💾 Hero.EXE Kickstarter Update: DATA RUN Time!
7 months ago – Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 04:53:38 PM

Hey everyone!

We know it’s been a while since our last post– let’s change that right now!
A lot of the nitty-gritty features in Hero.EXE have been upgraded in significantly major ways– the combat has reached a very satisfying snappiness that we sincerely hope players will appreciate as they try for themselves– the latest beta-branch build will be pushed at the same time of this post! 

Let’s get into some specifics of new updates to the game!:

🎯 Combat System Rework – Target Smarter, Strike Sharper

First and foremost: we’ve reworked our projectile targeting system from the ground up; the yellow tile highlight bug is finally defeated for good! In its place, we’ve implemented an upgraded and intuitive target-highlighting that gives players clearer, strategically predictable feedback– allowing for quicker reactions to everything that can (and will!) be thrown at your AVA; you can really feel the difference– beta-branch-tier backers, play for yourself and enjoy the squish!

☠️ Status Effects, Poison Tiles, and More! – Step Carefully

Hero.EXE also supports a swath of status effects with fun-tuitive denoting icons; they fan out from the top of your AVA’s head! Collect them all (to torture your AVA)! Accompanying the newly implemented effects, there is also poison added to the mix, complete with a bubbling hazard tile: 

Stand on one, and your code gets corrupted slowly draining your HP with a DOT poison debuff similar to fire, but it sticks with your AVA even when moving off– timing and tile management just became essential tools in your survival kit!

✨ Visual Novel Scene VFX Enhancement!

Possibly the most lively addition is that our VN Scenes are now equipped with a deeper layer of ~{BUOYANCY}~ we’re absolutely thrilled to utilize and play with to the silliest (and most dramatic!) extents– with VFX gradients, action operations and wiggles & jiggles, every flair we could ask for has been catered to, baby! Enjoy the emphasis and <<ENERGY.>> this Pandora’s box has unlocked! Here's a small sampling*:

*No AVAs were hurt in the duration of this video.

 💬 Banter Open World Dialogue System

Explore the Kore, explore the lore! Dialogue is also no longer locked behind just the VN scenes, interact with NPCs on the Overworld map directly– a little flavor goes a long way! Banter is equipped with it's own set of VFX capabilities, too!

⚔️Dungeon Mode in Progress– Dungeon Mode Lite: "DATA RUN " Accessible in Kore!

Say hello to Target in Kore and she’ll point you to a Data Run– a Firewall-esque procedurally generated Dungeon: get a prize at the end and unlock a pal! Every time you enter is a new seed, no two dungeons will be the same! 

Data Run is the precursor to Hero.EXE’s future Dungeon Mode, which is a self-contained Roguelite Mode separate from the main Story Mode– with Target’s assistance, you keep your current deck and ABS set-up when you enter Data Run, there is no penalty to failure outside losing out on your prize! More Biomes and Dungeon-specific features to come! 

💀 Refactored Enemy AI & Boss Upgrades

Enemy AI has gotten a complete facelift under the hood-- no more idling unless it's specific to the enemy; you might even see your opponents parrying your attacks! With upgraded enemy behavior also comes some new attack types and animations-- mmm, polish! Here's a couple examples:

Someone had some hot sauce in prep for the fight...

🐳 Having a Whale of a Time

Kadan’s Desert Miniboss adversary, our Whaley-Big-Boy, is nearly complete! This colossal boss fight is one of our most ambitious and mildly frantic challenges to date:

Dodge a bombardment of drills, thrills, bullets, missiles, and lasers! You might need to work on your parrying for this one, folks!

Thanks again for your continued support, it means the world to our tiny team! Stay tuned for more reveals, and as always, feel free to his us up on Discord to see what we're currently up to!

Cheers!

Development Build Tier Issues
over 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 27, 2024 at 10:15:53 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Hero.EXE Backer Beta Build is Now Live!
over 1 year ago – Mon, Dec 23, 2024 at 10:18:50 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Mega Game Update and a Beta Branch on its way soon!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 26, 2024 at 06:00:37 AM

Hello, everyone! It’s been a while, and we’re here with an update you’ve certainly been waiting for-- this, we can acknowledge, so we wanted to just take a few words regarding how important your support is to the project. Thank you so much for sticking with us! Rest assured, we've been hard at work on the game this entire time-- when it comes to game development, a lot of great features and content require a significant amount of interlinking pieces behind the scenes; because of this, things can sometimes look a bit odd or be tricky to understand when they're still in progress, especially from a onlooker's perspective! As such, we've wanted to be able to cook things up fully to present them in an orderly, easy to understand fashion for all of you! So with that said, onwards onto the update... and some big news about the availability of the Beta!

GEM is here!

Grab the Kore tether over to Spite’s domain and fight through waves of adoring fans– can you dance with the Queen and make it out in one piece?! Everyone who signed up to the Beta Branch will be able to explore the Server World as soon as the branch launches!!

Let’s see some of our Game Updates!

Gamepad It UP!

Controller support has massively upgraded: Traverse the Overworld, Menus, and Dialogue Scenes with the comfort of your go-to ‘pad! Hero.EXE now supports any controller you throw at it– there’s even potential to play with a TV remote (let us know if you try that; it would be hilarious)! (*Note: The Binder screen is still WIP, and will be changing in UI features to make the Scrapping mechanic, which gives the player Byte currency for destroying codes, more obvious to the player.)
 

Open Movement Mechanics!

Some parts of Hero.EXE’s Overworld are not tied to just the Node-to-Node movement, but have open WASD/Click-to-Move sections for your AVA to explore– in Gem, a helpful Ferryman will shuttle you around to the nearby islands on his boat! 
 

Resolution Revolution!

With different screen resolutions in mind, we’ve started the process of converting a lot of the UI to squash and stretch in a uniform/sense-catering manner. One such area is the OPTIONS menu, which was originally built entirely out of images (including the buttons!)-- this is now done through code, where text will be easily converted for language localization. 

Dialogue Updates

Extra features for Dialogue scene segments are now here! Introducing: Skip, Show Art, and Dia.Log History! Tired of a long-winded scene and just want to get back to the action of the game? Press and hold the Skip button (or CTRL by default on your keyboard) to skip right through to the next Choice Option, or to the end of a scene (particularly useful if you die to a boss and want a rematch)!

Skip Button!

Want to see the detail in a CG Illustration? Now you can! Blow up the Art to the size of your screen with the Show Art button! (If an Illustration isn’t present, the button will simply hide the dialogue box, showing the characters against the background with no UI in the way!)

Show Art/Hide Dialogue Box!

Ever advance a scene more than you meant and miss a crucial statement? Also available for reference is the DIA.LOG, a useful tool showing who said what in your current Dialogue Scene– (this includes the choice options you pick as a pilot)!

DIA.LOG History!

COMBAT UPDATES

Input Queuing!

Combat has never felt more fluid with the introduction of Input Queuing! With Input Queuing, it’s exactly what it says on the box– you queue your attacks and movements as you press them! So if you’re moving your AVA, and press the basic attack button, your AVA will attack right after finishing their movement, and vice-versa. You'll wonder how the combat functioned without it!
 

Faster Basic Attack!

There is a large delay between firing, cooldown, and firing again featured in the current Hero.EXE demo. With the Beta Branch, the basic attack is a much shorter delay, mapped only slightly over the time actually taken to play the attack animation. This is a large debate point within the team– the combat feels a lot faster and snappier with a shorter delay, but it throws the balance of the game off from what it is currently by a large margin (design of the core game loop was based on strategic, slower movement)! So far, the consensus is to lower the basic attack damage to compensate for the faster rate– but it’s currently untouched before doing a balance pass. The full damage is for your enjoyment on the Beta Branch launch! Let us know your feedback! How OP does the basic attack feel– and more importantly, does the speed feel fun?
 

Variety Tile Types!

Slip and Slide across the board with one of the new tile types coming your way: ice tiles! We’re still debating if Air Boots negates the ice tile effect or not, but it’s certainly fun to play around with before we toggle that! Poison tiles are next on the list!

Codes Codes Codes!

With easier implementation functionality in place, we’ll be rolling out new codes through the Beta Branch for feedback often! Each server world has its own set of codes centered around it’s theme! For Gem, there are a lot of Rhythm codes to find, and Kadan will, for the majority, have Balance. See which Worlds have what as you explore the game and grow your Binder! Have fun crafting your deck and seeing which type of build is your favorite! One of our newest mechanics to play with is Shield, which takes your hits for you; imagine a deck where you’re basically invulnerable! 
 

Feedback & Branch Time

2024 has been tumultuous, but as of September, the team welcomed on the programming help we've needed to finish out the game! With these additional resources and the engineering tools created in the past few months, development and implementation has gotten significantly easier! We’re so excited to share our card designs and fun mechanics with you! And with that, Beta-Backers--

The Hero.EXE Beta branch is officially staged and almost ready to go! Backers will be able to access the branch as soon as it goes live, which will be in the following update post! We've got just one or two things left we want to check on before distributing the Beta, so we can be confident that you'll have as great an experience as possible. With the Beta Branch opening, the Mystery Egg Games team is looking forward to making adjustments based on your player feedback and sentiment! A reminder that the Beta Branch will contain development builds and as such, there will be a lot of WIP updates that shoot out! We'll post in the #Beta announcements channel of our Discord if anything is game-breaking (save files might need to be wiped with new content releases)! 

Once everything is ready, we'll be sure to let you all know as loudly as we can, with another update post to specially announce the Beta going live.

Thank you for your patience, everyone -- and we sincerely thank you for playing our game!

Join our Discord for more direct feedback, questions, and update snippets!

Demo Update & Happy Holidays!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 04:03:24 PM

First, a Warning: Spoilers!

Spoilers! There will be spoilers in some of our posts from now on. We've been trying to keep this weird balance between keeping you all in anticipation of the game, while also trying to share development updates. NO MORE! We're going to be open about what we’re working on which will be showing you stuff that is technically spoilers. Please be aware and keep an eye out!

Long Overdue

Hey everyone! It’s been a long while since a public update, and the team had a bit of a shuffle behind the scenes (as well as an addition to the family)! Hectic as it was, we’re on track and putting our time, effort, and personal funds towards making Hero.EXE the most enjoyable experience it can be– with that being said, let’s get into the meat of why you’re reading this:

Demo Update!

It’s here! The version of the Demo that will be reflective of the rest of the game! Enjoy our new, shiny projectiles and fluid spine animation from the characters to the stages– the overhaul took a while, but the results are wonderful:

Also incorporated within the Demo is Controller Support for the combat portions of the game– swap your button settings through the Options menu to map away from the defaults and fit your playstyle!

Enjoy some new enemies & cards sprinkled into the mix– can you best the firewall?!

Currently working on: Server World Kadan!

Of course that’s not all, we’ve been working on the Demo update and the core game simultaneously! We're about halfway through Kadan, the desert-themed mobster-run Las-Vegas-inspired world. There you'll face off against Profit, the Monarch of Greed– and explore Valentine’s backstory; the reason she woke up in Tako’s graveyard, her relationship with Profit, and some intermixing of rival mobsters out for revenge! But what Valentine wants to know the most is the whereabouts of her previous partner: Agony. Having worked together under Profit, Valentine needs to know what happened to her– and herself!

We're currently working on the area’s miniboss, which plays a key role in Valentine’s story. After a good round of concepting, we've basically settled on this chonky, jewel-encrusted whale boi of several parts:

Needing a large enough boss that could “swim” through the desert sand unimpeded, originally we leaned towards a *worm* (for obvious virus-related reasons which we’d have to work into the story), but ultimately “whales” (that spend boatloads of money online)-- was a second easy choice to follow!

There might have been more concepting for this miniboss than any other boss in the game– it was the first actual monster-monster that wasn’t based off of something already existing in the in-game universe. Our Art Lead had a LOT of fun tossing around initial ideas (scorpions and centipedes, too)– but ultimately we settled on more towards the cute side of the spectrum. That being said, the Artbook is going to look fire.

Hub World: Kore!

Kore is also in the works! Kore is the Server World you go to directly after the end of the Demo, and acts as the Game’s central hub area. Kore is run by the Monarch Fury, and everything is very… “orderly”!

While picking your next map to explore, you’ll be able to shop, chat, and check the news on your escapades– word sure travels quick online… Wonder what the AVAs wandering around will think of you!

Let’s Go!

With the release of the Demo Overhaul, we’re in fantastic spirits– of course, feel absolutely in your right to beat us down and throw every bug you find at us into our Discord, where we will then bash our heads against the Unity* wall until it works. We also check Discord every day, folks– if you wanna reach out, that’s the spot to throw all your feedback and say hello! C:
We want to wish everyone Happy Holidays, and thanks for sticking with us!

Hope you enjoy the Demo update!

[*Note: There was a bit of controversy with Unity’s surprise “per install” price scheme a little bit ago– but after confirming the backpedal on Unity's part, as a team we agreed to sticking with it for the duration of the game’s development rather than switching engines.]