Painkiller

Community Management for the painkiller franchise was provided from the time JoWooD concluded their 2006 takeover of Dreamcatcher Interactive until August 2009.

In late 2008, the JoWooD group identified a fiscal need to publish stand-alone titles based on their most popular IPs, as cost-efficient and quickly as possible.

Homegrown Games was commissioned to design and develop a spinoff within 12 months, at a fraction of the budget previous titles of the series had. The game development held up to the ambitious timeline and the alpha version shown at GamesCom 2009 received favourably press previews.

Due to a growing number of vendor pre-orders, JoWooD decided to release the game two months early - at the Beta stage.

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Against those odds, Painkiller Resurrection delivered an impressive ROI for the publisher. Even though press and player ratings were far less favourable in light of the state at release, and fell short compared to other instalments in the franchise, the IP was successfully kept viable. The co-op campaign multiplayer was a first of its kind and is played even today. An additional spinoff "Redemption" was commissioned, this time with Homegrown Games in a supporting role for the improvements to the proprietary engine. A third and last "Recurring Evil" Painkiller game based on this technology was developed and released, marking the end of the PainEngine in commercial video game development.