Electric Nightmares

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Hero's Hour is a strategy RPG with huge automatic battles

A pixelated monster mash

I spend roughly 90% of my free time watching what the YouTube algorithm offers me. I've not been radicalised yet, although I do now refer to any shopping I buy as a "haul" and end all my conversations by thanking Skillshare.

To my surprise, the algorithm has recently started throwing indie games my way. Hero's Hour is among the most interesting it's shown me: a strategy RPG in which you construct armies of pixelated fantasy beasts who then have automated battles.

Cover image for YouTube videoHero's Hour - trailer

In Hero's Hour, you stomp around an overworld, build your hometown and venture out to explore new regions. It's turn-based and leisurely. Enter into a scrap and the battle is in real-time - but then, still somewhat leisurely, as your units fight for themselves. You amass the army via the overworld and place them in the fight, but after that you can either give attack orders or just sit back and watch hundreds of sprites burst over one another.

The world is procedurally generated, meaning the army you build will be different each time, and there are ten factions to play as. The factions are the typical fantasy archetypes - dwarves, orcs, necromancers, lizard pals...

All of the above was enough to prompt me to buy the game from Itch.io a week ago for $10 (#GAMEHAUL), though I haven't played it yet. (For why I haven't played it yet, see previous comment about how I spend almost all my free time.)

I'm mentioning it now because, although already available to buy via Itch, today brought the news that Hero's Hour is headed to Steam. It's not clear what will be new for the Steam release, if anything, but it'll be published by Goblinz and we'll reach hero o'clock sometime this winter.

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Hero's Hour

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About the Author
Graham Smith avatar

Graham Smith

Deputy Editorial Director

Rock Paper Shotgun's former editor-in-chief and current corporate dad. Also, he continues to write evening news posts for some reason.

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