Demo Update & Happy Holidays!
5 months 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.]

2023 Check-in. Animation and Art Overhaul, and MORE!
about 1 year ago – Fri, May 05, 2023 at 03:08:15 PM

Hi everyone!

Thanks to your support, we have made significant progress over the past few months, particularly in the areas of animation and art. Our team has been working to create a vibrant and immersive world for you to explore, and we can't wait for you to see it in action.

We have been working extensively on fleshing out the final details for characters and enemies, and our writing team is continuing their great work on storylines for our vibrant cast of AVAs, as well as touching up our existing narrative elements including in the demo.

Demo Progress

We know that many of you are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to play the updated Hero.EXE demo, and we are getting very close to setting an official date for it to go live. This new version of the demo will feature a combat art overhaul, additional content, improved mechanics, and other enhancements that will give you a better sense of what the final game will look and feel like.

Here is a sneak peek of just a few of the improvements:

In addition to the animation overhaul we are also working to increase the enemy variety in the project. This is notoriously difficult to do and depending on the game you often see recolors of models with little variation. We are taking an approach that will allow us to both save on resources and still give a wide variety of enemies (in both looks and gameplay) to engage with, as we are not limited to just palette swaps with our new animation system.

Some of these enemies will even have entirely new move sets and animations.

LOOK AT THAT RUN THIS BOY IS A UNIT!

As always, we are deeply grateful for your support and enthusiasm. Your contributions have allowed us to make tremendous progress on Hero.EXE, and we can't wait to share more updates with you in the coming months.

Hero.EXE 2022 End of Year Backer Update!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 09:05:32 PM

Hi all! It's been awhile since our last post and we have a ton of new stuff to show you! Let's start off:

New Blood

We were able to bring on a bunch of new artists and they are awesome!

Hero.EXE has a huge amount of artwork needed for the game– animations, CGs, backgrounds, card art, portraits… prime time for our team to grow! We can’t wait to show more of the lovely work they’re bringing to the table– especially with Gem wrapping up towards January! Keep an eye on our Twitter & Discord #Artspot channel for direct art updates!

We also have a new writer on board: long time friend of the crew, Robert Livingston (@AdmiralLavender)! You may remember his work from the GUNGUNGUN comic (and also several other ongoing comic projects)!

He’s hit the ground running helping us flesh out the story paths for our Server Worlds, and we are excited to see what comes next there.

Hidden Gems

The Gem Server World is nearing asset content completion! The dazzling bright lights and bustling nightlife are sure to catch your eye as you progress through Spite’s domain:

Reach the extra islands around the continent with the help of a local ferryman:

And if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll run into Melody for a free concert! Everyone *loves* Melody, after all!

A Spiteful Monarch

The leader of the Gem Server world is here to tear up the stage (and you)! Here’s a little preview of some of her animations:

In addition to the excellent art and animation-- we are really excited for you all to see her boss mechanics. It should make for an absolute banger.

New Keywords

In this latest build we also added Push and Stun as new Keywords. These do pretty much what they say on the tin:

These mechanics add a lot of strategy to how you can build your decks. Do you fill your deck with low damage cards that manipulate your enemies positions? Or do you build something more balanced? These are the kinds of things you’ll need to take into account when playing the game-- but you can also switch things up just to try 'em out!

Discord Rollup!

As some of you may have noticed– Kickstarter Roles are now applied on our Discord server! Behold– you should be able to see all wonderful backers with their exclusive Kickstarter tier role with an icon that appears in the chat! (This also opens up the Beta channels for everyone in “Terminal” and above, which will be used in later updates!)

If you’re in the server, or just joining the server and missing your role, let us know and we’ll hook ya up!

2023

This next year will be our first official year in full production. As many of you know we’re a small but passionate team working on something we really care about. Now that we have staffed up we can finally get right into it! First things first, there will be an update to the game’s Steam Demo early next year, that will include all of the new Spine sprites and animations.

Emails!

Also be sure to cheeeeeeeck your emails! We’re 94% on completed Backerkit Surveys– so be sure to fill yours out if you haven’t already! (If you haven’t received an email about your survey, let us know and we’ll have it resent!)
We’ll also be starting the process of development fulfillments in the new year. So if you ordered any design tiers (like creating codes, an outfit, or a bossfight)-- please be on the lookout so our designers can chat with you about your designs!

Happy Holidays pilots, and see you in the new year!

Backerkit Survey & Discord Info! Join us now!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 11:21:44 AM

Backerkit Updates!

Good news everyone! Backerkit emails have gone out and we’ve received most everyone’s responses, but there are still a few left to go!

With less than 10% of the surveys remaining, we’ll shortly be assigning out the Discord role rewards in one fell bot-assisted swoop to everyone that hops on in the server!

So, one last call to….

Check your emails and fill out that survey!

Note: We are still working on the technical details for non-Discord digital rewards (i.e. supporter exclusive early beta builds) so hold tight for upcoming news on that front (the Discord Beta channel will however be the first to know)! Physical rewards will be going out when Hero.EXE is closer to launch/at launch– we will send updates on those as well, well before release.

Production Progress

Here’s a birds eye view of our production roadmap! As you can see we have A LOT of writing and story ahead of us, but we’re really excited! Our current focus is to have Gem, the Music Server World, wrapped up over the next couple months. After that we plan to hit each Server World in succession until we are done!

And on a particular Server World...

Check out these fans! We’ve been working on a bunch of new enemy types for Gem! Really can’t wait for you guys to tackle some of these encounters, they're honestly been some of the funnest stuff to work on.

Gem is the music-themed Server World ruled by Spite, a Monarch and popular musician with a considerable number of fanatical followers that cheer her on– as well as some glitches joining in the jam & slam sessions! Take to the stage and battle to the heat of the beat!
 

There’s also a miniboss on some sort of towering contraption… can you guess what it’s made of?

 Discord, Discord, Discord!

We’re revamping our Discord server! With the Backerkit Surveys reaching 90%, it’s safe to start dishing out those Kickstarter-tier roles to everyone– as well as fill up those sticker and emoji slots! Want to see a particular character show a certain expression? Pop in #general and let us know! (Note: you’ll need to be in the Discord to get your exclusive backer tier roles-- so hop on in and say hello!)

That being said, here’s some of the server highlights:

[Roles]
Your Kickstarter-tier roles each have their own unique icon and color! If the role color doesn’t fit your fancy however, feel free to change to a different color your heart desires in #roles!

[Q+A]
Through Discord you can ask us (the developers) questions directly at any time!

[Bug-reports]
Discord is currently our primary source of glitch and bug awareness; every report is appreciated and helps us further polish the game!

[Beta Business]
For everyone backed at the “Terminal Access Edition” tier and above, there will be Beta Build channels– make sure you have the #Announcements unmuted to know when the first build drops!

Also, if you forgot to add your Discord tag to your Backerkit Survey, or are using this as an excuse to make one– you can still go back and edit/add to your survey information!

Hope to see you all there!

Surveys 100% Sent! Pre-order Store now Open!
almost 2 years ago – Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 06:38:19 AM

It's TIME!!

We're absolutely thrilled to announce:

Backerkit Surveys are now in YOUR email inbox! 

With the conclusion of the Smoke Test (where there were a few surveys sent out to make sure everything was working properly), everyone is receiving their own Backerkit survey-- in your email inbox right now!~ (Give or take a day for processing.)

What is a Backerkit survey for, you ask? 

When you (lovingly) pledged funding towards the Hero.EXE Kickstarter campaign, you were not leaving that page empty-handed-- there will be goodies coming your way! That being said, there are a lot of goodies to organize for so many pledges; we're utilizing Backerkit as a fulfillment tool to gather all the needed information to get your goodies to you-- that includes all necessary shipping information and things like your Discord tag to hand out roles and Beta build access. On top of this, Backerkit also has a wonderful perk-- with the Kickstarter over, you can still grab some of the exclusive items! If you missed out on grabbing a keychain for instance, you can "add-on" that select item onto your existing pledge when you fill out your survey! 

In your survey, there may also be a couple items that require you to make a selection. The Smoke Test did air out a couple points of confusion, so to make things completely clarified, the Keychain selection is as follows:

Keychain Designs:

1) Chip

2) Valentine

3) Melody

4) Ronin

Plus, A New Addition!

As requested by popular demand,  we also added an additional poster to the line up for you to choose from: Poster 4 features the main cast staring out at the great Server World Grid Sea-- adventure awaits!

Poster Designs:

1) Main Cast Action Pose

2) Beach Vacation 

3) Easter Bunny Costume Special

4) Server World Ocean Vista

If you have any Survey questions, feel free to email us or ping us on Discord!

And for those of you that don't have anything in your inbox and still want to grab some merch, or want to tell a friend about Hero.EXE--

Grand Opening: Pre-Order Store!~

With Backerkit, we're now hosting a post-Kickstarter shop for the crowd favourites; if you missed the campaign, this is the spot for loot! Every purchase is going towards further development costs-- thank you for giving Hero.EXE a chance!

Check out the Pre-Order Store here!

One More Thing: Animation Showcases!

As a further treat for your eyeballs, here are also some absolutely gorgeous Animation Showcases for the Main Cast's updated Combat sprites-- Desire coming up next! 

Thanks for your lovely work, @phenecly! 

Valentine:

Melody:

Chip:

Ronin: