Suiting (Back) Up

In Dispatch, the debut game from AdHoc studios, Robert Robertson loses his mech suit, the thing that makes him the superhero Mecha Man. In accepting a position as a dispatch worker in a superhero agency, he might eventually get his suit back, but it’ll take a lot of work for him to get there. It’s fitting, then, that the developers of AdHoc are in a similar spot.

After being laid off from Telltale in 2018, Nick Herman and Dennis Lenart have been hard at work establishing their new game studio and rebuilding their metaphorical supersuit. The main difference between Robert and AdHoc, however, is that by playing the demo of Dispatch, I can tell Robert has a ways to go before reclaiming who he once was, but the folks at AdHoc are right on the precipice of releasing a new, exciting game.

“It’s an interactive narrative superhero office comedy,” says Herman, creative director on Dispatch. Players will watch conversations between Robert and other characters and pick his responses at key points, affecting the story and his relationships with different people (who usually have superpowers). Herman also adds that it includes light strategy gameplay – while working at the emergency dispatch line, the player has to choose which hero Robert will send to each crisis, matching their abilities to the appropriate situation and leveling up their abilities over time.