Developers love to reference or imitate the games they played when they were kids. But rarely do we see that nostalgia pointed at specific moments in popular culture.
Developer RageSquid’s Action Henk and Moon Spider Studio’s Harold do just that. They’re speedy platforming games for PC with striking presentations. Action Henk’s tale recalls Pixar’s Toy Story films: A washed-up but beloved action figure is trying to prove to himself and others that he still has what it takes to race against the best. Harold is about a hapless dweeb caught up in a racing contest controlled by angels — and it looks like one of Disney’s classic 2D animated films.
Both do a great job of capturing that “just one more try” feeling. I reached out to the studios to find out more about how they channeled their nostalgia into such addicting games.
Above: In real life, fire and plastic don’t mix.
‘A G.I. Joe in a midlife crisis’
Action Henk’s titular hero is having a midlife crisis. In the game’s fictional version of the 1990s, Henk was in his prime — he looked more like an Olympian god than the Rambo reject he is today — and he was the fastest toy in the world. Nowadays, he’s out of shape and owes money to a well-dressed villain who challenges him to a race. With the help of his friends (who are also playable characters in the game), Henk is trying to live up to his once illustrious reputation.
“That’s how we described it: It’s a game about a G.I. Joe in a midlife crisis,” said RageSquid cofounder Roel Ezendam.
Action Henk (out on May 11 for PC, Mac, and Linux) is the first commercial game for the Utrecht, Netherlands-based RageSquid. The small team of developers (some of whom are still college students) worked together before on game jams. They had the idea for Action Henk since 2012, but at the time, they didn’t have the money to pursue it. After doing freelance work on other projects, they came back together to work on Action Henk full-time just over a year ago.
The toy theme came from art lead Gabrian van Houdt. Ezendam already had the running gameplay in mind (they originally thought of making a 3D platformer), but it was van Houdt’s job to come up with the premise. Van Houdt thought the game should be realistic and colorful but not as bright and cheery as a cartoon. Toys fit that description perfectly. Action Henk’s characters look like real toys, right down to their reflective sheen and the screws holding their joints together.
“If you’re thinking about toys, you go back to your childhood sort of naturally,” said Ezendam. “We were like, ‘How cool would it be if you could actually play with the toys, put down the blocks, and build your own levels?’ That’s how we ended up with the idea of having a level editor as well.”
Above: Henk even has his own theme park.
The inspiration for Henk came from a toy line the developers grew up with called Action Man. Action Man is like the European counterpart of Hasbro’s G.I. Joe toys, military action figures that come with various accessories. One day, van Houdt brought a huge box of toys to display in their office, including a bunch of Action Man figurines.
Rather than focus on gaming’s past, RageSquid is making an homage to their childhood.
“We were talking about this nostalgia stuff, and we’re like, ‘It’s not about nostalgia in terms of games, but nostalgia in terms of toys [and] childhood memories.’ I think we specifically said we don’t want to do 16-bit or 8-bit graphics and chiptune music,” said Ezendam.
[youtube https://youtu.be/WchXGpdDVc4]I couldn’t help but think of the Toy Story movies, which are also about old toys trying to find their place in the world. According to Ezendam, Toy Story may have had a subconscious influence on their design, but they tried to avoid making too many connections. But that didn’t stop them from leaving a few hints about the toys’ owner. The room Action Henk mostly takes place in looks like it belongs to someone who’s too old for toys but still keeps them around for nostalgia’s sake.
One ’90s flick they did use for reference was Small Soldiers, a somewhat violent tale about two sets of toys coming to life and waging war against each other. Action Henk isn’t that dark, but the events that unfold later on in the game reminded me of some of the characters from the film.
That’s not to say Action Henk is a story-heavy game (the story isn’t in the Steam Early Access version because the developers are saving it for launch). It’s just a neat dressing to the fast-paced gameplay. You’ll spend most of your time butt-sliding down Hot Wheels-esque orange tracks and jumping over wooden blocks to build your momentum.
Above: Smacking crocodiles is just one of many things you’ll do to keep Harold safe.
Making a 2D style that’s ‘actually a big trap’
On the other side of the world in Key Biscayne, Fla., another racing-focused platformer was gestating. Loris Malek founded Moon Spider Studio five years ago, yearning to create something that reminded him of his favorite skill-based games like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. With the recently released Harold (out on PC), he paired modern graphics with the type of old-school challenge he felt was missing from games today.
“For us, we did a game that looks like a triple-A quality game with a Walt Disney style that looks like it’s for kids. But it’s actually a big trap,” he said. “When you start to play it, you’re starting to get hit everywhere.”
Harold stretches further back than Moon Spider’s history. It started as an idea for a Nintendo DS game when Malek worked at the now-defunct Kando Games in France. When the studio went under, he took the project with him and worked on it by himself in his spare time.
During those years, the DS market dried up, and Xbox Live and PlayStation Network were becoming a popular distribution choice for indie games. Moon Spider redesigned Harold to work with a controller instead of a stylus. (It eventually canceled the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions because of the lack of time and money.)
Above: Harold can run faster if you strike him with lightning.
Harold is unusual for a platformer. You control both the character (timing his jumps) and the obstacles in each level. As Harold’s guardian angel, you have to make sure he has a clear path to the finish line. Since it plays so differently from other games in the genre, Malek knew he needed something to ease players in and encourage them to stick with the level-shifting mechanics.
“I realized that you needed a little time to learn this new habit and break the old habit [of controlling just the characters]. … That’s why I was like, ‘OK, if the graphics suck, we’re dead,’” said Malek. “It was very clear in my head. I told my art director that we need to make a very, very nice [looking] game.”
Malek figured it’d take 10 to 20 minutes for players to understand the gameplay, and having great graphics to look at while they’re learning would lessen the pain of losing and help get them over that hump. 2D animation is his “second passion” behind games, so the studio settled on a 2D style with 3D elements. The goal was to make Harold look like something Disney or Warner Bros. would’ve done back when animators still painted on cels.
Moon Spider’s location played a huge part in making that come true. Disney used to have an animation studio based in Orlando. After it closed in 2004, many animators stayed behind (instead of moving to the studio in Burbank, Calif.) because of their families. Malek “was very surprised” to see their applications when he put the call out for animators.
Above: Ice skating isn’t Harold’s forte.
The team (ranging from eight to 12 during development) quickly accomplished their animation goals, but they had a big problem. Harold only looked good in still images.
“It was terrible because when you see those kind of graphics, your brain expects to see everything moving perfectly at 24 frames per second. Because we saw that from Disney over the last 70 years,” said Malek. “When there was too much difference between … the graphics were very high but the animations were looking just like a video game. It was moving like crap.”
Though the self-funded company didn’t have much money, it went all-in on improving the animations. When I first saw Harold in a hands-off demo in 2012, it already looked stunning. But it took another two and a half years before Moon Spider would release it. The developers spent most of that time radically altering the difficulty level of the game. After letting people play Harold at gaming events like the Penny Arcade Expo, they realized that it was too hard.
The game they ended up releasing is “three or four times easier” than the 2012 version. Moon Spider redesigned over two-thirds of it, which also required making new art.
“It was a nightmare,” said Malek.
Above: Secret shortcuts come with brief but funny cutscenes.
The studio didn’t throw any of that material away; if Harold becomes successful, some of those extra obstacles and assets could show up in a sequel. When I asked Malek if he’d do it again — after going through the laborious redesigns and spending years on polishing Harold — he wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know yet. It depends on the success of Harold, how gamers react to the game,” said Malek. “We know we did something weird and different — that we took a risk. We didn’t have any other solutions, because if we do another [first-person shooter] or another Gears of War-like [game], we have no chance because we can’t compete with the other companies. So we had to find something that’s different. Different means [that people may or may not like it]. We will see.”
Whatever they work on next, Malek told me one thing is certain: They’ll continue perfecting their 2D animation techniques.
[youtube https://youtu.be/zawwEWNbOXs]Unlike Hollywood’s soulless treatment of our childhood memories, games haven’t really tried to reinterpret our past obsessions. But as Action Henk and Harold show, they can remind us of what made our old toys and movies so great without relying on too many winks and nods.
But developers (indies and bigger companies alike) can explore so much more. Hell, I’m still waiting for my dream game: a slick-looking Power Rangers-inspired brawler with flashy transformations and giant robots.