Hellboy Web of Wyrd’s creators on working with Lance Reddick: ‘We were just in awe’
It’s certainly not every day that a developer announces they’re making a new game set in the universe of Hellboy, Mike Mignola’s long-running supernatural-action comic series. For Patrick Martin and Adam Langridge, co-founders of U.K.-based game studio Upstream Arcade, it was a dream come true.
“I remember back in the mid-noughties when I was at Lionhead, I was always dreaming of making a game in the style of Hellboy,” Langridge told Polygon. “It’s been percolating in the background for a long time and leaped out more than once, particularly with our previous game, so it’s a real honor and a privilege to have finally made it happen.”
That previous game was West of Dead, a twin-stick roguelike shooter where players assume the role of an undead gunslinger who journeys through the depths of purgatory hunting wendigos, witches, and all sorts of other nefarious supernatural oddities. That game shared a lot in common with Mignola’s distinctive art style, particularly in its emphasis on stark lighting, jagged shadows, exaggerated silhouettes, and muted color palettes; so much so, in fact, that when Martin and Langridge were speaking with various publishers early on in West of Dead’s development, they were offered the opportunity to work on a Hellboy game proper.
“While we were working on that game, we got to speaking to Good Shepherd Entertainment,” Martin told Polygon. “They took a look at the visuals for West of Dead and went, ‘Hmmm, have you ever thought about doing an actual Hellboy game?’ at which point we obviously melted completely at the prospect and got busy working on a pitch with them.”
In the midst of finishing West of Dead, Upstream Arcade pitched its idea for a Hellboy roguelike brawler to Dark Horse Comics, who
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