Hi Everyone!

Thanks so much for checking out our first official devlog for Hero.EXE. Let’s get started!

In this post we are going to be addressing three main points. What is Hero.EXE?  Where is Hero.EXE now? and Where is Hero.EXE going?

What is Hero.EXE

It’s become apparent not everyone fully understands what Hero.EXE is supposed to be, so let me fully explain. Hero.EXE is an action RPG inspired by the Megaman Battle Network series.The player controls a character on a 6 x 3 grid where half of the grid is yours and half your opponents’. You then use a combination of cards and abilities to defeat your opponent or alternatively get defeated by your opponents’ abilities. To put it in no uncertain terms Hero.EXE and Battle Network have nearly identical combat.

Now where do they differ?

Well, Hero.EXE uses a deeper card system than other games like it. Cards function as the game’s main attacks, customization, and depth. We took a lot of inspiration from games like Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone for the card designs, but we made them unique to our system. Cards can only be gained as drops from enemies or through in game merchants. We will be showing off more of the card system in the future.

Hero.EXE is also about the story and journey you and your character go through. You see when you play Hero.EXE you are not your character. You are still yourself and the relationship between you and your character affects the game.

At the start of the game you choose an A.V.A. (Artificial, Virtual, Assistant) An Ava is your companion throughout the game. Each Ava has their own quirks abilities, and story.

Now during the game you will experience visual novel like scenes where you and your Ava come across some sort of encounter and you will have a decision or dialogue option. Dependent on your Ava’s personality and ideals they may disagree or even resent you for your decisions. This in turn has some effects on combat and your ability to control your Ava.

As you and your Ava progress through the game your relationship will affect different things. If you treat your Ava badly they may disobey you in combat. If you treat them well , they may survive a hit that should have defeated them. The relationship and context between you and your Ava really important to the game.

Where is Hero.EXE in Development?

Originally when we announced Hero.EXE it was a different beast. We planned on having the Demo done and showing to publishers by December. However, in that time we’ve gained a lot more resources. New team members, top notch voice acting, and better tools. Hero.EXE has been development for half a year. In that time we have implemented a lot of systems and mechanics.

So why haven’t you seen any definitive game play? Three reasons.

The first is our team. We have 7 core developers but, this is a passion project for us. We fund the game entirely by ourselves and we all have full time jobs. We have a Mom, a Student, a Security Guard and others on the team. We try to put as much time as we can in the game, but obviously we have responsibilities.

The Second is the card system. The card system proved incredibly difficult to program. Thankfully the system is now “Mostly” complete with some touch ups needed in the future. The programmer working on that system is so incredibly burnt out that we are going to switch him over to something easier. Shout out to Tom stay strong and pass your classes.

Lastly….Well, to be blunt a lot of the game needs a combat overhaul. Over the past few weeks it has become apparent that we made a mistake early in development.

When we first started building the game in May; we decided that it would be best to imitate Battle Network’s combat as much as we can. This was actually a huge mistake for several reasons.

One, being that Battle Network’s combat was designed over ten years ago.

Two, being that the combat was designed to be used on a really old portable piece of hardware with limited processing power.

Lastly, the combat as is just doesn’t feel very good compared to today’s games.

We have a ton of stuff done, but none of it is really that interesting. Menus, Over World UI, Title Screens, etc. We’ve started work on a much smoother and faster pace combat system. So that leads us to…

Where is Hero.EXE going?

To be perfectly frank. There is a 0% the game will not release in some form. We have spent too much time, energy, money, and love to give up. We have started on a complete overhaul of the combat with a new pipeline and a new focus. The team has been reinvigorated to show what we can do.

What does this mean for me? It means starting on January first you will be seeing actually living game play works in progress, consistently. We will be posting real content from the game in all of our media. Discord,Twitter,Tumblr, Reddit all of it.

So when will the demo be done? With the new overhaul we will have to push back our demo date some months. Tentative answer Q1 or Q2 of 2019, but that will be the publisher demo. Our main goal right now is to have the funding to finish the game in 12 months. That means getting the demo together showing it to some publishers and hopefully getting the funding needed to have a couple of our team members quit their jobs to work on the game full time. We have a few contacts in publishing that are interested, but we need the demo first.

What’s in the overhaul? New movement systems, character specific mechanics, defensive mechanics, a bunch of stuff. Its going to take a while to finish, but I promise it’ll be worth the wait.

What about Kickstarter? If we need to do any crowd funding we will have the full demo for the players to try as part of the campaign. We will also be conducting some early play testing on our Discord Server. No crowdfunding without a fully playable demo.

Phew and that’s everything. Sorry this post was so long we wanted to give everyone a really solid idea of why this is taking so long. We promise you’ll be seeing stuff from us.