The Henry Stickmin Collection

Merry Christmas!

Mario beating the Heck outta Dracula?
Where do I sign up?

Back in the days of Newgrounds, I played a buttload of Flash games. From fan games of Mario beating up bosses from other games to all the previous installments of the GemCraft series, passing by titles that could be perfectly serviceable indie Steam releases if they had been made for profit. Or, Heck, even if they had been released to Steam for free.

Some websites have moved on to games made on HTML5, while others have made it their duty to catalogue and preserve the Flash games in some way. With the end of Flash at the end of the year – in less than a week – these conservationist sites are much welcome.

This screenshot is taken from a Flash game called
Villainous. I loved it.

It’s not a completely accurate comparison, but much like someone who tries their hand at fanfiction before writing a proper original novel of their own, building a Flash game is a valuable learning experience in game development, and can open the doors to the indie world (or, who knows, all the way to AAA). In fact, there are several games I used to play on Newgrounds that were good on their own, that now have versions on Steam – with price tag, sure, but it’s good to see these creators moving from free games to actually being compensated for their work. It might also have to do with several seeing the writing on the wall for Flash for a few years now, so they remade their game (or created sequels) for a digital gaming distribution platform like Steam.

One of the series that made the jump is Henry Stickmin, whose five games have been entirely remade, with a bonus sixth to make it really worth the price tag. I recall playing “Stealing the Diamond” way back, so I wasn’t entirely stranger to the series. But it was a treat to rediscover it (and play through all the games I had missed) through this collection. Not to mention the moments of hilarity it gave me. For, if there is one thing we needed this year, it was laughter.

The first of many decisions.
The first few of several failures.

This is the story of… well… Henry Stickmin, duh, and it starts like every good story starts: He wants to steal money from a vault, and has an array of tools he can use. “Breaking the Bank” serves as an introduction to the core concept: At points of the story, you’re given several options. You choose one and… see how it goes. Yeah, that’s about it. However, besides the correct option(s), the others lead to Fails. Those are the best reason to play this game. They’re exactly what it says on the tin; Henry fails in a comical manner, and you get a big Fail screen with a comment. Collecting them is the entire point; as the store page says, if you get to the end on your first try without hitting any Fails, you’re doing it wrong.

What's better: Getting out in a sneaky way, or
through use of a lawyer?
I say, all escapes are good.

After “Breaking the Bank”, we go into “Escaping the Prison”, and another concept of the series starts here: Branching paths. Your first decision in that episode will lead to several possible paths, all of which lead to their own decisions with their own fails, and of course their own good endings. But hey, as awesome as they may be, it’s less about the destination than it is about the journey and seeing Henry get hurt/maimed/trapped in comical ways as you try to find the “right path”. Added to this are moments where the decisions have a timer, and failing to react in that time frame leads to a different fail. Those are reworked into Quick-Time Events on a handful of occasions.

Two-star Wanted rating?
Henry, those are rookie numbers.
Go steal a tank.

Even though Henry managed to get out of jail, he can’t help himself – the sight of a gigantic diamond delivered to the museum and displayed within its walls is too tempting. Time for a single-person heist. This is the game I knew from the Newgrounds days, so I remembered it somewhat – this gave me an opportunity to compare and contrast the versions.

When the devs of Innersloth say they remastered the originals, they mean it – Compare those two screenshots. You can see the upgrade in graphics, from a game made by a single person to one made by a team, thus with enough time to decorate and liven up the backgrounds, make this world actually feel complete.

You can tell the difference. The bottom pic is
missing museum paintings... I stole them.

Choose your weapon reference.

Other differences: The original Flash games weren’t bothered by that pesky thing called copyright, so they made plenty of references to other existing video games, infringement be damned. Metroid? Pokéballs? Sure. The Collection, on the other hand, is an official product, so most recognizable names were changed to bland or parody versions. Although it doesn’t mean that there were many references cut out from the product – the list collected on the Henry Stickmin wiki (yep, there’s one) is massive.

Yeah, Bios in the Prologue are easy to get.
Wait till you get to Episodes 3 and 4.
May God help you when you get to Episode 5.

There’s an added challenge to this one as well: The Bios. You can collect a character’s bio by right-clicking on them while they’re on the screen. Henry is a freebie, but everyone else is to be added to the records. Yes, there’s an extra achievement in each episode for getting all the profiles. It’s not so difficult at the beginning, with the prologue and first two episodes having less than 40 bios each… but it gets significantly more difficult later. Heck, I did get them all, but I don’t think I would have been able to do so without a guide. It’s bad in crowd shots, where the stick figures will often be quite small and difficult to click on. Just try to keep track of every character you’ve already clicked on. It’s tough! It will also, without a doubt, force you to replay several of the bad endings. Hey, I’m cool with that, they’re funny.

People who played the originals will also be happy to know that, aside from a handful of cases, most achievements have been kept, and some have been added. The tough part in getting them all is that, much like bios, you’re not likely to find them all without a guide. Some things are counter-intuitive, others you wouldn’t do unless you knew it would cause something to happen.

"Here's the target. Do what you do best."
"...Fail?"
"...With style."

The story continues in “Infiltrating the Airship”. Henry’s skills have not gone unnoticed by the government, so he is hired to capture the Toppat clan, a notorious robbery gang whose members all wear hats. It’s been profitable enough for them to travel around in an airship. If Henry succeeds, his criminal record will be wiped. During this mission, Henry becomes pals with Charles, the helicopter driver helping him. This episode also marks a turn for Henry where your choices allow his character to grow, instead of him being just the victim of several embarrassing Fails. You can have him capture the Toppat clan for the government; hunt down and kill or capture its most prominent members, or become the new Toppat leader; or steal their most precious jewel and flee, although this path does allow the government to capture the clan.

I should learn the Distraction Dance.

On to “Fleeing the Complex”. Regardless of what happens in the previous episode, Henry is captured and taken to The Wall, a high-security facility for dangerous prisoners. Once again, we need to find a way to escape. And, this time, Henry might not actually be alone – he can strike up a friendship with Ellie Rose, a girl also held captive at the Wall for crimes we never learn about, and they can escape together. That, or Henry can try escaping by himself. That works too. There are five ways this one can end.

With this many possible paths (and Fails),
no wonder a map became necessary.

In the Flash days, this was the first game in the series to include a map, which allowed the player to go back and replay options in order to get all of the endings without having to go through the entire sequence from the beginning. The feature was retroactively added to all prior games for the Collection.

The Toppats? Charles (potentially)?
Ellie (potentially)? Man, this does feel
like the Grand Finale.

This leads into the Grand Finale: “Completing the Mission”. The plot? The Toppats are planning something huge that will take them and their loot out of all jurisdictions. Everything else… is up to Henry. (Sorry, slight spoilers onwards.) See, there are FIFTEEN different paths this one can go, depending on which endings you’ve found in the previous two episodes, “Infiltrating the Airship” and “Fleeing the Complex”. One ending from one, one ending from the other – not all endings are compatible. But still, that’s 15 paths, and a total of 164 ways to fail – so roughly 11 fails per path.

Of course, you only get to pick between the
endings you found in the previous Episodes.

On one hand, I admire the dedication. This must have been a HUGE undertaking, trying to think up so many scenarios but also how they can resolve – or end poorly for Henry. Most running gags and other notable jokes from past Episodes also make a return in some form. On the other hand, these paths are short and they don’t split further into paths – most combinations only have one ending, one has two. These paths would be disappointing if there weren’t so many of them. “Completing the Mission” is best enjoyed as a full package, with all 15 paths available after getting all of the endings from the previous two episodes. Experiencing just one, or two, or three, is not enough. Sit back, relax, and enjoy well over an hour of hilarious animated content. Or take on a more active role and look for all 222 bios. This episode has more characters than all five previous episodes combined, that’s how big it is.

Henry and Ellie make for a pretty good team.
I would hate to see them being antagonists.
Which, yep - that also can happen.

I could talk about it some more, but really, none of what I say makes this game justice. Besides, that’s really all I can discuss without spoiling more stuff. I’m sparse on details and jokes specifically because there’s so much I want to say, but I don’t want to ruin anything.

Although the characters are stick figures (obviously), the rest of the animation is really good. As I said earlier, the re-animating of the original Flash games made for fantasic improvements. This bump in quality is at its most obvious in “Completing the Mission” as it is a brand-new product, but the other episodes also benefit greatly from all the extra work that was put into them for the re-release.

Gotta know when to fold 'em.

Even if the base idea of the game is still to see all of the Fails (something that can take a few hours to do), actually getting them all alongside the bios and achievements will take much longer. My copy clocks in at nearly 9 hours of playtime, and that’s with guides. Some achievements are a lot of fun to seek out. In particular, seeking the Among Us plushes scattered around the fifteen scenarios of the final episode was quite a challenge. (What? Of course Innersloth would reference their other game! …Actually, I wonder if Among Us rose in popularity this year after its release in 2018 due to being referenced in the Henry Stickmin Collection…)

And, well, need I say it again? It’s funny as all Heck. Not necessarily laugh-out-loud hilarious every single time, but funny, that’s for sure. I guess I already knew a few of the Fails (especially those from the “Stealing the Diamond” chapter), but it was a treat to see them again (precisely due to the graphical update). Some of the references are pretty great too. Although I preferred to play the game in fullscreen mode so I could bette read what was on the screen, and it frequently caused the game to crash.

"Cocca Colinski"? This sounds familiar.
This is a reference to Punch-Out, isn't it?

This year, animation is the only place where
we got any good crowd shots.

I say we need laughter this year, and it’s true. I feel like I spent most of the year trying to take my mind off that damned virus. Gaming, movies, collecting… anything really. This is a year in which we needed distractions more than any year before it. As this is the last review of the year, I’d like to say thank you, Innersloth, for this funny game, and thanks to every other studio, be it AAA or indie, be it first- or third-party, be it a game studio or a movie studio, for all the entertainment. Everything we’ve got this year, but also everything that came out before, everything that helped make this year a little less painful to get through.

Next week will be my usual yearly retrospective.