Henchman Story is a superhero satire from former Outer Worlds writer

Have you ever wondered what henchpeople get up to when they're not being battered almost-to-death by Batman, or being strung up in a big spiderweb against a police station? Admittedly I haven't, but thankfully Henchman Story is here to fill in the gaps. It's a superhero satire where you play as Stan, one of the henchmen for an ineffectual, small-scale supervillain named Lord Bedlam.

In this voiced visual novel, you'll view a superhero and supervillain-filled world through the eyes of a (mostly) average joe, who signed up to work for Lord Bedlam as the benefits are actually pretty good—at least compared to life on the straight and narrow. 

I've played a little of the updated demo available on Steam and itch.io. It's pretty funny, if not exactly laugh out loud (Although, to be fair, I think only Portal 2 managed that for me). The professional voice acting, and writing by Marc Soskin (formerly a writer on The Outer Worlds) are assuredly to do with that. Henchmen Story has the feel of a Saturday morning cartoon, albeit one housed in a largely static visual novel engine.

Unlike most henchmen, Stan will have some influence on the world. The story will branch depending on your choices, leading to one of eleven endings. There's romance too, if you can find the time between the inevitable superhero smackdowns.

If you're intrigued by the villain lifestyle, know that Henchman Story will be out on October 14. Have a go on the demo while you wait.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

Read more
A shirtless guy wearing a panda mask
Techno Banter channels Yakuza and Bojack Horseman as you destroy club rejects with words
Heart of the Machine
Heart of the Machine is Crusader Kings for speculative sci-fi nerds, flipping the script on the cult AI War series
A cartoon nun looks shocked and scared, bathed in green light.
The new game from the Blasphemous devs is like if Commandos was a metroidvania set in a Spanish monastery, and also the Green Beret kept losing his mind
Double headed wizard man holding arms up looking sad
A tabletop RPG designer made a game about the way FromSoft NPCs say cryptic stuff and go 'heh heh heh' all the time, and the result is a love letter to the 'grubby little weirdos'
Skin Deep official key art, featuring Nina Pasadena clutching a pistol like an action hero in a movie poster style collage image with sci-fi trappings around her
Immersive sci-fi FPS Skin Deep feels like Prey by way of Looney Tunes
Shotgun Cop Man, who looks like an angry thumb, holding a shotgun and a pistol
In Shotgun Cop Man you are a man who looks like a thumb and has gone to Hell to arrest Satan
Latest in Adventure
Image of illuminated manuscript-style drawings from the game Pentiment.
Random characters kept swearing in Obsidian's font-obsessed murder-mystery when its procedural error system ran amok: 'Naughtiness abounded'
An image of a corpse with the text "You've been re-educated."
I played the lost videogame sequel to 1984, and came away more nostalgic than ever for gaming's awkward adolescence in 1999
Rosella encounters a satyr in a forest in King's Quest 4
Eagle-eyed streamer spots that Roberta Williams' portrait in King's Quest 4 is based on her author photo on the back of the game box: 'I never noticed it before.'
Myst puzzle game
'You’ve been asking, and we’ve been listening': Myst remake adds a whole new world to the classic adventure, one originally introduced in another overhaul from 25 years ago
The character takes a test in a school room.
Expelled! review
Max, protagonist of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Double Exposure, stares with trepidation at something off-screen with her friend.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure reportedly a 'large loss' for Square Enix, says analyst, who adds: 'The company's IP fundamentally varies too much between good and bad'
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway