Bendy and the Ink Machine
| Bendy and the Ink Machine | |
|---|---|
| File:Bendy and the Ink Machine.png | |
| Developer(s) | Kindly Beast (as Joey Drew Studios Inc.) |
| Publisher(s) | Joey Drew Studios Inc. Rooster Teeth Games (Consoles) |
| Designer(s) | theMeatly Mike Mood Matt Goles Dan Tozer |
| Writer(s) | theMeatly Bookpast |
| Composer(s) | theMeatly |
| Engine | Unity |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | Survival horror |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Bendy and the Ink Machine (often abbreviated to BATIM) is an survival horror video game developed and published by Kindly Beast, under the name of the game's fictional animation studio, Joey Drew Studios Inc. (TheMeatly Games, Ltd. until August 1, 2018).[1][2] The game follows Henry Stein, a retired animator who returns to his old studio after an invitation from his old employer and discovers a nightmare of cartoon characters seemingly brought to life by the titular Machine.
Bendy and the Ink Machine was originally released in an episodic format in a series of five Chapters. The first Chapter was released for Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows via Game Jolt on February 10, 2017, with a second Chapter bundled with a remastered version of the first following on April 18, 2017. After the game succeeded in its Steam Greenlight campaign on February 28, 2017,[3] both available Chapters were released onto Steam on April 27, 2017. The third Chapter was released on September 28, 2017. The fourth Chapter was released on April 30, 2018, after a short delay. The Fifth chapter was released on October 26, 2018 and the Complete Edition on Steam was released on October 27, 2018. Mike Mood, the game's programmer and co-creator, describes the game as an "accidental success".[4]
Bendy and the Ink Machine was announced to be published by Rooster Teeth Games for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 26, 2018 after the fifth and final chapter is completed and released,[5] but was delayed to be released on those consoles at the same time as a Nintendo Switch port on November 20, 2018.
Gameplay
Bendy and the Ink Machine is a survival horror game that uses a mixture of puzzle solving, environment exploration and combat to aid Henry on his journey through Joey Drew Studios. Players explore through a first-person view and have limited physical actions such as running and jumping. Different items can be collected, some of which are required to perform various tasks before proceeding. Cans of bacon soup, a reference to the game's creator theMeatly and his partner Mike Mood, can also be collected for both achievements and to restore Henry's health if he is injured.
Combat is primarily focused around a variety of different melee-based weapons, such as an axe or a pipe. In-game enemies all have different strength levels and resilience to damage, forcing players to be tactical about keeping out of reach and striking when necessary. Henry can retreat inside Little Miracle Stations whenever enemies are nearby in order to recover or remain out of sight. If he takes too much damage, he can escape from the ink that consumes him and respawn at one of the numerous statues of Bendy that act as checkpoints.
In addition, players can find numerous audio logs throughout the studio that give more details about the game's story, particularly concerning about the fate of the studio and its employees, similar to the systems used in games such as BioShock. Some of these logs can be missed and require further exploration to uncover the secret areas they often reside in.
Story
Henry returns to his old animation studio Joey Drew Studios after receiving an invitation from his old friend and former employer Joey Drew, to be shown something important. Eventually finding the titular Ink Machine, he decides to turn it on after concluding it is what Joey wanted to show him. During the repair attempts, Henry makes the gruesome discovery of a corpse in the shape of Boris the Wolf, one of the studio's characters and also uncovers old tape recordings that imply that Joey was taking part in bizarre occult practices, unaware of the implications the Machine had on the studio's infrastructure. After completing the necessary steps to fix the Machine, Henry is suddenly attacked by an ink monster who resembles the studio's mascot Bendy and tries to escape, but the floor collapses underneath him, sending him into the depths below. After clearing the path forward and approaching what appears to be the site of a ritual, Henry is seized by a vision of the Machine, a wheelchair, and "Bendy" before he passes out.
After waking up, Henry explores the studio's music department and infirmary for a way out, encountering more hostile ink monsters. He learns that Sammy Lawrence, the musical director for the studio, seemingly started to worship Bendy as a deity sometime after the Machine's installation and, after draining a stairwell to escape, is knocked out from behind by the now-insane Sammy, who has also been transformed into an ink creature. Hoping that his "Lord" will restore his humanity, Sammy plots to sacrifice Henry to "Bendy" as an offering, but the ritual fails when Sammy is attacked and apparently killed by "Bendy" instead. Henry flees from "Bendy" and encounters a living version of Boris, and the pair escape to a safehouse.
Deciding to venture out together, the pair enter Heavenly Toys, the studio's toy manufacturing department. Henry encounters another ink creature who resembles the character Alice Angel, implied to be a transformed Susie Campbell, Alice's voice actress. He ventures down to "Alice's" lair where she explains she has been harvesting the body parts of multiple cartoon creatures in order to improve her deformed appearance, offering Henry his freedom in exchange for a few items for her experiments. During these tasks, Henry frequently encounters "Bendy" wandering the halls, corrupted versions of the Butcher Gang characters, and another creature called the Projectionist, implied to be created from the studio's projectionist Norman Polk. When every task is complete, Henry and Boris are allowed to ascend in an elevator to escape, but "Alice" proclaims she wants to use Boris to fix herself and makes the elevator crash. As Boris tries to wake Henry, he is suddenly pulled away by "Alice” into the darkness.
Henry climbs out of the remains of the crashed elevator and begins searching for Boris. He passes through the studio's archives and begins to suffer from seemingly paranormal hallucinations in the process. He also finds a gathering of more ink creatures named the Lost Ones, implied to be some of the studio's former employees desperate to go home. After navigating through the vents of the archives, Henry finds himself in a large underground warehouse that houses prototypes for a Bendy theme park, "Bendy Land", created by park designer Bertrum Piedmont. Henry begins restoring power to the warehouse to access the haunted house where Boris is being kept, encountering a monstrous version of Bertrum encased within an amusement attraction in the process. He also crosses paths with the Projectionist again but before he is struck down, “Bendy” appears and kills the creature, appearing to save Henry from certain death. Henry eventually enters the haunted house but to his dismay, he discovers Boris is now a hulking monster thanks to "Alice", forcing him to kill the wolf. An enraged "Alice" tries to kill Henry herself, only to be run through by a sword from behind belonging to a second Alice Angel and another clone of Boris with a mechanical arm.
The two cartoons imprison Henry in their hideout. Allison, the second Alice and implied to be created from the character's second voice actress Allison Pendle, says she and the other Boris, Tom, don't trust him. After some time in captivity slowly winning her over, Henry is given the Seeing Tool, a looking glass that can see hidden messages left behind by someone else trying to escape the studio. After a few more nights, Tom, implied to be created from Gent technician Thomas Connor, accidentally gives away their hiding location to “Bendy” and forces Allison to leave Henry for dead. Escaping "Bendy", Henry uses a paddleboat to cross a river of ink, coming across a town made by the Searchers and the Lost Ones. Sammy, having survived his encounter with "Bendy", attacks Henry in a rage that "Bendy" did not free him as he believed. Before Sammy can finish Henry off in a fight, Tom arrives from behind with Allison and kills him. Searchers and Lost Ones suddenly attack the three and they are forced to fight them off. Allison asks Henry to lead the way, but he ends up falling through a chasm into the studio's administration offices. With more of the hidden messages telling him to get something inside the studio's Film Vault, Henry discovers more audio logs that reveal the truth about the Machine.
Joey ordered the Machine's construction after the studio began to run into financial difficulty with the declining sales of the Bendy cartoons, creating it from equal parts engineering and magic. The hope was to run the studio's cartoon film reels through the Machine in order to create real-life cartoon attractions that people could interact with. The first attempt at doing this resulted in "Bendy", rejected as an abomination because of his lack of a soul. Joey decided to fix this using the souls of his employees, shown to do so explicitly in a log detailing his manipulation of Susie into giving hers up to become "Alice". Allison and Tom find Henry again after he opens up the Vault as another hidden message says that what he needs has been taken by "Bendy". He announces his intention to go to "Bendy's" lair and find what the Ink Demon has stolen. Though Allison and Tom wish him well, they are unable to follow Henry inside because of the lake of ink surrounding the lair, constructed inside the Ink Machine itself.
Inside, Henry finds a tape left behind by Joey who explains his reasons for creating the Machine where he also explains that the only thing that can truly defeat "Bendy" is "The End", a reel of film taken from the Vault. "Bendy" appears and transforms into a enormous ink beast to stop Henry from playing it. He runs, navigating through the maze-like insides of the Machine before circling back to the central chamber and inserting "The End" into a projector. "Beast Bendy" is forced to watch it and roars in pain as he disintegrates. The game then suddenly switches from the cartoon aesthetics of the studio into a realistic home, covered in letters and sketches relating back to characters and events from earlier in the game. Henry goes to the kitchen, where he finds an elderly Joey waiting to talk to him. As the old studio owner talks of how they took two different paths to get to this point, Joey tells Henry that he should visit the old workshop as he has something to show him. When Henry opens the door, he finds himself entering the studio from the beginning of the game, repeating his opening lines. In a post-credits scene, the camera focuses on an image of Bendy, Boris and Alice, left to Joey by Henry who congratulates him on on the success with the characters. With the sight of an older version of the Ink Machine in the corner, a young girl's voice asks "Uncle Joey" to tell her another story.
Completing the story will allow the player to use the Seeing Tool in all previous Chapters, allowing them to discover more hidden messages much earlier in the game. The Tool appears to imply that the messages are from Henry himself, making notes about how certain events like the Machine's activation and "Alice's" betrayal are fixed and cannot be changed. They also seem to hint that that the events of the game have been repeated hundreds of times before the story's beginning, suggesting that Henry has been trapped in a time loop.
Characters
Henry Stein is a former animator of Joey Drew Studios and the main protagonist of the game, who returns to the studio thirty years after resigning from the company. The game is played through his perspective. He is shown to remain mostly calm throughout the horrors of the situation, but quickly falls into despair as he gets closer to his end confrontation with the Ink Demon. He is voiced by the game's co-creator, theMeatly.
Joey Drew is the former owner of the studio and the primary reason Henry comes back to the studio via a letter. Described as a "man of ideas, and only ideas" by Henry, the other employees of the studio view him as an unethical perfectionist, uncaring towards the working conditions of his colleagues. Though acting like an eccentric dreamer on the surface, Joey ultimately proves to be focused only on his own success, drawing people in with his false promise of fulfilling their dreams. Joey is voiced by David Eddings.
Wally Franks is the studio's janitor who frequently laments the conditions of his job and the possibility of getting in trouble for his lax attitude. He frequently uses the phrase "I'm outta here!" as a catchphrase. He is voiced by co-creator theMeatly.
Thomas Connor is a Gent technician hired by Joey Drew to oversee the mechanical aspects of the studio's operations. He often complains about the poor state of most of the building's equipment and was partially responsible for the Machine's construction. It is implied he was later transformed into a cartoon, the Boris clone Tom. Thomas is voiced by co-creator Mike Mood.
Sammy Lawrence is the studios's musical director, driven mad by his transformation into an ink creature. He worships Bendy as a deity in the hopes of regaining his human form. Sammy is voiced by Aaron Landon.
Susie Campbell is a voice actress and the original voice of Alice Angel. Growing attached to her character, she was suddenly replaced in the role, causing her to become desperate enough to consider Joey's offer of making Alice real. The game implies she was later transformed into "Alice", an ink creature obsessed with making herself the perfect Alice Angel with little regard for others in the studio. Susie's human form is voiced by Alanna Linayre while "Alice" is voiced by Lauren Synger.
Jack Fain is the studio's a lyricist, transformed into a Searcher creature that Henry must defeat to escape the music department. He is voiced by one of the game's developers, Bookpast.
Norman Polk is the studio's projectionist, a reclusive man who was often observant to Joey's malpractices during the studio's operation. He is implied to return later as the Projectionist ink monster, a character that was almost left out of the final version of the game's third Chapter due to time restraints;[6] He is voiced by co-creator, theMeatly.
Bertrum Piedmont is a theme park architect hired by Joey Drew to design Bendy Land. Upon hearing that Joey intended to take credit for his creations, Bertrum became very antagonistic towards the studio owner. Henry encounters him as a disembodied head entombed in one of his prototype rides as a boss right. He is voiced by Joe J. Thomas.
Lacie Benton is an engineer constructing new attractions for Bertrum. Preferring to stay away from the happenings of the studio and the other workers, it is implied she was later killed during the studio's demise. She is voiced by Lani Minella.
Grant Cohen is the studio's accountant, shown to be exasperated by Joey's rampant spending at getting the Machine running. Though his eventual fate is unknown, audio logs left behind imply he was turned into an ink creature. He is voiced by Will Ryan, also known as DA Games.
Shawn Flynn is a designer in the Heavenly Toys department, often told off by Joey for not ensuring that each toy he created was perfectly crafted. He is voiced by Seán McLoughlin, also known as Jacksepticeye.
Allison Pendle is a voice actress and the second voice of Alice Angel. She was brought in to replace Susie as the character before the studio's demise. It is implied she was later transformed into Allison Angel, a more perfect representation of the character that aids Henry in exploring the deepest parts of the studio. Allison is voiced by Lauren Synger.
The titular character "Bendy" appears as a disfigured, skeletal ink monster that wanders the halls of the studio. Strong enough to destroy any other ink creatures close enough to him and kill Henry with just a touch, he acts as the main antagonistic force of the game. He is the first attempt at creating the original character Bendy the Dancing Demon using the Machine, but was rejected as an "abomination" for his lack of a soul.
Boris the Wolf is one of the studio's characters and appears in multiple forms throughout the game. The most notable example is the Boris that Henry encounters and journeys with through the game's third Chapter. Boris is shown being unable to speak, but can display emotions such as fear.
The Butcher Gang are a trio of cartoon characters (Charley, Barley and Edgar) who act as antagonists to Bendy in his cartoon shorts. They have been twisted into mutilated versions of themselves (Piper, Fisher, Striker) thanks to the Ink Machine and will attack Henry on sight.
Other ink creatures such as the Searchers appear as vaguely humanoid figured of ink that appear out of ink puddles to attack Henry. The Lost Ones are more human-shaped creatures who appear to be in a state of constant despair over what has happened to them.
Other media
Official videos for a series of animated shorts based on Bendy and the Ink Machine have been released from theMeatly's YouTube channel, with animation done by animator Timethehobo. The first animated short, Tombstone Picnic, was released as part of the Chapter Three reveal trailer on August 11, 2017.[7] The second short, Haunted Hijinx, was uploaded on October 31, 2017, to celebrate Halloween.[8] The third short, Snow Sillies, was uploaded on December 24, 2017, in celebration of the holiday season.
A Halloween crossover mod, Hello Bendy, was released for the game on October 27, 2017, for a limited time, featuring the Hello Neighbor antagonist who takes the role as Bendy in all previous three chapters and even Sammy Lawrence for Chapter 2.[9] The mod's menu features the advertisement of pre-ordering the game Hello Neighbor. The mod expired by the end of October that year.
Co-creator Mike Mood has talked about wanting to do a crossover with Cuphead, a popular run and gun platformer that follows the same rubber hose animation art style as Bendy and the Ink Machine.[10]
Bendy in Nightmare Run!
A mobile spin-off, titled Bendy in Nightmare Run!, was announced on January 26, 2018 and was released on Android and iOS on August 15, 2018. [11][12]Developed by Karman Interactive in partnership with Joey Drew Studios Inc. and PhatMojo, the game introduces the cartoon Bendy and his co-stars in an endless running-style game, featuring four levels with a different "boss" cartoon monster, as well as collectible items and power-ups, including bacon soup cans that act as currency to buy abilities and upgrades, and possible future updates.
References
- ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBt-1lel6Ek
- ^ https://joeydrewstudios.com/
- ^ TheMeatly Games (February 10, 2017). "We did it!! WE ARE GREENLIT!!". Steam. Retrieved June 26, 2017.
- ^ https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TylerMcAuleyVallier/20170711/301391/The_CoCreator_of_Bendy_and_the_Ink_Machine_Talks_Accidental_Success.php
- ^ @themeatly (January 29, 2018). "Yup! It's official... #BATIM is coming to consoles! :D It's a huge step and I'm sooooo excited... ^_^ This amazing community coming together made it all possible. :)" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Asarch, Steven (14 July 2017). "How Bendy And The Ink Machine Lived Up To The Hype". Player.One. Retrieved 8 June 2018.
- ^ theMeatly (2017-08-11), "Bendy and the Ink Machine: Chapter Three" – Reveal Trailer 2017, retrieved 2018-01-05
- ^ theMeatly (2017-10-31), Bendy in "Haunted Hijinx" – A Joey Drew Short, retrieved 2018-01-05
- ^ @batimgame (7 Oct 2017). "HELLO BENDY has arrived for Halloween! Play both games for some spooky surprises. ;) http://store.steampowered.com/app/521890/Hello_Neighbor/ … http://store.steampowered.com/app/622650/Bendy_and_the_Ink_Machine/ …" (Tweet) – via Twitter. {{Cite tweet}}: |date= / |number= mismatch (help)
- ^ "Bendy Co-Creator Talks Cuphead Crossover +MORE, Interview w/ BATIM's Mike Mood". YouTube. The Leaderboard. 8 April 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
- ^ @BendyRun (January 26, 2018). "SURPRISE! :) There's a new #Bendy game …FOR YOUR PHONE!! :) #BendyinNightmareRun #BINR http://bendy.run" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ @BendyRun (January 27, 2018). "An Official Bendy Action Packed Boss Runner coming to your iOS and Android devices soon! #BINR #BendyInNightmareRun http://bendy.run" (Tweet) – via Twitter.