KickStarter Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption - adventure-RPG from the creators of Quest for Glory

[MRY]

It's amazing to me that there is a near certainty that either the decision to surname the protagonist "O'Conner" or the decision to have a German professor was all in the service of the pun "Herr O." I don't know whether to salute or weep.

Overall, here are the things that struck me. My priority order might seem crazy, but it is what it is.

(1) Glad they have a game.
(2) That music is painfully boring, especially in comparison to the QFG theme.
(3) The order of gameplay shown is fairly troubling. No traditional adventure gameplay that I saw. Instead, it goes: slow walking; visual novel (possibly not interactive); puzzle minigame a la Castle of Dr. Brain or something; slightly faster walking; briefest flash of having interaction options with a rose bush; cutscene; poker minigame; weird highlight of "you're not skilled enough to be a Warrior" as if there were class selection, but AFAIK you have to be a rogue; attractive but fairly shallow combat.
(4) The combination of #3 and #4 meant that this felt nothing like QFG for me.

Still, I hope they get over the finish line and make a million bucks!

[EDIT:]

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/2074558

Happy Holidays from Hero-U

Merry Christmas and an Awesome New Year!

First, and most importantly, we wish all our backers and fans a wonderful holiday season. Have a great Christmas and a safe and happy New Year. Lori and I are doing something special this year - our first real vacation in 30 years or so. We’ll be spending Christmas in Barcelona, Spain, recharging our energy before the final push on Hero-U.

Testing and Project Progress
After some initial challenges, we opened Alpha testing to a few backers in August. Since then we’ve invited 100 top backers and have 30 testers exercising the game.

And boy have they been exercising! The testers have reported over 1000 bugs and suggestions for design improvements, most of which we’ve been able to address. We’ve also addressed several hundred automatically reported issues with the game.

This has, as expected, been quite a challenge for our small team. Every day we face the question, “Do we keep polishing the parts of the game we’ve been testing, or spend the time getting the next section ready for testing?” For the most part, we’re making sure there are no story-wrecking problems anywhere in the game.

What we didn’t expect was the passion this small group of playtesters has applied to playing Hero-U. Many of the suggestions have been incredibly insightful, causing Lori to rewrite and add entire sections of dialogue to improve the game flow and responsiveness to player actions.

Our next steps will be to open the testing process to all 340 backers who supported us at an alpha test level. Once all of the game content is ready to test, we’ll open the floodgates to over 4000 Beta testers. At each stage, we raise the stakes for the team as we continue to develop the final sections of the game while fixing and improving the parts that we thought were “done”.

We’ve made a great amount of progress thanks to the team and our testers, but there is still quite a bit to be done before release.

Remaining to be done:

• Opening cinematic is coming along really well, but still needs time to finish.
• The Catacombs need to be polished, then submitted for testing.
• We’re currently doing a major rework on one Catacombs puzzle that required combat. We promised Adventure-Treff that Hero-U could be completed without combat, and we’re delivering on that promise!
• The Dungeon area needs some polish before we can add it to the testing queue.
• The final scene of the game - the endgame - has not yet been programmed and needs a little more dialogue.
• We need to get the Steam achievements integrated into Steam.
• Final testing, and then release.

We’ve just released a “sneak preview” of the Catacombs to testers. All of the scenes are navigable, but occasionally a bit crazy - Shawn steps through a doorway and ends up on his back in the next scene. We plan to have full Catacombs functionality in place for the next test build in mid-January.

The adjusted schedule:

• Catacombs about Jan. 15
• The Dungeon early in February, with the endgame added in late February.
• Meanwhile, we’ll improve game settings, add additional sound effects, implement Steam achievements, and finalize the opening cinematic.
• Game release - between March 15 and April 15.

I would love to say a flat “March 15 is the release date”, but as we’ve seen, many things can happen during testing that can cause us to step back and spend extra time reworking an area of the game. Still, March 15 is our target release date.

Shawn isn't the only Hero at Hero-U

Walking through the Uncanny Valley
We first heard the term “Uncanny Valley” while working at Sierra. As long as games were obviously low-resolution and cartoony, players had no problem ignoring glaring flaws in graphics quality, sound, and storytelling. Games were obviously not films, and that was fine.

At the same time, we knew we could do a lot better, and we did. Through the 1990s, Sierra games went from 4 colors to 16 to 256, doubled their resolution, and started to experiment with 3D graphics. Audio went from PC speaker single-voice “beeps and boops” to 3- and 4-voice sound and MIDI to fully-orchestrated tracks and synthesizer-quality sound cards. The user interface went from typing to point-and-click - I still think there is much more to be done in that area. Storytelling went from simplistic “game logic” to something approaching Hollywood and even art films.

But there’s a danger to coming too close to the domain of the gods. The ancient Greeks called it “hubris”. In modern terms, there is an invisible line between acceptance of game flaws as “fantasy”, vs. getting close enough to real life that players start expecting the game to *be* real. Based on tester feedback, we’re coming perilously close to that line with Hero-U.

We’ve been getting “uncanny valley” feedback on Hero-U much more than with any previous game. Players get so involved in the conversations and action, they feel as though they are really at Hero-U. This means we can’t just take the easy way out that Sierra used so often - “Oh, they’re doing that? We can’t handle that. Kill the character if they try it.” Instead, we add additional dialogue chains, obstacles, and puzzles.

This feedback is one of the reasons we are taking a lot of extra time making sure we get every sequence in the game “right”. We don’t want Hero-U to feel like “just another adventure game” or RPG. If players notice that a character’s dialogue in one scene or event doesn’t seem to match up with what they’ve said or done earlier, we change it to improve continuity. In many cases, the correct dialogue already exists, but there is an error in the scripting code that causes lines to come up out of order. As we walk through the Uncanny Valley, it’s no longer good enough to have some characters that talk - they have to feel real.

Game Play Video
Al Eufrasio put together this game play video to highlight how Hero-U plays.

Incidentally, there is a graphical glitch in one scene of the video due to processing, but don't worry - that doesn’t happen in the game.

Resource Reminders
Please keep your email and address current at https://hero-u-adventure-role-playing-game.backerkit.com

Participate in the Hero-U forum at http://www.hero-u.net/forum/

Our FaceBook page is https://www.facebook.com/TheSchoolForHeroes/.

And of course our project updates are on Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-adventure-role-playing-game/updates.

Check out A Tale of Two Kingdoms on Steam (art by JP Selwood) - http://store.steampowered.com/app/603870/A_Tale_of_Two_Kingdoms/ This game features our own JP Selwood’s background art, and was recently re-released on Steam. It’s an adventure game based on Celtic mythology.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://hero-u.com/racing-to-the-finish-line/

Racing to the Finish Line

The race to ship Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is on. Thank you for your patience and understanding. This race has been long and arduous – a marathon rather than a sprint – but we never lost sight of our goal to make Hero-U as awesome as our backers and fans. Your trust and understanding have been our inspiration and encouragement.

Testing 1 2 3
Rogue to Redemption is an extremely complex game that gives the player many opportunities to change the course of the lives of Shawn and his fellow students. Every action Shawn takes in the game can have huge repercussions later on. That means that it can take many playthroughs before a player uncovers all of Hero-U’s secrets.

Hero-U is undergoing intensive Alpha Testing right now, and we will soon open up testing to many more players. All the secret passages, hidden treasures, and nasty monsters are being discovered, recovered, and bashed upon. They have already uncovered many interesting bugs for us to fix, and we look forward to learning about and fixing many more.

We promise that we will release this game as bug-squashed as possible.

The most important feedback we are getting from our Alpha testers is that Hero-U is fun to play. Yay! That’s something we never know until players get their hands on the game. It means that all that work we’ve put into designing Hero-U to be a unique and entertaining adventure game resonates with our players. They like it – and we hope that you will, too.

State of the Art (and Programming)

At this point, the room art and animation for the game are completed. There are only a few bits of polishing artwork left to add for special effects. The dialogue scripts have all been written. The room interaction scripts to-do list is down to the last couple of areas. Every room in the game has had some programming work. We’re down to the polishing and clean-up phase of development.

In other words, we’re in the home stretch to our goal of shipping Hero-U.

It has taken years of hard work, inspiration, exploration, evolution, and compromise to bring this game to this stage of development. Now comes the phase where we make certain every aspect of this game is as fun and exciting as possible. Our Alpha testers are giving us plenty of suggestions on how to make the game better. We’re doing everything we can to make Hero-U even greater.

The Finish Line

This race isn’t over yet. We’ll be adding hundreds of new testers over the next few weeks. We want to get as many people as we can involved in finding and eliminating all the creepy-crawling bugs that hide in the woodwork of the world of Hero-U. These devoted people are making sure that you get to play the best game possible.

So here’s a cheer to everyone who is willing to playtest our game! They have chosen to face the frustrations of finding that a puzzle can’t be solved, or that a friend can’t be found, all because some bug munched on a line of code. Thanks to these brave and loyal fans, we will be able to ship Hero-U full of fun for all.

Believe me, we are all looking forward to crossing that finish line as soon as possible!

 

[SerratedBiz]

I'm honestly both excited about the prospect of a Cole-designed game and scared shitless about my expectations being missed yet again.

 

[Burning Bridges]

With a name like "Hero-U" it can only be shit.

 

[taxalot]

The most fantastic thing about this is the delusion they are going to make several episodes.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I'm honestly both excited about the prospect of a Cole-designed game and scared shitless about my expectations being missed yet again. them losing their homes and lifelihood when this will almost inevitably bomb

 

[MRY]

With a name like "Hero-U" it can only be shit.

I share misgivings about the title Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. QFG actually was full of mood-breaking (mood-making?) puns and stuff ("Spielburg" or "antwerp" or some of the Erasmus stuff), but my image of it in retrospect is of a basically coherent setting (or series of settings), whereas this sounds much goofier, from the concept of a university for heroes (with the anachronistic "U" and the unusual hyphen) to the KQ-style punning subtitle. That kind of jars with "redemption," a very melodramatic concept.

Still, I have faith in the Coles. QFG1, 3, and 4 are all-time favorites of mine. (I always bounced off 2 because of the maze.)

 

[Lhynn]

Hero-U is a game no one asked for and no one wanted by a bunch of people that allegedly didnt seem to care.

If it ever gets released im thinking it wont suck tho. So hopefully well get to play it some day.

 

[V_K]

from the concept of a university for heroes

Didn't the QfG protagonist finish a hero course in some similar school though?

 

[Alex]

And on the second game you had a chance to join the WIT if you played as a magic user. I do get where MRY is coming from, but this example is a little bad because you had similar stuff in the Quest for Glory series.

 

[MRY]

Huh, I'd totally forgotten that. Just goes to prove Ron Gilbert's dictum about how the games we remember playing aren't the games we actually played. Looks like there were correspondence courses and also academies in the setting: http://questforglory.wikia.com/wiki/Famous_Adventurer's_Correspondence_School_for_Heroes

But my own dumb brain may itself be a foreboding sign for the game if that stuff got compartmentalized as a frame story for the manuals rather than as core setting.

 

[Irxy]

Looks like there is a global timer in the game. Hope it's not too severe, I hate timed games.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/2109037

Hero-U in the Final Alpha Stages

Game Development Progress
We’ve completed the first Alpha test stages, and I will soon be inviting every backer entitled to the Alpha and Beta Test perk. We’re currently polishing the Catacombs area of Hero-U and adding the Dungeon. At the beginning of March, we plan to add the Endgame and open up testing to everyone with the Beta Testing perk. The game will be complete at that point, but will undoubtedly have balance issues and bugs that we missed in earlier testing.

As we get closer to Code Complete, I can start making better estimates of how long it will take us to complete everything else. Lori has finished writing the game dialogue, and Josh Mandel is finishing up the last few object interactions. I still have some writing work to do on the endgame, game manual, Bestiary, and art book, and polish work to do on the Yearbook.

Depending on further testing results, we are likely looking at a mid-April 2018 release. To do that, we will need much more than the finished game and manual. We need to integrate it with every release platform, get keys to backers, and much more.

A Zombie Chorus Line - “Hey, watch where you’re sheathing that sword!”

“Racing to the Finish Line” on Hero-U.com
Lori posted a new blog entry on www.hero-u.com - http://hero-u.com/racing-to-the-finish-line/ - last month. Check it out. She writes most of the posts there, while I write most of the Kickstarter updates.

Alpha Testing - Watch for your Steam invitation
Earth’s listing in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy read simply, “Mostly harmless.” Now that our small cadre of pre-Alpha testers have helped us eliminate the most devastating bugs from Hero-U, I will soon be inviting all registered Alpha testers to experience the game-in-progress. It’s mostly playable now, with just the dungeon and endgame to be added over the next few weeks.

If your page on https://hero-u-adventure-role-playing-game.backerkit.com/ shows that you have the “Alpha and Beta Testing” perk, keep watch on your email for an Alpha test invitation within the next two weeks.

The team is looking forward to more testers with a mixture of anticipation, excitement, and concern (“terror” is much too strong a term). They’ve quashed over 1100 bugs so far, and with your help we’ll do our best to make the game squeaky-clean by release.

Sneaking Through the Sea Caves

What Do Our Testers Think About Hero-U?
So far the tester feedback has been very positive. Despite having to fight bugs, our testers have been very involved in the game and have good things to say about it.

I asked one tester, Raf M, to write up his impressions. Here are his concluding paragraphs. His full “impressions” report is at http://hero-u.com/hero-u-playtesting-feedback/.

"Based on what is currently playable in the alpha (and that is already quite a lot), I think that the gamers who liked Quest for Glory, will like Hero-U. I think it is clear that Hero-U is also a Lori and Corey Cole game."

"In my opinion, the game succeeds in making you feel that Shawn is at a school, but it’s essentially still a story driven RPG/adventure game hybrid, not a “school simulator”."

"I have spent quite a lot of time playing the alpha. I immediately liked the core of the game. If I didn’t, I would not have invested so much time playing an unfinished game with inevitable bugs. I am always looking forwards to new builds, so I can make more progress in the game."

"There is still more work to be done, but there is already a lot of content in the game. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is getting bigger and bigger. In my opinion, the alpha is strongly indicating that the long wait for the final game is almost over and it will be worth it."

Unsolicited, tester Richard Baxter wrote:

"I am finding the game really enjoyable (at day 30). The character interactions, visual emotions, music, atmosphere, lighting, environmental depth, story, comedy, portraits, statues, textures, and 3D animations are all incredible. I also find it (like Quest for Glory) a great learning programme in the finer points of heroism and ethical philosophy - which is one of the underlying themes (school)."

"I think Lori should become a director for a film, and do writing for similar games. Her characters are so much more interesting."

It’s difficult - maybe impossible - for us to judge our own work. It’s always a big relief when we release a game and find out that players like it. We’ve been very fortunate with that so far in that players say they like almost all of our games. We hope that Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption will continue that lucky legacy. (Game Success = 90% Luck, 90% Inspiration, and 90% Hard Work. It’s possible I should have taken that Statistics class I missed in college.)

 

[Lambonius]

Great isometric perspective graphics are a true art that takes an extremely fine level of stylistic nuance to pull off. This game does not appear to achieve that.

The problem is that the artist completely gives up the ability to compose the image in anything resembling an artful way, because the camera is locked to that ridiculous isometric view. It's fucking ugly and a monumental mistake for a story-driven adventure game. The Quest For Glory games succeeded in their world-building in a large part due to the imaginative and story-book quality of their backgrounds. This game crippled itself right out of the gate with this terrible design decision.

Compare the beauty of the promotional non-in-game paintings with the dogshit fuckery of the actual screenshots. What a travesty.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I want to say that whille the game's visuals reek of amateurism and poor art direction, one would hope that the game's strengths (writing, gameplay) make up for its weaknesses.

Unfortunately, at the same time I say this from the basis of hope, I'm absolutely unsure the game will sell enough to even recoup its costs. And presentation is a big part of what drives sales.

 

[Infinitron]

"Between April 15 and May 15": https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/2129416

So Close We Can Taste It

Most of Us Are Happy

The Pareto Principle says that 80% of results come from 20% of causes. I’ve often parodied that with my “90-90 rule of software development” - “90% of the project takes 90% of the schedule, and the last 10% takes the other 90%.” I even gave a 90-90-90 rule (Luck, Inspiration, and Hard Work) in my previous update.

Zeno (the Arrow Paradox) would have suggested that means that no game is ever finished… and he would be right! There is still a lot of work we would like to do on each of our previous games. But sooner or later, the boss walks into the room and declares, “Ship it!” Only then is a game officially “done”, but not really...

Fortunately, I’m happy to report that we’re much farther along with Hero-U than 90%. But there is still a huge amount of work to do. Releasing the game is only one stage in our 5+ year project. We also have to fulfill physical orders (posters, game boxes, and the Yearbook), write the text for the manuals, set up Steam and other web pages, promote the game, port it to consoles, and get started on the next games. Just thinking about all that is exhausting!

We’ve just released (to Alpha Testers) the first build that players can play all the way through from the beginning to the end! That is a huge milestone that looked very far away even a few months ago. All that is missing to declare “Code Complete” and move into the Beta Test phase is to clean up a few “boss combats” and improve the endgame flow and polish.

We also need some logistics to handle thousands of additional player-testers. That will probably include a discussion forum just for testers that we may be able to turn into a general support site after game release.

As we get closer to the finish line, I think I can do a better job of prediction than I’ve managed in the past. Our scheduled Beta Test date is March 15, but let’s say “by the end of March” to be safe. Game release will be 4-6 weeks after we enter Beta testing. That puts it somewhere between April 15 and May 15. Yes, THIS year, 2018.

Keeping In Touch
As we approach release, it’s very important that you keep your information on BackerKit up to date. You can find and edit it at https://hero-u-adventure-role-playing-game.backerkit.com/.

I received “hard email bounces” from five Alpha-level backers. I’ve managed to track four of them down, but I’m still looking for a current email for “GamerIntel”. If that’s you, please contact support (at) hero-u (dot) com and update your information on BackerKit.

For everyone else, please visit BackerKit and update your email and physical address information if either has changed.

You may also join in the discussions at http://hero-u.net/forum/. We plan to make a separate forum or a hidden area on the current forum for Beta test feedback.

Our FaceBook page is https://www.facebook.com/TheSchoolForHeroes/.

If you are a Beta Test level backer, you will receive an email from BackerKit when your Steam key is available for testing. All Beta testing will be on Steam so that you will automatically get patches when we update the game.

Let's Keep In Touch, Y'All

 

[MRY]

whille the game's visuals reek of amateurism and poor art direction

I bet these were just quick pics done for the Kickstarter update, though, and won't be in the game.

 

[SerratedBiz]

It may be a personal thing, but I feel like that art is amateurish and I'm not a fan. For example, it feels like the artist only ever worked on one limited set of faces and then began slapping facial hair or skin colors to make them varied. The bodies are stiff, perspective is often screwed up and the characters aren't even necessarily consistent over different vignettes. See the pictures above compared to this, for instance. Maybe it's a time thing and they've redone them, I dunno.

Don't get me wrong though, it's serviceable and amateurism can be a quality if a product is born out of passion. However, by now I'm afraid to look into how much this level of artwork cost the game in both time and money. Maybe not much. Hopefully, not at all.

At the end of the day, I'm going to buy this out of undying love for the people who created my favorite game series of all time, not because of the quality of the presentation thus far. I have far less hope that this will scratch my QFG itch compared to, before their respective releases, what I had for Heroine's Quest, QFI or the QFG2 remake.

 

[Taluntain]

whille the game's visuals reek of amateurism and poor art direction

I bet these were just quick pics done for the Kickstarter update, though, and won't be in the game.

I doubt it, the rest of what I've seen was along those lines too.

 

[Viata]

Huh, I'd totally forgotten that. Just goes to prove Ron Gilbert's dictum about how the games we remember playing aren't the games we actually played.

Which is a good reason to always replay them.

 

[Viata]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/1965158

Lori and I had a chat with two of the leaders of the DOS Games Club (https://www.dosgameclub.com/interview-with-the-coles/). This is a group that picks an old MS-DOS game each month. Everybody plays that game, then meets to discuss it, similar to a book club.

This seems cool as fuck.

 

[Sacred82]

do we have anyone with "beta access" here? I'm putting my money on that beta being super small, if it exists at all.



Be aware that I don't have any money. But you get the idea.

 

[Fizzii]

Someone has started posting about it on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventureg...verview_of_herou_features_upcoming_game_from/ , and then linked to a subreddit they've created to go into more detail.

Looks like it can be preordered here for $25: https://hero-u-adventure-role-playing-game.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/28888

I'll probably pick it up soon after it is released, from what I've heard the game is playing quite well, so I'm keen to check it out myself.

 

[Sacred82]

that "someone" got registered 6 months ago, and all his posts have to do with Hero-U. Are you shitting me?



Better to be a little paranoid than to be completely naive people.