Guido Henkel | |
|---|---|
 Henkel in 2011 | |
| Born | September 9, 1964 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Video game designer |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Employer | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Website | http://guidohenkel.com/ |
Guido Henkel (born September 9, 1964, in Stuttgart, Germany) is a German-American video game designer. He is most well known for his work on Planescape: Torment and for creating the Realms of Arkania series of video games.
Henkel was born on September 9, 1964, in Stuttgart, Germany. He modeled a working microprocessor in high school before getting interested in video game development. [1]
Henkel focused on programming out of school, and formed his first company, Dragonware Games. [2] Henkel began making text adventure games, and then moved onto creating role-playing games. [3] After creating a series of games for a number of different early personal computers, he landed a publishing deal with Ariolasoft.[ citation needed ] After releasing a couple of games with the company, Henkel left and formed Attic Entertainment Software with two friends which published games for a number of early computer platforms.[ citation needed ] In 1992, Attic published Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny , which, according to Die Zeit 's Nicole Lange, was a commercial and critical success in Germany but found weak sales worldwide outside of Germany. [4] After working with Attic on two more games, Henkel moved to the United States in 1997. [5]
Henkel joined Interplay Productions, where he was initially assigned to their role-playing development company Black Isle Studios, which is where he served as a senior producer for Planescape: Torment . [6] While working on the game, Henkel served as the model for the game's box cover. [7] After having worked on a more fantasy-themed RPG series in Realms of Arkania and other fantasy games for over a decade, Henkel noted in an interview when Planescape came out that he "felt encumbered by [fantasy's] limitations and people's expectations." [6] He noted in a retrospective interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun that his role on Realms had involved him having his hand in everything from the art and programming to project management, while his producer role on Planetscape was far more limited to administrative project management pieces. [7] Henkel also worked on Fallout and began work on Neverwinter Nights before leaving Interplay in late 1999. [3]
After leaving Interplay, Henkel created a home video review site, DVD Review. [8] In 2001, Henkel joined a new company eMusement as a Vice President. [9] eMusement was slated to develop a game with SquareSoft, but after six months, the project was cancelled and the company shut down.[ citation needed ] Henkel pivoted to working with mobile phone carriers to develop games to sell directly to consumers on their phones from 2002 to 2011.[ citation needed ] Henkel in 2013 was helping to lead a team to create a game called Deathfire: Ruins of Nevermore, but the project was canceled after it failed to reach its Kickstarter goal and further funding was not enough to keep development going; the team refunded all pledges. [7] [10] Henkel currently works as the Principal Software Engineer for the Intellivision Amico. [11]
| Game title | Year | Developer |
|---|---|---|
| FlipIt! | 2003 | G3 Studios |
| Video Poker Pro | 2002 | G3 Studios |
| Black Jack Pro | 2002 | G3 Studios |
| Planescape: Torment | 1999 | Interplay Productions |
| The Ultimate Wizardy Archives | 1998 | Interplay Productions |
| Herrscher der Meere | 1997 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Realms of Arkania: Shadows over Riva | 1996 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Fears | 1995 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Realms of Arkania: Star Trail | 1994 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny | 1992 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Drachen von Laas | 1991 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| The Oath | 1991 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Spirit of Adventure | 1991 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Lords of Doom | 1990 | Attic Entertainment Software |
| Exolon | 1989 | Hewson Consultants |
| Ooze: Als die Geister mürbe wurden… | 1989 | Dragonware Games |
| Hellowoon: Das Geheimnis des Zauberstabs | 1987 | Dragonware Games |
| Herrscher der Meere | 1997 | Attic Entertainment Software [12] |
| Realms of Arkania: Shadows over Riva | 1996 | Attic Entertainment Software [13] |
| Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games | 1996 | Sir-Tech [14] |
| Realms of Arkania: Star Trail | 1994 | Attic Entertainment Software [15] |
| Drachen von Laas | 1991 | Attic Entertainment Software [16] |
| Spirit of Adventure | 1991 | Attic Entertainment Software [17] |
Planescape: Torment is a 1999 role-playing video game developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment for Windows. The game takes place in locations from the multiverse of Planescape, a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy campaign setting. The game's engine is a modified version of the Infinity Engine, which was used for BioWare's Baldur's Gate, a previous D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms.
The Dark Eye is a German tabletop role-playing game with a high fantasy theme created by Ulrich Kiesow and launched by Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit GmbH and Droemer Knaur Verlag in 1984. It is the most successful role-playing game on the German market, outselling Dungeons & Dragons. Many years of work on the game have led to a detailed and extensively described game world.
Icewind Dale is a role-playing video game developed by Black Isle Studios and originally published by Interplay Entertainment for Windows in 2000 and by MacPlay for the Macintosh in 2002. The game takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting and the region of Icewind Dale, and uses the 2nd edition ruleset. The story follows a different set of events than those of R. A. Salvatore's The Icewind Dale Trilogy novels: in the game, an adventuring party becomes enlisted as a caravan guard while in Icewind Dale, in the wake of strange events, and eventually discover a plot that threatens the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale and beyond.
Frank Brian Fargo is an American video game designer, producer, programmer and executive, and founder of Interplay Entertainment, inXile Entertainment and Robot Cache.
Black Isle Studios is a division of the developer and publisher Interplay Entertainment that develops role-playing video games. It has published several games from other developers.
Chris Avellone is an American video game designer and comic book writer. He worked for Interplay and Obsidian Entertainment before working as a freelancer. He is best known for his work on role-playing video games such as Planescape: Torment and the Fallout series.
inXile Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Tustin, California. Specializing in role-playing video games, inXile was founded in 2002 by Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo. The studio produced the fantasy games The Bard's Tale and Hunted: The Demon's Forge, along with various games for Flash and iOS such as Fantastic Contraption in its first decade of development. In 2014, inXile released the post-apocalyptic game Wasteland 2, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Following the game's critical success, the studio went on to raise a then-record US$4 million on Kickstarter to develop Torment: Tides of Numenera, a spiritual successor to Interplay's Planescape: Torment. The studio was purchased by Microsoft and became part of Xbox Game Studios in 2018, just as they were developing Wasteland 3, which they released in 2020. The studio is currently developing Clockwork Revolution for Windows and Xbox Series X/S.
Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny is a role-playing video game developed by Attic Entertainment Software. It was the first game based on the German pen & paper RPG system The Dark Eye by Schmidt Spiele. The original German version of the game was released in 1992. Due to its success it was translated to English and released by Sir-Tech in 1993.
Realms of Arkania: Star Trail is a computer role-playing game by Attic Entertainment Software based on the German RPG system Das Schwarze Auge. The original German version of the game was released in 1994. Due to the success of its predecessor Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny, it was translated to English and released by Sir-Tech in the same year. An expansion, Speech Pack, was released in 1994 for the floppy disk version.
"The Nameless One" is the protagonist of the 1999 Black Isle Studios role-playing video game, Planescape: Torment. In the game, he suffers from a curse of immortality that has spanned thousands of years. Every time he dies, another person in the multiverse dies to fuel his resurrection. Upon rebirth, The Nameless One has little to no recollection of his past life, and often with completely different personality than before.
Colin McComb is an American writer and game designer, who is best known for his work designing the Planescape setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, and as the creative lead for the role-playing video game Torment: Tides of Numenera.
Sigil is a fictional city and the center of the Planescape campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.
Timothy Cain is an American video game developer best known as the creator, producer, lead programmer and one of the main designers of the 1997 computer game Fallout. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Charles Deenen, is a Dutch video game audio director, composer, sound designer, and mixer. He wrote music created sound effects for many Commodore 64 and Amiga games, in addition to working for Interplay, Electronic Arts, and other video game developers.
Larian Studios is a Belgian independent video game developer and publisher founded in 1996 by Swen Vincke. Headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, Larian focuses on developing role-playing video games but has previously worked on educational games and casino games. It is best known for developing the Divinity series and Baldur's Gate 3.
Soulbringer is a fantasy RPG developed by Gremlin Interactive and published by Interplay Entertainment and Infogrames in 2000. It was later packed and shipped in combination with Interplay's Planescape: Torment.
IdeaSpark Labs Inc. is a Canadian video game developer founded in 2009 by BioWare co-founder Trent Oster and former BioWare lead programmer Cameron Tofer. Beamdog's distribution service was launched in July 2010.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a role-playing video game developed by inXile Entertainment and published by Techland Publishing for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is a spiritual successor to 1999's Planescape: Torment.
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