Hero-U - Patch 4 and Free Bestiary

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Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption has been updated with some quality of life features and a free bestiary download full of monster information.

New Build - "Patch 4" - is Live!

13 January - transolar
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We've updated Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption with several "quality of life" improvements along with dozens of game tweaks (mostly audio, along with a "final" fix to the long-troublesome Katie quest chain) to reported issues. Steam will automatically give you the new update when you play the game.

The biggest changes are in the Settings page - now also available from the main menu. A much-requested feature is the ability to speed up character (including monsters and other non-player characters) in the game. If you like a faster pace, this feature is for you. Character animation might look a bit strange at higher speeds.

Also added to settings are options for switching between full screen and windowed mode and some other options for the adventurous.

"Done" items in the Journal To Do list now show the most recently completed ones on top so you don't have to page to the end to see your progress.

Deleting game saves now works better.

The Boss Wraith battle is now slightly more challenging with the Wraith's ability to summon monsters to help him. The well-prepared player will still get through it just fine, but it's no longer a pushover.

Speaking of bosses, we've decided to make the Rogue to Redemption Bestiary a free download! This is a beautiful art book PDF with all of the Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption monsters and a few strategy tips. For now, click on "View the quick reference" on our store page to download it. We will make it available as Free DLC soon.

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Also coming soon to https://www.hero-u.com will be a free interactive Hint and Strategy Guide. We're making it a web page so that we can update it easily with new and improved hints.
More information.
 
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Being big fan of QfG series I have to try this one as well, eventually. Pity they pitched something very different in original Kickstarter, so I passed on it. Perhaps whole story would be different if they went for QfG clone from beginning.
 
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This turned out to be one of the most successful Kick Starter campaigns that I ever supported, and I've backed quite a few. They may not have set a record in how much funds were collected, but they did make a game that I thoroughly enjoyed playing, and will replay many times again in the future. Adjustments such as these just show what a stellar team is behind this great product.
 
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This turned out to be one of the most successful Kick Starter campaigns that I ever supported, and I've backed quite a few. They may not have set a record in how much funds were collected ...

Any words on how the biz fares? AFAIK the devs have made some drastic moves to secure funding for the completion the project.
 
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I still want it translated.
Even though I have it now in English language - it's imho a shame that games like this remain completely untranslated.
 
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I personally have no knowledge of how the business is going for them, I can only hope that based on how good the last product was, they are reaping huge benefits. I'm quite keen to see the next game in the series, but considering how long this one took, I believe the next iteration is still quite a ways off.
 
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it's imho a shame that games like this remain completely untranslated.
In the indie scene, fan translations are the way to go.
So if you are up to it, contact the devs, and arrange a translation job (but beware, these jobs are usually unpaid)

I can only hope that based on how good the last product was, they are reaping huge benefits.
Unfortunately, there is no relation between quality, personal satisfaction and business performance. That's the bane of the indie scene: no matter how great your game is, you'll often left penniless.
I had a glance on their steam forum page, and it seems the biz is not that stellar, i.e. that's why there are no professional translations.
 
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My guess is that sales was very low given the rather few reviews on steam/gog.

I personally have no knowledge of how the business is going for them, I can only hope that based on how good the last product was, they are reaping huge benefits. I'm quite keen to see the next game in the series, but considering how long this one took, I believe the next iteration is still quite a ways off.
 
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Well adventure games don't sell as they use to outside of Germany.:(
 
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How anyone could dispute the value and success of the game is simply beyond me. They likely had quite a number of folks that contributed to the kick starter project, so that alone should garner them plenty of positive word of mouth. You'd be hard pressed to find a similar game in the same value range. As great as this game was, it really leaves me hankering for more, especially considering how the game ended and some things you discover along the way.
 
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There was some talk about a sequel but it will be a shorter game.

So I believe they're planning on 4 games if they can continue to get the funds for them. The working title for the new game is Wizard's Way from what I remember reading.
 
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Monetary success is way down the list for me. First would come customer satisfaction, then how much enjoyment the creators take in their product. A quality release has intrinsic value to me, and you can easily see the love and effort that went into making this masterpiece.
 
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I understand why consumer of the product does not care about its profitability for the producer. But without profit the producer will surely discontinue the product sooner or later. Any business must be on win-win basis or it doesnt work.

From info I managed to catch during development, developers had huge trouble to get the game out of the door. Kickstarter, although succesfull, did not provide sufficient budget and finding additional funds proved to be hard for Coles. Hard to imagine they will be able to continue if sales are disappointing (which I dont know, maybe they are doing fine, which would be great).

By the way, I still believe that had they be more bold with original Kickstarter pitch and if they went for QfG formula from beginning, initial Kickstarter funds would be higher.
 
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I believe that if the developers would invest just a bit into translations, it would pay off huge dividends. The classic Sierra games were available in several languages, and if they did the same with Hero-U, I'm sure it would help sales. When I was still living in Canada, I heard several people state that the reason they'd not picked up the game was that they were hoping for German/French versions.
 
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I believe that if the developers would invest just a bit into translations, it would pay off huge dividends.

FYI, adding new language to a game is not just having translations, but there are certain technical issues to be solved as well:
- Dialog must fit into a fixed UI frame. Tricky for e.g. German, where the text is about 30-50% longer than English.
- Language uses special characters. Tricky if the freeware font used does not have a full Unicode layout, and you want to translate to e.g. French.
- Language uses special write direction. Tricky if the UI engine does not support it and you want to use e.g. Hebrew text.
- Language uses a special alphabet. Tricky if you rely on auto-hyphen and other word processing features, and the engine does not handle e.g. Chinese or Japanese.
… and so on, and so on.
And I've never even mentioned certain translation pitfalls a professional translator must be aware of (slang, in-game lingo, etc) E.g. try to translate the term "powerup" correctly into several languages… :)
Finally, if you have a fan community translation, you must double check the text for inconsistencies (e.g. one guy translates "powerup" in Spanish to "Encender", the other calls it "Potenciador", etc, etc, etc)

… so, as you can see, having translation in a game is a huge effort, and I'm not surprised that many smaller indie devs simply don't bother with it.
 
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Yeah, I get that it's a time and monetary pricey deal, but considering that these folks have provided games in the past via multiple languages, I'm surprised they didn't do that with this game. Then again, I know things changed a lot from when they first did the kick starter project to actually launching the game, but I do think the translations might pay for themselves, with increased sales.
 
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