Hero.EXE

Expect the Un-Hexpected!
about 1 month ago – Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 03:02:53 PM

Hellooooo Pilots! We’ve got a BIG Update just for you! Much like our cursor sizes, let us take up your screen with fun!

ABS Rework: HEXES in H.EXE!

We’re really hyped for this one, guys!
Remember that single rectangle bar at the bottom of the ABS screen that you would hold your ABS blocks in? Where there might have been a thin sliver of a Block that took up approximately 10 pixels of the screen sandwiched between AirBoots and some other 500-tier power and was difficult to grab and/or notice at all? Well, those were actually a placeholder– because we went in a much more intuitive and puzzle-oriented direction for our blockholster power-combiner: a HEXGRID!

ABS Blocks now come in hexagonal shapes stapled together in unique orientations you can shift around and rotate, letting you literally build your build! As you adventure through the Server Worlds, ABS Blocks are sprinkled everywhere that Codes are available as well: loot drops, shops, and quest/dialogue rewards! (Additional Gridspace is unlocked as you progress through the main Story.)

Most of the blocks you’ll find are a set size of hexes, but in a random arrangement– blocktypes share the same name and power, but can be different shapes! 

If you find a shape that’s simply unmanageable, you can either scrap it for Bytes (which can be used to buy more blocks)... 

Or put it into one of 4 purple FREE SLOTs which hold any size block for the low, low price of 1 single space! By default, Valentine has her trusty [Air Boots] block placed in the 1st Free Slot top left.

Most blocks have their shape randomly arranged, but a few special blocks are set solid as particular shapes for a fun silhouette:

Use the SORT system when you have a lot of Blocks to filter through in numerous (and especially useful) ways– including what will currently fit in the gaps of your active hexgrid!

Hit the SCAN button to see all your ABS Blocks in Order of Operations!

Hacking Minigame: Take a crack at a hack! 

I’m in.
In a brand new HACKING MINIGAME, that is! Not enough puzzley elements for ya? Not enough hexagons?! Crack encrypted sequences by arranging the “logic symbols” in the correct order via process of elimination! Each row input shows color-codes for location markers as well as an additional clue on the left (bear in mind symbols can appear multiple times in the same sequence)!

You’ve only got so many attempts before it boots you out, so fire up those little grey cells for breaking into “secure” systems, accessing restricted areas, and maybe uncovering some secrets and treasure caches along the way! 
While usually hidden or story-driven, Hacking sequences can also appear on the map with their own Node icon (particularly spawning in Data Runs)!:

Codes, Codes, Codes!

ABS wasn’t the only overhaul! We’ve been busy bees: balancing & boosting everything in our binders, while donning the “Build”-er hats for battling with ABS! You’re certainly going to see some exciting additions to the LootPools (each Server World & Firewall has their own set), as well as a brand new Starter Deck! 
 

Each AVA has their own small subset of Character-specific Codes for their Starter Deck, too! 

You’ll also find important Keywords now color-coded, legible-logical Syntax, and we’ve got a little bit of *wiggle* room with some fun in the descriptions! See what you can find!

Codes+ABS= AVA Builds!

One of the most beneficial additions we've been working on: Builds! Instead of simply choosing the strongest individual Blocks or Codes by themselves, players can now create entire Builds around powerful synergies! Some Blocks generate resources, amplify specific effects, add to your loot, or maybe turn the board into a rhythm game! The goal is to encourage experimentation and discover wild combinations that can snowball into crazy and intense harmonies; be ready to change your Deck/Block Loadout at the drop of a hat! Whether you want to chain abilities together for massive burst damage, or simply want to bathe in chaos and screenshake, there's now a lot more room to craft the game so it plays how you really want it to! 

An example build you can create by filling your deck with grenades, shields, and fire: the “Bombsuit Build". Bombsuit is a shield-centered build that increases the power of your explosions! If something explodes, gain more RAM? When your shield takes damage, something explodes? If something explodes, make things explode?! ...Boom! 

Another Build is the “Treasure Slide”. This Build relies on you unearthing hidden treasures by excavating cracked tiles, which causes boulders to fall on enemies! One AVA’s trash is another AVA’s Treasure; what will you find underneath the tiles? I see a glint; time for rocks to fall!

Side Quests & Alternate Paths!

Huh? Was that road there before? That wasn’t on the map a minute ago!

Not every Node in Hero.EXE stays on the linear path. Did you choose to help an AVA when they could have been deleted? Did that certain glitch get away? Where did they go after you interacted? Maybe you should follow their footsteps and see where this leads…

Every decision made has some weight! Branching paths might trigger immediately, while others remain dormant until specific conditions/flags are met, or earlier actions come back into play. Stay tuned; we’ll be updating these with each build of the game!

Viruses and Boosts

Valentine got a VIRUS?? What the heck was that notification pop-up?! 
Sometimes your AVA will encounter Viruses out while exploring/during dialogues. A virus could have either a negative or positive effect.
If you look in your AVA’s POCIT, it will show any current AVA-afflictions:

Viruses can afflict things like your ABS blocks, add Codes to your hand, mess with your UI; be careful what choices you make as a Pilot! Thankfully, most Viruses don’t last very long; check back to POCIT to see if you’re still infected.

The Bonus Round: Wiggling, Toggling, Bloops!

Wow! This update is getting a little long– In addition to all of the above, we have been working on a slew of other little things! Other notable noticeables include:

>Spine-ing AVA Portraits for Dialogue/POCIT scenes!

As an added bit of fun, you can also drag your AVA around in POCIT! Valentine will probably get annoyed if you do it too much, though.

>HUGE Visual improvements: Designing for many Resolutions!

We’ve got MIPMAPS, folks!! SVGs where applicable for UI elements! A “Lanczos” algorithm? All you need to know is, everything is much, much more pretty– and smooth. Card Art should be beautiful at ANY size window! Play on your smart fridge!

>QOL Improvements!

Screenshake toggle! Cursor Sizes! Seeing the board when you hover over the GO! Button in Combat! Viewing your Discard & Deck piles! Easy Scrapping! Quicker Overworld movement! Dynamic RAM on Codes! There’s definitely a bunch about tile highlights and tells!! 

>Sounds! Chirps & Bleepbloops?

On top of a mountain of new SFX (thanks, Gat!), Characters will now digi-esquely “talk” when they don’t have voicelines! Each character will have a unique “chirp” to them, and inflections will have different pitches! Expect different bleeps for happiness, sadness, nervousness; ect! (Chirps are toggleable in the OPTIONS menu.)

>Thank you!

That’s a lot to cram in for one Update! As always, we’ll be on Discord if you have any questions about the game! We really hope you like the Hacking Minigame & new ABS system (which genuinely took months of iteration); @us if you want to see some of the design choices we went through; our screenshots are plentiful! Beta Branch Backers, you can play the latest Build via updating Steam to the latest version! It’s live as of this Update: Please, let us know your feedback, criticisms, and if you like the new Starter Deck or not! 

 

Cheers everyone, and thank you so much for your continued support! 

💾 Hero.EXE Kickstarter Update: DATA RUN Time!
11 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!