HAAK is a Metroidvania Action Platform Game by Blingame.
The came casts you as a guy named Haak, who's wandering through a post-apocalyptic world in search of his brother, Baak. His wanderings take him to the Sanho Ruins, where he finds a watch that brings him in contact with a mysterious person named Tr8.
Tr8 informs Haak that the watch he found used to belong to Tr8's agent, 3Kyo. He asks Haak to help him find the agent, and in exchange, Haak can keep the watch if he so chooses. Thus begins Haak's adventure through the ruins.
The game was released on August 24th, 2022.
HAAK contains examples of:
- After the End: The setting is a classic post-apocalypse; you can find clippings of newspapers that further describe some of the details. As bleak as it may seem, most of the world does leans towards a civilization that is healing and progressing well.
- Apocalyptic Log: You'll find these on computers on the wall, which contain messages left behind by others. This is ultimately how we learn of Baak's potential fate.
- Autosave: The game does this at points such as after conversations with Tr8, after getting a new gameplay item, and after defeating certain enemies.
- Badass Cape: Part of Haak's (as well as his brother Baak's) standard wear for much of what we get to see. Haak's is blue while his brother's is white. That said, you can apply color dyes to Haak's cape with ink you can find throughout the game. Amusingly, in the various level splash art images that come up every time you enter or exit a zone, sometimes Haak's cape gets drawn like a massive hyper stylized scarf (which it cannot do in-game).
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Happens at least twice during the game, three if you count the climactic battle against Gael.
- Bilingual Bonus: Haak is actually Dutch for "Hook".
- Bittersweet Ending: After everything is done, Haak is forced to accept that the brother he spent all this time looking for is potentially lost for good after having had his mind broken during the Guardians of Knowledge's experiments. While his home celebrates an improved harvest thanks to help from Tr8 and her forces, only Haak remembers what was lost.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: There is a lot of this going on in the dialogues with the NPCs you come across.
- Conspicuous Electric Obstacle: Surface-mounted red and blue nodes discharge red and blue lightning respectively. Sometimes the electricity is constant, sometimes it turns on and off. Some nodes even move back and forth.
- Gratuitous English: Old Joel is the only character whose voice lines are in English.
- Hackette: Towards the end of the events at Anthony Hill, Tr8 reveals themselves to be a woman working for the Wasteland Reclaimers, at the very end you learn her real name: Cui Te. Haak doesn't really make much of this reveal considering the circumstances.
- Heart Container: Life shards. Collect three and you get an extension on your Life Meter.
- I Will Find You: This is Haak's one driving quest above all else. Whatever happens, he's out here to bring his brother home.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Haak. He's often very brusque, but he does have his heart in the place even with the edges and softens up a bit as the game moves along. You can push him to show a little more of the heart to gold in him in some side quests.
- Life Meter: Located in the top-left corner of the screen, it looks like orange circles connected by an orange line.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: There are locked doors in the Sanho Ruins that will only open once a blue keycard is acquired.
- Mission Control: Tr8 acts as this for Haak for most of the game after their initial meeting. Theirs is rocky and strained partnership for a large portion of the story.
- Moral Dilemma: There are a few side quests that allow you to make a choice in how they ultimately end, they don't necessarily affect the story long term but do add atmosphere to the setting of the game. In most cases the darker choices will give you extra money while the kinder choices may well give you nothing but satisfaction in helping people - however one of them does offer a useful item and choosing the kinder options all the way leads to an achievement.
- One-Word Title: Haak, obviously.
- Protagonist Title: Haak is the Player Character's name.
- Save Point: Many in the game, which take on two forms. One looks like a little blue circles with a plus sign, and replenishes your health when it's used. There are also toiletports, which save your game, and also double as teleporters, enabling fast travel around the game map.
- Shout-Out: One of the people you can find in Huang's Bar in Neo Sanho is Kaneda.
- Spikes of Doom: Comes in two flavors - either they'll do chip damage, or they'll be an instant kill. Usually if the area you come across is surrounded by these and you have no ground to stand on, they're likely to be the latter.
- Tennis Boss: Best way to deal a lot of damage in most boss situations where they launch projectiles.
- Tricked-Out Gloves: Haak finds some gloves in the Sanho Ruins that he can use for melee combat, and also shoot out a grappling hook from them.
- Urban Ruins: The Sanho Ruins.
