. There are some challenges that stem from that approach, though. What happens if the player does something noteworthy during the conversation? Wouldn’t it feel strange if the hero broke a piece of furniture and the npc didn't react to it? We had some ideas on how to tackle those problems but we couldn’t be sure they would work without trying them out in an actual game. And so we went on a rapid prototyping spree…

…Two weeks and five gallons of coffee later we finally had a build and a working prototype of the system. As a side effect we created this tiny escape room experience. We were quite surprised that it was even playable! So, we called it Hank: Straightjacket and decided to release it as a free game. If you’d like to giving it a go - here’s the link:

Hope you guys enjoy it and if you’re interested in more Hank’s adventure here the link to Hank: Drowning on Dry Land:

Cya Around,

Kuba