Game Review: Heroes Must Die

(originally published 3rd February 2016 on DVS Gaming)

Heroes Must Die tells the story of a young hero who has forcibly conscripted into the villain’s, Lord Murder’s, army. The game is an action-RPG, where the young must first break the world in order to save it. “Faced with the daunting task of dealing with the world’s evilest boss, stupidest minions, most daring freedom fighters, and troublesome-est posers“. The game is currently still in beta phase, with a live theatrical performance that includes audience interaction due to be released.

All of the dialogue is textual, there is no voice acting besides the occasional death cries of the Heroes you are killing. The first thing that stands out is the number of spelling and grammatical errors that are in the dialogue boxes. Simple words such as “practitioner” and “lightening” are spelled incorrectly. We also noticed that some sentences were not started with an upper case letter. There also appeared to be a sentence that wasn’t completed in the dialogue box. The voice acting of the Heroes’ death cries is lackluster and it sounds more like he’s bored than suffering in death’s embrace. The background music while wandering around is quite pleasant, however sound effects, such as the “Victory” cry at the end of a battle is overtly loud against the rest of the music and noise.

The dialogue between the characters is quite funny, with a few sexual innuendos and Zelda references thrown in. There are plenty of “stupid minions” and “troublesome posers” and although there are quite a few laugh out loud moments in the game, at times the dialogue seems forced, almost trying too hard to be funny. Once the protagonist becomes conscripted into the army, the storyline becomes quite fun. However, the options available don’t feel like they have much of a bearing on the story as a whole and when played through a couple times, seemed to only change how the characters interacted but not the final outcome.

The fighting sequences are quite clever and fun to play. The whole fight takes place on a grid, where you create your path of fighting during the attack phase, building up your combo points to attack the more powerful Heroes. The defense phase is like a game of “Simon Says”. You are shown where the Heroes will attack you, and then must remember those sequences when given the choice of where to move to avoid being hit.

The character art and 16 bit inspired graphics of the game are well done. The character moves smoothly across the screen, though at times the game play and the graphics don’t match. For instance, it was possible to enter doorways from a few steps away on the side of the building you are trying to enter. Occasionally NPCs would pop up dialogue boxes if you wandered to close after completing a scene with them.

As a puzzle game Heroes Must Die is fun to play. The story is funny, though the characters aren’t particularly likable. The Beta is available to download from the website. Given that the game is still in beta phase, we recommend you try it out. Check out the videos below, play the Beta and let us know what you think of the game!