Henchman Story
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Henchman Story is an interactive story 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.
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 eleven endings, determining the fate of its characters, and if you play your cards right, you might even earn a promotion!
Professional Voice Acting (In Progress): Starring a talented cast of professional actors that have been featured in anime, video games and more!
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Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $14.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- [Patch Notes] - Version 1.11Dec 07, 2021
- [Patch Notes] - Version 1.1Oct 26, 2021
- Henchman Story is OUT NOW!Oct 14, 2021
- Official Discord!Oct 01, 2021
- Release Date and a New DemoAug 19, 2021
- Updated Demo Coming Soon!Jul 28, 2021
- Development Update: Script Completed and Voice Acting Underway!Apr 17, 2021
- Mac Demo Now AvailableNov 13, 2020
Comments
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Great game that was well over expectatons when I bought it, with an added dose of voice acting that was solid and fun to listen to. Short story: Glad I bought it.
What are the romance options?
I loved this game just found it today! Haven't played through all the endings yet, but will soon. Hope you guys end up making more games in the future!
For some reason my game never saves?
There should be an auto-save page with 3 slots on the loading screen. You can reach it by navigating back from Page 1 and forward from Page 2 of the Load Menu.
If those slots are empty after playing for a while, I suspect you may be on a Mac. Be sure to extract Henchman Story from the DMG to your Applications folder before playing, or saves won't work. The DMG is provided so the app can be certified as safe by Apple, sorry if that's an incovenience.
Hope that helps, and thanks for supporting the game!
I'll try the autosave thing thank you for that, but is it normal for the regular save files not to work?
I'm on a PC
The regular save files should be working, but you have to save in them manually. If you've unzipped the files to a folder you have permissions to add or alter files in, there shouldn't be any issues with saving. If you continue to have issues, could you describe the exact process you go through when saving and where the problem occurs? You should just be able to open the Save Menu (not the Load Menu, which looks similar) and click on one of the save slots, which look like comic books.
Any plans for DLC? Absolutely love the game, it really gives me Venture Bros vibes
Now that the game has been released, we're curious - who's your favorite character in Henchman Story? Vote in our poll and offer your hot take here, on Twitter or in our Discord!
https://strawpoll.com/bc87r8gdf
And the results are in!
Thanks to everyone who voted!
What would it take to have a Miss Dynamo romance route patched in?
We're considering our options for DLC, but whether or not it happens depends on how well the game does. So we'll see! We do have a few ideas in mind...
A tip for future crowdfunders: Might wanna consider also opening a project on Indiegogo. Those of us who use it instead of kickstarter wouldn't have to find out about awesome stuff like this after the fact.
If you intend to make a DLC I would be happy if the sequel for Agent Stan would be made.
Oh yes please. I'll cross my fingers that it does well. I love all the characters but I really dig Dynamo the most. Great job btw. You did great!😁✌🏻✌🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
Nice
Nice, the music and voice acting is top notch, the banter is the highlight of the game.
Thanks for playing the game, and for the kind words! =) We do love us some banter. And we were fortunate to have such an awesome cast and VO crew.
If you enjoyed the music, then feel free to check it out on Spotify or Apple Music, or buy it right here on Itch, if you're so inclined.
The favorite route so far would be Stan bantering with "Kate" so far, was nice to see how Stan went with her in the end. Will run through to get the other ending hopefully
Who exactly are the romance options? are there any story restrictions to them as well? like i want to be the good guy or choose the good branch and can't romance the bad girl.
Kate and Madame Scorpion are the romance options, but you won't be able to romance them on every route.
Can I play as a man or woman?
The protagonist, Stan, has a set name and identity - but also full voice acting!
will the game be directly released on the 14th or sometime later
Thanks for asking! The game will officially go live at 9am Central Daylight Time.
thanks!! also how much gameplay is in the game overall? Are we going to explicit romance or will it be a black screen like most ( i am good either way). How many endings are there in game?
There's roughly 200k words overall in the final game. For reference, the demo had ~15k words so if you know how long that took you, that's a good metric. In total, there are 11 endings and 2 romances, with no nudity or explicit scenes. Hope that helps!
soon 1 day left
A good Gem, I am glad to wait till the 14th
Oh my god, I'm already obsessed! I can't believe I only just now found this gem 😍 The voice acting is absolutely amazing & the artwork is stunning! I'm so excited for October! You all have already done such an incredible job!
I do have a question regarding the romance part of this game though. I know this story doesn't focus on the romance part like a lot of other VN's but do you get to pick who Stan romances? Or is that something that's already set with a particular character?
(Me over here totally not already simping for Shining Nova)
Thanks so much! It's awesome that you had such a fun time with the game so far!
And to answer your question: yes, there will be two romance options, and each one will a couple endings. There will also be multiple endings that don't have romance - so your choices will shape both the plot and Stan's love life. We don't really believe in the idea of "bad ends" either, so all of them are totally valid conclusions to the story (though there is one that cuts things a little short).
It'll be exciting to see what endings people gravitate towards in the full game, they really cover a whole spectrum of possibilities!
It seems something went wrong when bundling the Windows / Linux archive. On Linux I'm getting the following output:
Hey, ifo, thanks again for checking out the game and pointing this out.
We just uploaded a fixed version and tested on a couple machines with Ubuntu, so if you download the new version it should be good to go! To avoid any confusion, we deleted our previous reply.
Hope you enjoy the demo!
Thanks a lot, the new version is working perfectly fine again!
Just a quick question, how much romance will be in this game? Will it be romanced-based or story-based?
There will definitely be romance, but it will be more like a BioWare game than a dating sim. The romance is part of the story, but not the sole focus of the story. Hope that helps!
Got it, thanks
This was hilarious :)
this deserves waaay more attention (seriously) i cant find any unique visual novels anymore. Here's to hoping this gets the recognition it deserves
That's kind of you to say, thanks so much for the support! We hope more people get the chance to play it too.
soooo when is that comming to steam? last Dev news has been a long time.
Thanks for checking in! The demo is currently on Steam, but don't worry, the full game is move along at a steady pace. Our script was finalized in mid-March at over 200,000 words, and we've officially started the voiceover process! We offered some insight on that in our last Kickstarter update, here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/silkensail/henchman-story/posts/3128736
However, while we're prioritizing keeping our backers informed, we understand that not everyone who's interested in the game was able to support the campaign. So we'll be posting a devlog here on itch.io soon with some more news about how development is going and what to expect in the near future. The one thing we don't want to share until we're absolutely certain is our game's official release date. We know it can be frustrating to see a release date delayed, so we want to avoid that if possible.
Hope that helps clear things up! Thanks for being patient and supporting the game! And always feel free to ping us on here or Twitter if you're curious about how things are going.
Just played the demo and loved the section with Shining Nova. Cant wait until this comes out! Wish I had seen the Kickstarter because I would have been all over that XD
Once again, love it. Thanks so much for making this!
I was bummed when I saw I was too late to donate, especially seeing it was just under the donation goal I'd have loved to see added in.
Found out about this a while back and decided to give it a chance. Tried the mac demo but every time I try to save progress, it crashes. May want to look into that. Otherwise good game; really looking forward to how it develops
Really appreciate the support, Mark, it's great that you enjoyed the demo! We'll be posting more regular devlogs and updates in the coming months to show our progress , so keep your eye on our blog and our Twitter if you want to follow along.
Sorry you had trouble saving the game though. That's a critical bug for sure, so we took a look at it right away, and luckily I think we found the problem. This appears to happen if you open the .DMG file and play the game directly from that location. While the game does start from there, it can't create the new files it needs for the save system to function.
To remedy this, open the .DMG file, and then open your Applications folder in a second Finder window. Then, take the HenchmanStory-Demo-mac file and drag it into the Applications folder. After a minute, the game should be ready to go, and saves should function properly as long as you open it from the Applications folder. You can then get rid of the original .DMG file to save space. We realize now that's not wholly intuitive, so for the final version, we'll look into creating MacOS installer that takes care of this for you. So thanks for pointing that out, and thanks again for checking out the game!
Thanks for the reply and the help! Looking forward to the updates. Quick Question; I saw on the kickstarter page that the stretch goal fell short on Miss Dynamo route, any chance of it coming as a future update post-release?
No problem, happy to help! As for the Miss Dynamo romance, I can't promise anything, but if the game does well enough and there's enough interest a Dynamo route or side story is something I can see us doing. The team in general likes her a lot, as do a lot of players! So it's a possibility we may discuss after launch - we just can't guarantee it.
I was bummed when I saw that it was just under that goal when it ended. Hopefully the game sells well and it can be added in sometime in the future, something like that is awesome since it adds more game!
Same, her character matches Stan's so well. From the way the game's written, in just the demo BTW, I definitely believe that it'll sell well enough.
That's good to hear, looking forward to seeing the full thing!
I just discovered this project the other day and saw the game got funded. I was wondering if I could still pledge to support it outside of Kickstarter, I was planning on pledging the $20 tier.
Thanks for asking, Jay, glad the game caught your eye! We're not planning any further full-fledged crowdfunding right now, but we're considering a pre-order or storefront system where people can support the game and nab some of the rewards from the Kickstarter. We'll be sure to let you know how that progresses.
Appreciate you checking out the game!
Thanks! I wrote a reply to your response a month ago but guess it didn't post? (Oh well) It's awesome how active you're being responding to these questions, would definitely love to preorder this. ^^
Hello! I have downloaded the demo but it keeps saying that it couldn't execute the Henchman Story - Demo application and asks if it's missing, any help please?
Thanks for you patience - things have been busy over here and I missed this. Are you on Windows or Linux?
It's no problem! I'm using Windows.
Okay, I think I've replicated it. Did you move the Henchman Story - Demo.exe or the folders there to another location? Or did you rename anything? The .exe file needs to remain in the same folder as the "game," "lib," and "renpy" folders with those names.
I didn't do anything. All I did was download the file and unzipped it. I didn't move or change anything.
No worries! I would try deleting the files and downloading it into a new location - the error you got means that the .exe is looking for the files but they aren't where they expect them to be. Sorry for he hassle, hope that helps!
Alternatively, you can try the Steam version, which should do all that automatically.
Hi, I really want to play the demo, but I can't seem to access it? I'm using a Mac and when I click on the application, it says Microsoft does not support Mac. Let me know what I can do! I'm really excited for this game. :(
Unfortunately, the demo is only playable on PC and Linux right now. We are working on securing a Mac so that we can finalize the Mac version of the demo. We hope to have that up soon, and we'll reply to this comment as soon as it's ready! Thanks for your patience, and for your interest in the game!
Thank you for responding! Looking forward to it! :)
Hey, good news! We just released the Mac version of the demo today, so you should be good to go. Thanks for your patience!
Hey, thanks so much! Just got back on itch so I really appreciate it :) You guys rock
This was the first visual novel that I have ever played so I will admit it was kind of slow for me, BUT I will say I really enjoyed what was offered in this. The voice acting that is in the game now is really funny and I cant wait for you to add more voice lines in. As far as the writing goes which is the life of this game, I have nothing to complain about the story and direction is amazing. Well done!
Awesome! It was fun to watch your reaction to everything as it played out - Lord Bedlam's poker face is definitely top notch, he may have missed his calling. I'm glad that we could provide you with an enjoyable introduction to visual novels, even if they're not normally your thing. The story is often the be-all and end-all of VNs, so if you enjoyed that, then we can't ask for much more. Thanks for checking it out and sharing your playthrough!
Hi! I wanted to support you guys on Kickstarter. I was very excited about the "You're Hired!" tier, but its only for the US and Canada unfortunately. Is there any way you guys can ship it to The Netherlands? (Central Europe). If so you've got yourselves another Legendary Supervillain xD
Hi, Johnkes98! We're looking into finding a way to ship to the UK and Europe, but we're having trouble pinning down the cost. We will get back to you right away if we can nail that down. Thanks for your interest in the project and for bringing this up, it's much appreciated!
Hey, great news! We've managed to find a way to ship internationally to both the EU and UK, so you can feel free to back any of the physical reward tiers you'd like! Thanks again for your patience, and for bringing this up.
I've deleted my earlier comment linking this morning's Kickstarter update so as not to cause a comment logjam or create any confusion. Enjoy your rewards, and thanks so much for supporting the game. :)
Hurray, thanks a bunch! Just backed it :) Im very excited about the game, good luck!
This was just delightful! Killer voice acting and hilarious writing, great job! Excited to see where this goes!
Thanks again for the fun playthrough, Steev! Much appreciated.
Appreciate you sharing your playthrough of the demo, Terrorose! It's fun to watch people react to the story as they play. Making you feel immersed in a superhero themed world is one of the game's biggest goals, so it's great to see that it accomplished that for you. :)
Yep, I feel as nervous as the protagonist when the mission on the lab starts.
i always loved comicbook supervillains, especially the overthetop ones. So i was thrilled from the first 5 minutes on to play a henchman for someone like Lord Bedlam. i got a few questions regarding the future of this game.
1- With how much love and care that is put into this game, its probably a bigger thing, will the finished Product be avaible on platforms like steam?
2- With the "continued in spring 2021" does that mean the full game is just in the early beginnings and it will be long until its finished?
3- Romance was mentioned, so are they male options? and if so...please let there also be someone else beside Dave. pleaaase...
Last thing, not really a question. i just wanted to say, i like the "opinions changed about you" notes, without giving away if for the better or worse. keeping it a little in suspence.
keep up the good work with the great visuals,the voice acting and the music. i definitly looking forward to see more next year.
It's awesome to hear that the demo rose to your villainous expectations! I've always enjoyed larger than life supervillains myself, so writing for Lord Bedlam has been a blast. To answer your questions:
1) Yep! The final game will be released on both Steam and itch.io, so you can choose whichever platform you prefer.
2) I wouldn't say it's in the early beginnings. There's a lot of the game that's very far along, especially when it comes to the art and script, but full voice acting takes time and we want to make sure the final product is as polished as possible. So we're very confident that the full game will be released in its entireity in spring.
3) Male romance options aren't planned right now, unfortunately. Sorry! But you can avoid romance altogether if hetero romances aren't your thing.
And thanks for your note about the Opinion popup! I prefer that method too, and it's nice to see that others feel the same way.
Thanks for the answers. Yes Lord Bedlam is everything i could have wished for (how dare there are Larpers who allow Orcs in jeans? Burn there message boards i say. Whuhahaha) xD
i am glad that it will come to steam too. will probably get it there as soon as its finished.
Great to hear its going so well. The voice acting so far has been top notch. cant wait for spring to come.
aww, its alright, i will enjoy the whole game regardless if there is male romance or not. it will be a blast either way.
This demo was amazing i really hope you finish the game it was a blast to play through the voice acting was good, the characters were good and it was funny :)
Thanks so much for the kind words! It's great to hear that you enjoyed your time with the demo. We're definitely planning on finishing it, so keep an eye on our devlog and/or our Twitter for updates to the game as it progresses.