What happens when you take Thing from The Addams Family and give it a handgun license? You get Michael McWrist, a loose cannon detective packed into a single disembodied right hand.
Handcop is a very strange, very real game currently being developed by Brazilian developer Jeff Ramos. Working as a one-man team, Ramos has had Handcop in the pipeline since at least February, though Handcop truly grabbed the internet's attention with a gif posted to Reddit last week with the winking caption "Too lazy to animate the whole body".
Don't mess with him!#screenshotsaturday #gamedev #game #indiedev #characterdesign #animation #character #3Danimation pic.twitter.com/cZcHzxJc6TSeptember 18, 2021
Speaking to IGN, Ramos stresses that this isn't just a gimmick. The developer wants Handcop to be a properly compelling stealth-action game, using your diminutive stature to finger-walk your way around baddies. There are dashes, executions, melee combat and throwable weapons, with plans to add rings that boost your stats.
- In Shotgun Cop Man you are a man who looks like a thumb and has gone to Hell to arrest Satan
- I felt goodwill and hope for the future seeing Cybrlich and the Death Cult of Labor, an FPS that's 60% HUD and looks like an Adult Swim cartoon where you smoke 'deepweed' to restore your health and blow clouds that spell out 'doink' and 'loud'
"Different from most comedy games, the shooting is for real here," Ramos said. "It is very satisfying and the headshots are superb."
Ramos has been messing with disembodied hand prototypes for some time, a habit that he says started when he was "playing finger football with my wife and saw a TV commercial featuring the hand from The Addams Family". One of these is even playable on Itch, a neon-blasted cyberpunk shooter called Hand of Pain developed for a game jam last September.
In the time since, Handcop has taken on a more dishevelled, '80s cop flair, complete with striped shirt and loose tie. Ramos is currently seeking funding and looking for a publisher to help make Handcop a reality. He reckons the game has the potential to be "much more than what a solo dev with zero funding" can do—but even if he doesn't find funding, it sounds like he's determined to make Handcop a reality.
Personally, I look forward to getting my hands on it when it's finished. Get it?
