Introduction to Dan the Man

Dan the Man is a 2D action platformer created by Halfbrick Studios in partnership with StudioJoho, based on Joho's webseries of the same name. The game was officially globally released on October 6th 2016 on all mobile platforms, though there were some prerelease versions available in an open beta. You can get the game for free on the App Store and on Google Play.

The plot so far

The original webseries takes place in a 16-bit video game world where all NPCs act almost human and actions taken by Dan have (somewhat) realistic consequences. The original series leading up to the game can be watched here.

Stage 1 is a standalone episode following Dan as he saves a princess from a tower, who makes Dan spend all of his savings to satisfy her frivolous lifestyle, leading him into crippling debt. All of his belongings are then repossessed by the banks he is indebted to, at which point the princess immediately dumps him in favor of the shopkeeper Dan was buying from.

The remaining stages are all related to each other and form the main story of the webseries. Dan arrives at an inn that is under attack by a robot in Stage 2, where he meets Josie the innkeeper who he falls in love with. After defeating the robot and fighting some rebels on jetpacks they spend some time together at the inn. Dan has sex with Josie in Stage 4 after some coaching from two barmates, the Geezers, which leads to her getting pregnant.

They later make their way to the King's castle in Stage 5, where Dan and the King's guards team up against a dragon that is attacking the castle. Dan is treated as a hero by the King, who invites him to a party that night. During this party, Josie sneaks into the castle basement with a waitress, where it is revealed that a baby dragon is being used against its will to power the kingdom, and that the dragon who was attacking the castle earlier is its mother. The waitress asks Josie to join the resistance and help them free the baby dragon. Josie refuses to join the resistance but does join forces with them to free the dragon. During the fight, the waitress is killed by the Dark Master, an evil black pixelated stick figure. The baby dragon is then returned to its mother by Josie and a very hungover Dan.

In Stage 6 the game is revealed to have a multiplayer mode in beta. In this multiplayer world, Dan meets another player, Ana, who explains that he can live here once he beats the game. They spend some time together and eventually fall in love, which Josie interprets as Dan breaking up with her, causing her to cut her hair and "go dark". At the end of their multiplayer session Ana reveals that in order to beat the game Josie needs to marry Dan, prompting Dan to try to get her back in Stage 7. Dan falls off a cliff while chasing after Josie, which gives him a game over as he had no lives remaining, sending Josie into depression. After trying to sleep it off fails and a meeting with a therapist bears no fruit, she wanders down a river and meets Light Master, the good counterpart to Dark Master, who teaches her how to deal with this trauma. Meanwhile at the King's castle, the Advisor hosts a meeting with some executives to work out a solution for the lack of electricity in the kingdom. He suggests using villagers to run on a treadmill to generate power, receiving almost unanimous support from the room. He enlists Dark Master to capture villagers for this cause, with Josie ending up among those captured and forced to run on the treadmill. One of the King's guards supervising the treadmill sends a photo to the two executives who opposed the Advisor's treadmill plan, who are swiftly killed by Dark Master but not before they post the image to social media. The following morning, Dan's funeral is interrupted by the player pressing start to continue, reviving Dan. At the same time, villagers across the kingdom band together to form a peaceful protest at the King's castle gate, who are then attacked by the King's guards. They retreat back to their village and meet the armed resistance who plan to storm the King's castle and rescue the captive villagers by force. During the argument however, a villager notices Dan and, all recognizing that he has come back from the dead, ask him to choose what to do next.

The game's plot continues from this point, as Dan doesn't get the opportunity to make a choice as a rebel on a jetpack incites the resistance to storm the castle. He follows closely behind the resistance, accompanied by the Geezers from Josie's inn. Dan defeats the Gatekeeper boss at the King's castle gate, allowing the resistance to enter the castle, though once they are within the castle walls the Geezers realize that the resistance are unnecessarily vicious and cold-blooded, killing innocent members of the King's court. Eventually it becomes clear that the resistance in its current state no longer cares about saving the captive villagers and instead wants to overthrow the monarchy and take over the kingdom, so Dan and the Geezers take it into their own hands to free the villagers and enter the sewers below the kingdom. While the Geezers are rigging explosives on one of the walls neighboring the treadmill room, the guards supervising the treadmill are called out to fight against the rebel incursion, an opportunity which Josie takes advantage of by running up the treadmill and knocking out the treadmill operator. The villagers celebrate, but are all killed in the explosion set off by the Geezers, which enrages Josie. Once the smoke clears and Dan steps through the hole in the wall, Josie enters a state of shock and runs away. Dan tries to follow her but is stopped by Dark Master. He defeats Dark Master in a fight, but Dark Master persists and tries to stop him again. Fortunately Light Master appears and begins fighting Dark Master, allowing Dan to escape into the inner castle. Dan and the Geezers traverse the castle interior in search of Josie, meeting up with the resistance at the meeting room where the King is hiding. The leader of the resistance then kills the King and takes his crown. Hat Geezer makes a stand and tells him that the killing needs to end now, but is then promptly shot as the resistance runs away in search of the Advisor. Bald Geezer swears to get his revenge, taking a gun and following them. All parties finally meet up on the castle roof, where a battle is taking place between the last of the King's guards and the last of the resistance, and Bald Geezer is being held at gunpoint by the Advisor who himself is being held at gunpoint by Josie. The Rebel King kills all three of them, and fights Dan in a giant robot. After the giant robot is defeated, the Rebel King finally detonates the entire castle, bringing it to the ground and killing Dan in the process. Dan then respawns back to when the villagers asked him for assistance and chooses to kill the closest resistance member, preventing the events of the game.

The gameplay loop

You can play as one of 4 different characters, being Dan, Josie, Barry and the Custom Character. On first boot you will only have the option to pick either Dan or Josie, but once the Prologue is completed you can switch between characters at will. Barry is unlocked as an in-app purchase or by inviting friends, and Custom is unlocked after progressing far enough into the main story mode (after beating 8-1-1 in modern versions, but used to be later). As a 2D platformer the game naturally has 2 direction buttons and a jump button, but also has 3 additional functional buttons, being the attack button (used for melee attacks), the weapon button (to use weapons) and the switch weapon button (which cycles to the next weapon). At first only 3 options are available for attacking, but by using coins to upgrade your characters you can unlock more attacks or make existing attacks stronger. Weapons can also be upgraded after beating 8-2-1, each having 2 upgrades which increase their power and total ammunition.

The game's story mode follows Dan as he storms the King's castle. It consists of 5 chapters each with 3 stages, chapter 0 being the prologue with 3 short stages, and chapters 1 through 4 being the main story where the stages are longer. Each stage has enemies to defeat, objects to break for coins and healing items, and secret areas with particularly good loot. Every stage also features at least 1 fight scene, where you're trapped in a confined space and have to defeat all the enemies in the fight to progress. Every level except for 8-0-1 and 8-0-3 has 1-2 shops which can each be entered at most twice, where you can buy either a healing item or a weapon in exchange for some coins. There are 2 checkpoints per level in the prologue and 4 in the main story, which serve as respawn points if you die, or you can choose to quit the level and restart from the last checkpoint you reached. In the 3rd stage of every chapter, the section after the last checkpoint has a cutscene which leads into a boss fight, beating this boss allows you to progress to the next chapter. Once you've beaten stage 8-4-3 you unlock hard story mode, where enemies have more health and their attacks do more damage, among other changes.

There are also arena-based levels, which are distinct from story levels in that they can have a timer and/or have varying completion requirements, ranging from defeating all the enemies, reaching the end of a platforming challenge, or defeating a boss. Arena-based levels can have multiple arenas in them, and you are transported to the next one by completing the objective. If the arena is timed, enemies will usually drop clock items which increase the timer by a given amount (1 second, 3s, 6s, and very rarely 9s; 12s clocks exist but are placed in levels and are not dropped by enemies). Before entering an arena you will be taken to a pre-arena shop screen (vortex shop) where you can choose to select a powerup and/or buy a weapon or health item. There are 4 different powerups which each last for the duration of the next arena and can either increase your total health, increase the time received from clock items, triple your melee damage output, or cause coins to drop proportionally to the damage you deal to enemies. There are 24 optional arena-based levels (battle stages) in the main story mode which all have multiple arenas where the goal is to defeat all the enemies. There is an endless survival mode consisting of one infinite string of arenas which get progressively more difficult, where you can find special fighters (resembling the custom character) which drop tokens that can be used in the prize machine. The prize machine itself takes 1 token and converts it into a prize, which can be either a powerup or a random amount of coins, or more rarely a costume ticket (obtaining enough of the same kind of costume ticket gives a new outfit for custom) or 3 new tokens. The last singleplayer gamemode is adventure mode which is a compilation of 7 "adventures" which contain a total of 34 arena-based levels which each can be played on easy, normal or hard difficulty. Getting all bronze, silver or gold trophies in an adventure gives a prize, which is either some coins, some tokens or the costume associated to that adventure. There is additionally a 2 player online multiplayer mode, in which you and your opponent play 3 arenas fighting enemies together (though there is a small chance of having a boss arena instead, where you fight one of 4 story mode bosses), competing to get the highest score among the two of you. During special events, playing a game of multiplayer will reward medals to both players, with slightly more going to the winner if arena 3 is completed, and an equal but lower amount if the game is incomplete due to a disconnect. Collecting enough medals will give the player rewards ranging from emotes that can be used in multiplayer, profile icons which will display on the title screen and at the beginning of a multiplayer match, coins, tokens, and (as the last reward) the event exclusive costume.