Handcop is a disembodied hand shooter with a big gun, and it’s already huge on Reddit

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Last weekend, game developer Jeff Ramos posted a gif that he had made On twitter. It showed a disembodied human hand dressed as a scruffy police detective, running simultaneously with two fingers and holding a huge pistol with the rest. It’s weird, funny, and undeniably well animated, all of which got him clicked, receiving a few thousand retweets and 10,000+ likes.

Emboldened, Ramos wondered what Reddit would think. When ar / gaming came around, the gif got the same amount of upvotes pretty quickly. Then it kept going up. Suddenly it made the cover of Reddit. As of this writing, it has exceeded 100,000 upvotes. Ramos’s work had officially gone viral.

“Many people commented [saying] that ‘this could be a great game!’ “Ramos tells me by email.” I did my best to explain that this IS a game. ”

In fact, it’s a game that’s been a year in development now, with the goal of mixing Max Payne’s narrative, Superhot’s pure style, Hotline Miami’s score attack chase, and putting it all into a slightly with inflection of the 80. hand with a big gun. Ramos calls him the world’s first Fist-Person Shooter.

Meet Michael McWrist, the star of Handcop:

Born in Brazil and living in London, Ramos has been working in animation since the age of 17, eventually landing at Bossa Studios (Surgeon Simulator). The idea that became Handcop started as an experiment: “I was playing finger football with my wife and I saw a TV commercial with the Addams family hand. So I thought it would be fun to learn procedural animations using one hand. instead of a humanoid. “

That prototype, which saw disembodied hands playing soccer (you can see a gif below), eventually became an experiment to animate a more realistic hand while turn a VR experience into a non-VR game. Which in turn became Hand of pain, a fully playable neon-hued shooter made for an itch.io game. As Ramos says, “The response was excellent, so I had to continue.”

Ramos' first handheld prototype.

Ramos’ first handheld prototype.

Since then, Handcop has done in Ramos’ spare time almost entirely on his own, aside from help from Twitter friends and acquaintances on voice-overs, animation manipulation, and concept art. The promoter recently started paternity leave, which helped her pick up the pace when she was not caring for her new child.

What came out of that work sounds, and looks, genuinely intriguing. Handcop actively draws on some beloved sources, not least the friend cop movies of the ’80s, but Ramos is keen that his main character function as more than just a visual joke and offer more unusual play opportunities. McWrist’s small size is used for stealth runs, allowing him to enter tight spaces or on tiptoe (hand in hand?) Via power lines, while finger snapping allows for a flickering teleportation ability. But that small size also means that Handcop is currently a one-hit kill game, adding to the need for a tougher technical game.

Handcop – Animations and Concept Art

“Unlike most comedy games, the shooting is real here,” explains Ramos. “It’s very satisfying and the headshots are excellent.” There are also other staples of action games: running, slowing down time, risk-reward dodging, execution maneuvers that increase end-of-level scores at the expense of time spent, and more. McWrist can throw his weapon at enemies, even go into close combat, and Ramos includes several weapons, as well as planning “wearable rings to improve one of your stats.”

It’s definitely fun to watch, but the work that’s being done is no joke.

Despite that hard work, it has been difficult to get noticed so far. “The last week [I posted the Reddit gif], I tried to boost the game by posting [everywhere] I could, “Ramos tells me.” It was stressful and I was missing quality time with my wife and baby. I decided never to do that again.

“This weekend I couldn’t sleep because my phone didn’t stop, [I had so] Lots of posts from people saying they want to make a game out of this, this should be a game, or how weird this character is. It felt good, mainly because that 3 second cycle is a year of hard work on a concept that I really believed in and that I am passionate about. ”

For Ramos, that reaction has been the vindication he needs to continue working at Handcop. He sees a potentially great future and has been actively courting editors to see if he can secure interest in his project. “The game can be so much more than a solo developer without funding can do,” he tells me of that quest. “I want to find a publisher, I want to explore the possibilities of this project, of this character.”

What Ramos wants is more hands to do Handcop. But even if they don’t come, that Reddit response and the boost it’s given have made Ramos’s decision. “My dream has always been to direct a game, and that’s what I want to do with Handcop, even if I have to animate, program and design at the same time.” In a timely manner, it will do so with one hand if the job demands it.

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s executive news editor. Follow him on Twitter. Do you have any advice for us? Do you want to discuss a possible story? Send an email to [email protected].



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