Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack on track for 2020 release

Written by Jack Allin — May 7, 2019 at 11:51

LucasArts once made a pretty successful game starring a trio of playable time travelers, and now indie developer Pontus Wittenmark of Warm Kitten is hoping to do the same in the upcoming Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack.

The titular character is still pining for his ex-girlfriend when he becomes "entangled in some pretty gnarly time travelling nonsense." After inadvertently opening a time portal through his company's microwave oven (because where else would one be?), Justin soon finds himself "walking around in the stone ages." Unfortunately, while he's getting his bearings, "a curious little caveman makes a run for the portal, closing it behind him. This caveman (Kloot) is now stuck in Justin’s office while Justin is stranded in the past." Making matters worse, not only has Justin's ex Julia "moved on with her life, perhaps never to think about Justin again," but this space-time disruption "didn't go unnoticed by the (future) authorities. And in a future ruled by artificial intelligence, unauthorized time travelers are hunted down and neutralized by mechanical agents." 

Presented in gorgeous 2D cartoon graphics, Justin Wack promises to be a "modern take on point-and-click adventure games, oozing with love for the storytelling and humor of the classic Lucasfilm games while still trying to keep things fresh." More specifically, this will involve multiple timelines and characters to control, transforming a caveman into a hipster, and attempting to reunite estranged lovers while getting everyone back to their own eras, "all while avoiding being captured by the mechanical detectives sniffing around for unauthorized time travelling." Although separated by thousands of years, the protagonists will "definitely have some means of interacting with each other", and in the fine tradition of such adventures, "actions made in the past will affect the future."

Warm Kitten is tentatively hoping to complete the game for Windows and Mac before the end of 2020, with Linux and mobile versions also under consideration. Long before that, however, the little Swedish studio is aiming to finish a playable demo sometime this summer, in time to launch a Kickstarter to help finance the rest of production. To learn more about the game while you wait, be sure to drop by the developer's website