People Can Fly

Lore & Background

In the world of Painkiller, the player assumes the role of a silent, heavily armed warrior torn between the realms of Heaven and Hell. The narrative is deliberately pulpy—demons, divine intervention, chainsaws, and rocket launchers coexist in a tone that treats cosmic horror as a backdrop for pure mechanical spectacle. The protagonist is defined not by dialogue or backstory but by the sheer kinetic energy of every encounter.

The broader People Can Fly catalogue shares a through-line: the player is always the fastest, loudest, most destructive force in the room. Gears of War translated that philosophy into a cover-based third-person shooter where every corridor fight ends in a burst of bone-crunching impact. Bulletstorm leaned into a satirical, over-the-top gunplay system where creativity in killing was literally rewarded. Ghostrunner distilled the studio's DNA into a single, razor-sharp loop: dash, slash, kill, repeat, at breakneck speed.

The studio's internal culture, as reflected in its public-facing work, favours bold visual identity and mechanical clarity over narrative subtlety. Characters are archetypes; levels are arenas; the player's agency is the story.

In Their Own Story

The corridor lights flicker to a sickly amber. You feel the weight of the chainsaw before you even see it—oil and heat pressing against your palms. Somewhere ahead, a Wraith shrieks, its voice splitting the stone walls of the Pandemonium fortress. You don't slow down. You never slow down. The next room is a cathedral of broken pews and dripping ichor, and the next is a void of black fire where gravity is a suggestion. You pull the trigger, and the world answers with a thunderclap of muzzle flash and screaming metal. This is not a story. This is a feeling, and it has no off switch.

Reader's Guide

People Can Fly's creative process has consistently prioritised mechanical feel over narrative depth. Early Painkiller titles were built on a heavily modified Unreal Tournament 2003 codebase, giving the studio a head start on networking and weapon handling while they layered in their signature gore and environmental destruction.

The shift to Unreal Engine 3 for Gears of War marked a turning point. The studio embraced the engine's Niagara-style particle systems (then called the FX system) and its advanced lighting to create the signature mud-and-blood aesthetic. Motion capture was used for character animations, but the studio was known for hand-tuning the most impactful moments—headshots, ragdoll chains, and the satisfying 'crunch' of a kill—frame by frame.

Critically, Painkiller was praised for its raw, unfiltered combat and memorable level design, though its single-player campaign was considered short. Gears of War became a genre-defining title on Xbox 360, and the studio's work there cemented the cover-shooter formula for a generation. Bulletstorm received mixed reviews for its narrative but was widely admired for its inventive kill-scoring system.

The Ghostrunner series brought the studio back to its roots: a single, perfectly tuned combat loop, a striking cyberpunk-visual identity, and a soundtrack that matches the speed of the action. Fans of fast, punishing, style-forward shooters consistently point to People Can Fly as a benchmark for mechanical polish.

Did You Know?

• People Can Fly was founded by the same two developers—Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński—who later left to establish CD Projekt, the studio behind The Witcher series.
• The original Painkiller (2004) was built on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine, allowing the studio to ship a polished, network-ready FPS quickly.
• Ghostrunner (2020) was developed with Unreal Engine 4 and became a commercial and critical surprise hit, revitalising the studio's independent identity after years of larger-scale projects.
• The studio's name, 'People Can Fly,' was chosen as a playful, irreverent nod to the Polish gaming scene's underdog status in the late 1990s.