Michael Hengst

Michael Hengst worked in the games industry since 1988. While being editor and editor in-chief of the famous German magazines POWER PLAY and Video Games, he worked also on various games in various roles. One of his earliest works was the translation of the in game text and the manual of the SSI Role Playing Game Buck Rogers. He worked also as a tester for the German version of Landstalker, which he, funnily enough, played first in Japanese. That fact has been brought to the attention of the European boss of Sega, at that time. During an ECTS, Michael had the chance to convince him to bring Landstalker into Germany.

In addition he was – in a certainly strange way – responsible for bringing the RPG Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant into the German market. By visiting the developer Sir-Tech in the early nineties, he became a close friend the co-owner of Sir-Tech, Robert Sirotek. Wondering why Wizardry has never been released in Germany, he brought together Robert and Jürgen Goeldner, the Managing Director of the German publisher Softgold. As a result the Game was released 1993 in Germany in a fully localised version.

Michael worked between 1995 and 1996 for the well known Developer Sunflowers, and than as a freelancer before opening his own business in 1998. During that time, Michael Hengst brought successful strategy guides into the German market, which sold well. In addition he did some press folders and brochures on different games, like Diablo II.

Michael worked for the Austrian based Publisher/Developer JoWooD Software AG in various roles. He helped bolstering JoWooD into becoming multi platform publisher and took on different projects, like Ski Racing 2005: Featuring Hermann Mayer, which has been developed by the Swedish developer Coldwood Interactive on three different platforms.

Later, Michael worked as a freelancer for various companies. For JoWooD Software AG, together with the Slovenian developer Zootfly and US Designer Bob Bates, he worked on the game First Battalion He returned 2017 in working with Bob Bates on his new text adventure Thaumistry: In Charm’s Way.

In the following years he worked in producing positions for Playlogic (2005/2006), Steel Monkeys (2006 - 2008) and Gameforge (10/2009 - 03/2011). In August 2011 he founded his own company Flying Fishkopp Productions which is a contractor for free-to-play and mobile game content. In 2012 he also started to write for the magazine Chip Power Play.

From 2016 till 2017 he also gained valuable experience in various new fields, while working for the Social Gambling company Platogo in Vienna and shortly after that started with the small Developer/Publisher Wild River Games in Munich, where he is mainly responsible for production, platform submissions and licensor relationships. In 2020 and 2021 Michael worked mainly on the production of the game Horse Club Adventure for PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PS4. And he also wrote (and still writes) numerous articles for gaming website gamersglobal.de.

Additionally, he worked on following games (as of August 2021): * Ostwind Gold - Product Manager * Pilot Sports - Product Manager * Gelly Break - Product Manager * Ostwind: Aris Ankunft - Product Manager * WoodPunk - Release Manager * Das Schwarze Auge: Book of Heroes - Producer * Eldrador: Creatures - Producer / Submissionmanager * Horse Club Adventures - Lead Designer / Producer / Submissionmanager * Ooops 2! The Game - Producer / Submissionmanager