the Official Hero Interactive Blog

Work has really been progressing on Roaming Fortress and as promised, we plan on revealing a lot more about the project as it develops.  One of the coolest parts of the game is the art and the variety of really neat creatures and units- it’s something we definitely want to start showing off.

Cue the Roaming Fortress cards!  Each week we will be revealing/featuring a new unit/enemy/whatever from the game as part of a collectible card!  As we move along, all of our blog visitors will get to see some cool art and learn a lot of inside information about the world of Roaming Fortress.  Our first in the series is the Burden Drake:

Hero Interactive is looking for interns for the Fall 2010, Spring 2011 semesters!

Flash Game Designer/Developer Intern     St. Joseph, MI   (unpaid)

Internship Position

We’re looking for an intern who loves to make games and has experience with Adobe Flash / ActionScript 3 (PHP and MySQL knowledge are a plus).  The internship is all hands-on and the intern will get a solid 30-35 hours of experience each week.  The intern will take an active role in the development of games and participate in the whole process from design to game release.  Depending on their interest, we can also work with them on the business side of flash games.  We will work hard to make sure interns benefit and learn as much as possible during their time with us.  In fact, over 70% of our interns are offered some sort of employment upon the completion of their internships.

That said, this is primarily an unpaid internship.  The intern will be responsible for setting up their living in St. Joseph, Michigan for the semester (no remote internships), however, we would be happy to help with the process.  We will also work with your school program, if desired, to get you school credit for the internship.  You must be a United States citizen to be eligible for our internship program.  Additionally, you must have completed a minimum of 1 year of post-high school education.

About Hero Interactive

Hero Interactive is one of the top flash game developers in the online community, creating such popular titles as Bubble Tanks, StormWinds, StarShine, Pixel, and more. Our focus has always been on game innovation, quality, and fun. With our hearts set on these goals we’ve created and released over 25 of our own IP projects- each a success that we take much pride in. With the help of our valued partners these games have spread out across the world, are hosted on thousands of sites, and have been played millions of times. Most recently, Hero Interactive won the Mochi Award for best shooter game of 2008 at the Flash Gaming Summit 2009 and was a finalist for the best strategy game at the summit in 2010.

To Apply

Send your resume to internships@herointeractive.com.  Applicants with an online portfolio of past work get bonus points.

I know some of you have noticed that I’m making blog posts now, so I thought I’d tell you a bit more about myself. I’m Lisa, and I started at Hero as an intern at the beginning of summer. The internship got me the last few credits I needed to graduate from Michigan State, so I’ll be a full-time Hero employee starting next month. In addition to working on games, I’ll be the new community manager here. That means writing blogs, moderating comments, and making witty responses to your comments.

Later this week, I’ll be talking more about my experience as an intern and sharing some of what I’ve learned about the game design process.

The game is nearing completion, but sadly it won’t be ready for release by the end of the month. Expect it soon, but not in July.

We tried discussing the prospect of pants with the goblins, but it didn’t go over too well and now they’re on strike.

Today we’re pleased to announce another title in joint production with YETi CGI- a wicked puzzle game called Shifty.

Players are given colored stones they need to shift around in order to group all matching colors together (adjacent, no diagonal).  Your baby brother could do that,  but throw in the fact that stones are limited to a handful of moves indicated above and the game gets a lot harder.  Swap two stones, and the numbers for each go down by 1.  Stones with 0 are un-movable and a show stopper.

Once you get all the colors grouped with matching colors (meaning all reds next to reds, and all blues next to blues) you win the level!  Again, sounds simple, but as the game progresses it gets more and more challenging. Early boards will start out as 3×3 squares with two colors, and will eventually grow to a mind melting 6×6 and five colors.

The game will feature thirty levels and several unique backgrounds done by our own artist, KC.  We are also planning on having a survival mode where the game generates random puzzles for you to solve.  Beat each one in a matter of minutes to continue to the next and see how long you can last!

The game is looking great and although we enjoy the action and strategy genres, it’s a lot of fun getting back into the puzzle arena.  Keep an eye out for this one in the late summer/early fall. 

I’m very pleased to announce a new game under development: Roaming Fortress!

Developed in partnership with our friends (and fellow Michiganders) over at YETi CGI, Roaming Fortress will be one of our bigger titles- featuring epic battles between your giant upgradable fortress on the back of a massive creature against hordes of oncoming enemies.  Not only can you defend your fortress with Spearmen, Archers, Catapults and more as you watch the gigantic battle unfold and your orders are carried out, but you’ll be able to use your hero to fire arrows yourself into the fray and use special abilities.  The game will also feature several locations to battle through and an array of really sweet enemies.  Enemy units can even mount other units, for example you might come across a siege tower with a fire mage on top, pushed by a huge ogre- killing the ogre will leave the siege tower standing and mage still attacking you!

The game features some gorgeous 3d rendered art and it is really looking fantastic.  We should have some screenshots in the next couple of months that I can throw up on here as well as some updated information about the game.

Expect some more kick-ass games as a result from our collaborating with YETi, they are putting out some amazing work and it means we’ve got a lot of good stuff headed your way.

Did you know that nearly all our games have cheat features built into them from the beginning?  It’s true!

Here are just a few games with cheats.  Some of them link to the blog posts describing them.  Also note that some cheats only work on the games hosted on ArmorGames:

Bubble Tanks Arenas - Link        (This cheat will soon be a main menu button on ArmorGames.com)

StormWinds: The Lost Campaigns - Link

StormWinds 1.5 (Note: EC Purchase is not necessary on ArmorGames.com) - Link

Bubble Tanks 2 - Hold `Ctrl` and press the `+` key on the numpad to gain 100 life!

LightSprites - Hold `Ctrl` and press the right arrow key to move on to a new theme!

Bubble Tanks Tower Defense 1.5 was just released on ArmorGames!  You can go play it there now!

The game will be exclusively on ArmorGames for one month, after which we will begin widespread distribution.  Speaking of that, we decided to push back distribution of BTA till tomorrow, regretfully, as we were too busy with BTTD 1.5 today.

Enjoy the game!

Retired Wizard Defense is a Hero Interactive Mini Arcade project developed by our interns Lisa and Brent!  Small but fun, this little game features our wizard hero’s nap constantly under the threat of all kinds of horrible creatures who are apparently still bitter about past battles and such.  To cut off the hordes of incoming goblins and other creatures, you the player can summon and drop all sorts of ridiculous objects on them: toilets, school buses, sharks… whatever.

Featuring stylish art and some fun characters and quirky objects, I think this game will be a fun distraction from work or between classes.  Expect it out this month!

Bubble Tanks Tower Defense 1.5 will be released on Monday, the 12th of July, 2010, PST (Sorry Australians, you have to wait till Monday here in the US).

Soon after BTTD 1.5 is released, we’ll begin the widespread release of BTA on to other sites outside of Armor Games (Newgrounds, Kongregate, and so on).

I can’t guarantee it, but I’m hoping for a late week release for BTTD 1.5.  If we don’t release it by then, I think you can expect it early next week.  Bottom line: it’s coming soon!

We were planning on doing the widespread release of BTA on to other sites early July, but because of Jimmy moving out and other factors we decided to hold off a little bit.  Now we’re waiting till BTTD 1.5 comes out so that the two games can link to each other from the main menu, driving up some extra bonus traffic to each game.

Bubble Tanks Tower Defense 1.5 is looking awesome.  The new towers and enemies are a lot of fun.  Below you can see a screenshot of a game in “Dark Mode”.  It’s just a fun and challenging twist that I enjoy.  I beat the below level last week while in Dark Mode and FML Mode at the SAME TIME.  It was craziness.

Some people have been asking about tower placement in the upgrade tree.  We really had to pack them in, the biggest challenge is that the interface only allows you select between four options.  The full tree from in-game is shown below.  Poison Towers are under the normal path.  Beams are under the Splash Heavy towers.  In the Area Burst section we have the Self-Destruct towers.  Confuse Towers are located under the Weakness branch.

This week I’ll announce some of the new games we made known in the newsletter.  For those who didn’t get it, stay tuned!

This post’s title says it all.