Game News Free Adventure RPG Heroine's Quest Released

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Crystal Shard; Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok

If you've been looking for a new game in the vein of Quest for Glory, you may be interested to know that the adventure RPG Heroine's Quest has finally been released today - and you can download it for free:

Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok is an adventure / RPG hybrid. Like in many adventure games, you have a world to save, and must use your wit, guile and inventory to puzzle your way through. Like in many roleplaying games, you can customize your character with various classes and skills, and must train yourself in combat to stand a chance against the fierce monsters in your way.

The game is designed in the spirit and atmosphere of the classics, and strives to have the same high quality of art, music, and plot. With multiple character classes and several solutions to many puzzles, the game has excellent replayability.

Features:
- Explore the rich world of Norse mythology!
- Three character classes with separate side quests: use your strength as a warrior, the arcane arts as a sorceress, wit and guile as a rogue, or create a hybrid with skills from multiple classes.
- 32 distinct voice acted characters with animated portraits.
- Over 100 hand-painted backgrounds and 10,000 sprites in animations.
- Many monsters, including giants, trolls, and svartalfar.
- High replayability due to optional quests, alternative solutions, and the three different classes.

Available for download from www.crystalshard.net/hq.htm.​

The game is free, but you can also support the devs by throwing some of your spare change at them via Paypal (by using the link on the download page).

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Brofisted because not Infi.

 

[V_K]

It's funny how the best games I've played in the last 10 years were all freeware (Dark Disciples 1&2 and now this). And given how indies usually turn out much better that AAAs, it's almost like the game's quality is really inversely proportional to its budget.

 

[Surf Solar]

Gonna grab this, looks and reads amazing!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Why is this not on steam? And where are muh cheevos and DLC :patriot:

 

[MicoSelva]

Looks nice, but is it any good?

 

[Dickie]

Here's a trailer with no information, in case anyone cares. I was hoping it'd show some gameplay.

 

[Berekän]

Looks nice, but is it any good?

Give it a try, it's free!

 

[V_K]

Looks nice, but is it any good?

Well, I'm halfway through chapter 2 (of I don't know how many) and having a blast so far. It's much like Quest for Glory but with more RPG - better combat, some survival/scavenging, alchemy.

 

[Zed]

fuq yis im gonna play this so hard tonite
pixels n' blonde chix n' puzzles n' adventure n' fite
what more can you ask for

 

[Servo]

Looks cool but why the voice acting? I wish devs would stop wasting their time and money on that shit. The kind of people who play games like this know how to read.

 

[abnaxus]

Was this developed by JarlFrank?

 

[Fizzii]

Thanks for making this news post

Looks cool but why the voice acting? I wish devs would stop wasting their time and money on that shit. The kind of people who play games like this know how to read.

You'd be surprised how many people expect voice acting in a game nowadays; some people have passed over other adventure games before because of the lack of a voice pack. Matter of preference really. I recommend giving the voices a go, because (in my opinion), most of them are really good and bring a lot of life to the characters, plus they help you with remembering the various Nordic names if you aren't familiar with them already. If you end up wanting to play with muted voices regardless, you can always put the speech slider in the game options to minimum, and they will be silent (also ensure that the 'text advances automatically' option is unchecked).

For the record, we didn't need to spend any money on it as many of the actors were kind enough to help us out for free even though they also do professional voice work. And the main thing which took the longest time was the programming, so organising a voice pack never slowed down the progress of the game

Was this developed by @JarlFrank?

The game is developed by Crystal Shard (of which I am a member); JarlFrank made the first post about Heroine's Quest when our first trailer was released back in February this year.

 

[Zed]

first impressions (after an hour): loving this!

+ lovely graphics.
+ good enough voice acting (! wasn't even expecting voices).
+ charming chuckle-humor. python references (at least better than arrow to the leg, r00fles).
+ good challenge (at least early on, and even at low difficulty).
+ nice survival stuff, i.e. you have to eat, keep warm, rest.
+ lovely music.
+ RADIANT A.I. :p NPCs walk around town, shops seem to keep schedules and stuff.

- no mouse-over indication. absolutely not a big deal and perhaps many prefer not to have this.
- fornsigtuna is a very silly-sounding name for a city if you're a swede. there's a place called sigtuna outside stockholm and "forn" means something of the past. err, whatever.
- no fullscreen (window size isn't the problem, the fact that it's a window is; just fullscreen with black border to keep the upscaled size would be fine).
- somewhat clunky to use items.

 

[Fizzii]

Hey Zed, thanks for the comments!

Regarding full screen - there is actually an option in the form of an icon called 'Heroine's Quest fullscreen'. It should be in your Start menu next to 'Heroine's Quest', or in the directory where you installed the game to.

 

[SCO]

First 'death' try to refuse the jarl's request twice. (once is cool too).
For fullscreen i just edited the AGS config file but i noticed the shortcut after too.

Bug on the guild bookshelf, on the last 'animal' entry there is a obvious placeholder for images.
Also funny cosmetic 'problem' with the lower right border in fullscreen and icons (they get hidden until they reach the center, but only partially on the lower right).

The heroines voice is strangely uninflected, although many of the other voices are nice. Maybe it was a last minute addition? QFG didn't have voices for the main character and it was all 3rd person narrator on dialog parts referring to the hero.

 

[Alex_Steel]

I came here for a game about druge addicts but found something that looks much more interesting.

I'm downloading it now, if I like it I will send some money when I can. Thanks Fizzii for giving it for free anyway.

 

[Servo]

TAnd the main thing which took the longest time was the programming

Whoa.... definitely have to have a look see then. That is almost unheard of these days

 

[Crooked Bee]

A really charming game from what I've played so far, and seems to nail the Quest for Glory style of exploration and atmosphere quite well.

Loving the music, too.

All in all, a real pleasure to play and a perfect game for the winter holiday.

 

[SCO]

Crooked Bee can you do a post about seventh sense too? They published the book 13 of the magnakai lone wolf series (the first of the second series, the client goes from 1-13) on christmas. When AoD comes out, the main page should be renamed CYOACodex too for good measure.

 

[Decado]

I am a huge Quest for Glory nut. I just wrote a way-too-long blog post about the first one, and I plan on replaying/reviewing all of them in the next couple of weeks. I will download this and give a it whirl!

http://thegwumps.blogspot.com/

 

[Zed]

Hey Zed, thanks for the comments!

Regarding full screen - there is actually an option in the form of an icon called 'Heroine's Quest fullscreen'. It should be in your Start menu next to 'Heroine's Quest', or in the directory where you installed the game to.

awzummmm

 

[GrimoireFTW]

wow trailer looks awesome cant wait to try this. thanks for the game!

Quest For Glory was one of my first computer games when I was a kid, such a great game that was. Great sequels also

 

[SerratedBiz]

Already downloaded and into the second chapter, myself. Disabled voice acting and the experience is very much improved.

The Quest for Glory vibe is strong, screens are filled with very interesting details (lots of stuff to click and you get different responses whether you look, touch or talk to people or even objects, which is awesome). All in all, the game I've been waiting for probably since QFG4.

 

[SuicideBunny]

any way to remap combat keys or resize the bigass window? i'd love to play but z and y being switched on german keyboards and the window taking up most of my monitor despite being friggin lowres are very annoying.

editing acsetup.cfg and changing gfxfilter from max to none/stdscale2/stdscale3 works for resizing, if anyone else hates it being so big.