Summer Daze at Hero-U Now Live On Kickstarter!
It’s now officially Autumn, which is a bit like “second Summer” here, but Lori and I are looking ahead to Summer. Specifically our new game, “Summer Daze at Hero-U,” which is a prequel to Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. We’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign for it at
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/summer-daze-at-hero-u.
This isn’t just a fundraising campaign for Summer Daze. We’re planning a really fun month of games, contests, livestreams, and other activities. This also happens to be the 30th anniversary of Hero’s Quest, so we’ll have that theme for some of the events.
Important Note: If you preordered Hero-U 2: Wizards Way (formerly “Wizard’s Way” - browsers hate punctuation), we will be fulfilling that by sending you a copy of Summer Daze at Hero-U when it’s finished. There’s no need to support the new campaign at the minimum level unless you want to get another copy for a friend. As I’ve reported previously in these updates, Rogue to Redemption has not been successful enough to fund another full-sized traditional adventure game such as Wizards Way. We still hope to do that in a year or two, but we aren’t there yet.
Summer Daze at Hero-U is a smaller, more focused game that we are able to make with a smaller budget. That doesn’t mean it has any less story or player choices. What we’ve cut out are walking around, examining every object you see, and the complex time mechanics of Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. Summer Daze plays more like a cross between a dating sim and an interactive storybook than a Sierra adventure game. Think Dream Daddy or Long Live the Queen, but with 10x the story and dialogue of games in their categories.
Incidentally, we’re a lot farther along on this game than we were when we Kickstarted Rogue to Redemption. We’ve been working on it for over a year, so most of the principle art is complete, and the game is fully plotted. You can play through the first day of Tilly’s story by downloading the free prototype demo from
https://transolar-games.itch.io/summer-daze. That will give you a good feel for the play style, although it isn’t final - We’ll add more decisions and dialogue choices as we refine the game.
With Summer Daze at Hero-U, we’re refining an adventure game down to its core - story, characters, and choices. Have you played games that caused you frustration because you knew what you wanted to do, but couldn’t find a way to communicate that to the game? I have that experience with pretty much all adventure and many other games.
Then there’s walking around. You did a lot of that in Hero-U. Some players loved it, and it made them nostalgic for 1990’s Sierra games. Others complained that it was too slow and painful. Or that they needed an automap because they kept getting lost. Or that they needed a “quick travel” option because they already knew where they wanted to go. And you know what? Every single one of those players was right… for the way they like to play games.
Too much walking? Try sneaking!
So we thought, “Our games are really about story, characters, and choices. Moving a small avatar around isn’t any of those. Searching for the right object to pick up isn’t one of those either. Those things are the most costly part of developing an adventure game, and they don’t really add to the experience. What if we took those out and focused on the parts that matter? Story! Characters! Choices!”
That’s not to say that story, characters, and choices are the only things that matter in a game. Beautiful art, charming characters, and uplifting music help create atmosphere and add to the story in their own ways. You wouldn’t need a computer to play a choose-your-own-adventure book. So we decided to make a beautiful game full of rich dialogue options, but without inventory management, pixel hunting, or maneuvering a small character around the screen. We decided to focus on the parts that we think matter most in a narrative adventure game.
The next question was, “What kind of stories do we want to tell?”
We see a lot of dark, grim games these days. Wars, insane asylums, vampires, murder, and more. As the “Mongolian Birthday Song” puts it, “Death, destruction, and despair, people dying everywhere. Happy birthday! Uhh!” (
http://caidwiki.org/index.php?title=Mongolian_Birthday_Song).
We’ve had some intense moments in our games. Shannara features the death of a major character. Quest for Glory IV has Vampires and Dark One cultists trying to turn the world to darkness, Quest for Glory V has a character assassinating a King and summoning a huge Dragon to lay waste to the countryside.
But along with that, we’ve always made sure our games include humor, friendship, and heart. Most people are basically good and helpful. A few are scoundrels, because without them, there’d be nothing for heroes to do. But on the whole, our games have positive, uplifting messages.
That might sound a little sappy, but it’s our way. We’re more interested in heroes, and what people can do at their best, than about the dark, grimy things they fight against. Shawn O’Conner is a rogue, yes, but he’s a rogue with a good heart who would much rather help people than hurt them. And of course the Quest for Glory hero is all about honor, friendship, and doing good.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Summer Daze at Hero-U. You’ll get to play as Tilly Appleberry, a sweet but mischievous rogue, or as Ifeyo Kinah, a studious and honorable wizard. Both are really good people who like to make friends and do good. Of course, in Tilly’s case, that mostly consists of causing chaos, but always in a well-meaning way. Or so she says.
Summer Daze is a “prequel to Rogue to Redemption,” taking place the Summer before Shawn O’Conner gets shanghaied into attending Hero-U. You’ll learn why Master von Urwald is ready for any of Shawn’s antics after spending a Summer dealing with Tilly. The game leads up to the annual Harvest Festival at the end of Summer.
There’s much more about the game on the Kickstarter page. We hope you’ll join us for there, and share Summer Daze with your friends. We think the world needs more sweet, uplifting games to counter all the darkness and gloom out there. And it’s going to be an amazing and memorable month full of fun and games for all of us!
Your Heroes - Tilly Appleberry and Ifeyo Kinah