Get over it
Do you have a similar taste in video and computer games as me? I’m dedicating this blog to a review of one of my favorite computer games – released in July, 2018. It’s about those lovable rogues, like Han Solo, Bronn, Jack Sparrow, and Guybrush Threepwood, along with the code of honor and morality that differentiates them from thieves and cutthroats. This game has much in common with LucasArts’ Curse of Monkey Island, but its a little more subtle and epic. Sound interesting? I told Leanne that I knew she would love this game and needed to trust me and play it. She’s now addicted!
It’s a small budget indie game with a huge amount of depth and I really want to see it succeed and achieve the planned sequels. So I’ve done my best below to share what makes this game special for me, personally, though you might find you enjoy the game for reasons of your own as there is so much going on and so many ways to play it. So what is this game?…
Hero-U – Rogue to Redemption is Harry Potter meets The Sims and that is a really good thing!
You play a student named Shawn O’Connor in a class for Rogues at a magical university called Hero-U. Taking place on a parallel magical Earth, you have one semester to battle through exams, plotting classmates, private wagers and competition, unlocking secret passages throughout the castle, exploration in the catacombs, and battling or negotiating with monsters from rats to wraiths. This game is $34.99 on Steam and worth the dive for anyone who loves immersive adventure gaming, from two of the greatest video game creators in the Adventure genre, Lori and Corey Cole.
I’m using a pop-culture comparison here because it would be such a shame for fans of either to miss out on the chance to give this gem of a game a chance. It’s so hard for indie games to get noticed amid the sea of big money mainsteam publishers. Both the world of Harry Potter and the video game franchise The Sims capture much of what makes this game great, but with the caveat that this is very much a uniquely flavored world of its own built upon previous Adventure RPGs that were its forerunners. This is an adventure and RPG game that should not be judged merely on first appearances because there are layers upon layers to uncover.
Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is a game driven by its characters and how you manage your relationships with them. There are games within games here. Literally, with a weekly poker-style card game you can play against your classmates as one of many non-combat ways of making money, as well as games within games in the form of romance. You might have a romance that can hurt friendships, or you can cheat and damage a current romance. You can say things that upset your friends and your reputation, in their eyes, will take a knock. You can work hard to rebuild a friendship, or simply move on. At the same time you have to eat, sleep, work, study, and still find time to go off and adventure within and below the castle grounds.
The immersion arises from the engrossing simulation of being a student at a magical school with a power-tripping school admin as one of the many down-to-earth obstacles that balance with the ghosts and monsters that litter the school’s dark corners. This game captures something I’m calling “the edge of comfort” in that, you have the familiar of the school side of the game set against the hidden dangers of magical and monstrous proportions. The chance to have your character’s heart broken, or be stabbed in the back by a friend, is a little less stressful but equally enjoyable to the more epic fantasy situations that develop throughout the semester.
REPLAY VALUE
The dungeon crawling is auxiliary to this game, and rather than hunt and sell, you can choose to focus on exploration to reconnect items and loved ones, or uncover mysteries and solve problems for friends and ghosts around you. Hack ‘n Slash, this game is not, although you can try your darndest inbetween your busy semester.
In short, this game is highly re-playable because you can’t solve every problem in one run, and you can pursue different friendships at the expense of others… and you’ll always have that feeling that there was some secret passage or room you didn’t quite manage to find, or do not yet know about. What if you try being nicer to one of the characters you ignored last time through?
IMMERSION
There’s an intimacy between the game and the player in Hero-U. Time management is such a factor in this game that there is a good balance between excitement and nervous tension as to whether you will let down a fellow classmate, miss an important lecture and chance to make a trap during class, or trigger a plot event in time to save the day. However, the game is not all about suspense at all, even if it does manage to do creepy very well if you stray into the darker areas within the university.
Indie games can surprise you with their level of immersion and the fun that can be found outside the marquee big budget games from large publishers. It can feel like we are overexposed to clone after clone of hack ‘n slash games with overblown cinematic cut scenes and celebrity voice acting. Maybe we can fall into the trap of being drawn to games on the superficial level. So many games these days are cookie cutter builds with the skin of a licensed property thrown over the top. How about something different? It is so easy for your casual and even diehard gamers to overlook those diamonds in the rough.
My comparison to Harry Potter stems from the game’s setting, but originates from the game’s predecessors having established a Correspondence School For Heroes way back in 1989. For fans of Potter, Hero-U definitely scratches the itch for strong storytelling, great characters they can relate to and care for, and a school for heroes (including wizards). Although the setting is a little more fantastical and is not set in our contemporary 21st century, the characters and daily life in Hero-U is very much transplanted from our familiar society, with a tongue and cheek attitude toward anachronisms.
COMEDY
Hero-U lets you shape the story of Shawn’s semester and steer a different path to the end through multiple playthroughs.
Shawn, the main character, has witty and sarcastic dialogue options, but his inner monologue that he shares with the player throughout the story brings humor out of both mundane and fantastic situations. You know that the game is loosely aware of its own tropes, but never intrudes enough to become Discworld or Monty Python. The silly, when it is there, is brief and punctuates a three-dimensional world filled with consequences.
The writing is humorous and often silly, but always as a seasoning to a deep adventure that is built around emotional growth and facing real dangers of the Saruman and Voldemort school of villainy. You have amusing zombie pirates, balanced with the much more sinister evil of fallen wizards who have sold their soul for dark powers, ready to unleash other-dimensional terror upon the world. However, don’t be surprised when an evil wraith shows a sarcastic sense of humor, or some monsters turn out to be open for negotiation rather than combat.
This game’s willingness to be more than hack ‘n slash is part of its charm. Rogues are famous for being able to talk and joke their way out of almost any situation. If you are familiar with LucasArts Curse of Monkey Island series, starring Guybrush Threepwood, then you will appreciate Hero-U’s personality.
ADVENTURE GAMING WITH TEETH
I want to acknowledge Lori and Corey Cole, the husband and wife who were the creators of Sierra’s revolutionary Adventure-RPG hybrid computer game series “Quest for Glory” in the late 80s to late 90s.
I loved those games for the writing, the tone and art-styles, and for the roleplaying skills mechanic that they introduced to adventure games, injecting some extra spice into an already enjoyable genre. QFG combined non-linear story-driven mystery with a way to personalize your playthrough by not only adding combat, but letting you choose which skills you felt needed to be honed and sharpened. It was Kings Quest with teeth.
You chose the style of game you wanted to play. There was more than one path to complete the game and having different skills that helped you pursue unique pathways to becoming the hero at the end made it feel like you were truly in the driver’s seat. You also had the capability to transfer your character and their stats and inventory over to later games in the series.
I had worried that having a fixed character of Shawn O’Connor as the hero, rather than one that the player creates and name’s, would make Hero-U less immersive. However, Shawn feels the part, and with all his options for skills, I felt just as engrossed with developing and raising various skill stats of my choosing that I was very happy with the experience.
HERO-U vs QFG?
Players who are unfamiliar with QFG will have no more trouble appreciating Hero-U than a Star Wars fan starting at A New Hope hearing Obi-Wan’s mentioning of the Clone Wars.
Hero-U is far more than a spiritual successor. This game proves that Lori and Corey Cole ARE QFG; in that sense, their wonderful fantasy imaginations, quirky ironic humor, taste for adventure and romance, and desire to draw the player into an intelligent story with a great moral heart, are what makes both QFG series and Hero-U so wonderful!
It’s a bit like what Star Trek the Next Generation did for Star Trek the Original Series. It builds its own legacy and provides a fresh jumping in point. It adds to the depth of the setting, but isn’t integral. Rogue to Redemption so easily captures the soul of what made QFG good that you are focused on the present and the future of this series, rather than the past.
Before loading this game up and actually playing it at long last, I did not think I would be able to escape comparisons to QFG, but I found I was right back in Neverland, and in a game just as addictive –perhaps more so! Hero-U is enormous fun to explore even while your character is confined to the bounds of your fortress university and its dungeons and catacombs. You’ll be left wanting to know the secrets of certain characters and rooms which remain for the later sequels. Let’s just say, I want to know more about Mortuai…
GRAPHICS AND ART STYLE
I’ll tell you upfront that I like the graphics and the complimentary cartoony art style. In terms of technology, this game is not state of the art or cutting edge, but the utilization of the Unity engine on which the game is built offers a much deeper playing experience than a player may at first realize. This is an indie game and the visuals aren’t intended to compete with games built largely upon their graphics with a huge budget to match. Within a few minutes you will be hit by the number of ways this game immerses you of which the graphics are but one part.
In the 90s I was hesitant about the shift from the 2D cartoon art-style into 3D isometric like Diablo for the final of the QFG series, Dragon Fire. It seemed like a big change, and I felt like it may be a sign that the magic of the game had been lost. Today’s the Star Wars original trilogy is starting to date with its puppets and model effects, however I doubt it is nostalgia that keeps those three movies so enjoyable to watch. It’s the story that helps lift everything around it. Once again with Hero-U, the enchanting quality of these games lies not so much in the packaging, but in the heart and soul provided by the Coles’ imaginative world and sense of humor.
The story in Dragon Fire, and the options available to the player made me feel truly a part of it. With Hero-U, that 3D isometric style continues, but in a more polished and accomplished form. I think the art style that suits the Coles’ games so well –particularly the illustrations for the character dialogue and cutscenes– continuing that cartoony tone that helped make the QFG series so endearing.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Transolar Games, the Coles’ games publishing company, has given fans of the fantasy genre a quirky world full of heroism, romance, serpents, warlocks, anthropomorphic humans from many different epochs all in one place. So, if you like Harry Potter, this is worth checking out. If you like playing “The Sims”, you might also want to try this for the time management and relationship development. But Hero-U is far more than either. In truth, this game is for many different kinds of people, and especially those that like to try indie games that take you on a journey.
I think Hero-U genuinely stands out as probably the best of the games by the Coles so far, including the QFG series, which is extremely near and dear to my heart. This game is full of character just like its distant predecessors. Given that the Coles were able to produce and publish this game themselves it deserves to be on your radar and locked into your targeting computer. Make the trench run to the Steam or GOG store and pick up a copy.
With future installments of Hero-U allowing you to play new characters in different classes, such as the immediate sequel “The Wizard’s Way”, players will get the chance to discover parts of the castle that were closed off to them in Rogue to Redemption, and learn more of the epic backstory surrounding the tragic heroes who built it. I’m on board for the future installments and I invite you to join me for a unique and addictive gaming experience.
http://hero-u.net/forum/index.php
Several years ago I promoted the Hero-U Rogue to Redemption Kickstarter campaign. There is so much more I could say about this game and my own experience with games by the Coles since I discovered them as a teenager. I don’t have the room to say all I want, and I don’t know how much more you would want to listen. So just know that this, for me, is a special game that defies many conventions. Please spread the word so that none of your friends with an interest in this sort of experience misses out.
May the Forciness be with you, always!