the Official Hero Interactive Blog

Well, our good friend Eric Ottati has wrapped up his summer internship here at Hero Interactive. Eric helped in major ways with many of the games we’ve all come to love; you’ll find his name in the credits of LightSprites, StarShine, and Triangles- plus three of our upcoming titles: StormWinds, Microbe Kombat, and the illustrious Bubble Tanks 2. Although Eric will be sorely missed, he has assured us that he’ll still strive to help out whenever able, and even post some mindless garble on this sham we call the blog!

But just because Eric is leaving us to do fancy activities he calls “school” doesn’t mean that we can use such a loss as an excuse for delaying even more games (aside from BT2 which I’ll blame him for anyways ). Struggling to fill his shoes is my new partner in Flash: Joe Fitzgerald. He’ll be working with me many hours this coming year on all our future titles, hopefully adding in his kickass art skills and alarming sense of style. Keep an eye out for Joe in the credits, you should be seeing more of him soon! Maybe he’ll even post to this blog someday…

Today was a strange day. We (Jared and I) started working around 1:30pm. Around 3:00pm somehow there ended up being a six pack of beer in the office, which then lead to us accidentally making another game… Well, it’s not done completely, but it might as well be. It already rocks, but we’ll most likely tweak it for a bit to make sure things are as righteous as they should be. It probably won’t be released until after StormWinds, just to push us to get that done quickly. There’s info and a picture on the main site, so check that out.

Jeez, wasn’t Bubble Tanks II suppose to be out like a month or two ago….?

With Warm Regards,

Eric Ottati @ Hero Interactive

Whoa!  Check this out, another demo video, this time showing the intro screens and the first glimpse of StormWinds.  We should have a gameplay video in the future!

Although it’s already been announced in the COCAK interview posted earlier, I thought I’d formerly announce our next game on the way titled “StormWinds.” We’ve been working hard on this game, with a much larger crew: 4 people in fact, compared to just myself working on Bubble Tanks or many of the other games. Check out the logo:

From the COCAK interview:

“Essentially, it’s a game taking place in a kind of steampunk setting much different than our other games. Inspired by one of my favorite flash games, Bowmaster Prelude, the player will be fighting off a massive invasion of airships coming at your air fortress. Your fortress has slots for gun turrets these turrets are massive, and you can select them and control them. At first you’ll only have only one place to put a turret, but you’ll be able to construct more as you go. Each turret can be whatever type you want, as long as you’ve unlocked it, so you could have a flamethrower turret, or a flak turret, or a machine gun turret. Each turret has load times so you’ll want to switch guns frequently, but because you can build two flak turrets for example, you’ve essentially doubled your flak turret fire rate. So it’ll get interesting in between waves, you’ll also be able to place floating mines, etc…“

I’m very excited about this game, and I think you all will enjoy it. Says Eric my intern:

“I think this game is going to be totally badass!”

Right on Eric. Right on.

We’ll be sharing a lot more stuff including videos as we move forward!

Eric sent me a link to this yesterday. Being that we’re constantly trying to move away from analog and into what I like to call “the digital world”, we might be using this very nifty program in the future for all the art in our games.  What do you think?

Check us out!  Our 3rd game featured on Kongregate.com!  This week you must get to level 10 of StarShine in order to earn the Sharpening Stone card of their upcoming collectible card game!  You have to be a member of Kongregate in order to earn the card and complete the challenge.  If you’re thinking of joining, use the link of the front page of HeroInteractive.com in order to enter into our weekly drawings!

Get to know us a little better by reading the COCAK interview with Jared.  You can find it at:

http://cocak.blogspot.com/2007/08/interview-with-developer.html 

COCAK is a great blog if you’re a fan of Kongregate like I am.  Many a weekly challenge and achievement badge require the skills I just don’t possess. If you’re at all like me and want to get those badges anyways, check out the site!

We’ve added some more merch to the Hero Interactive store.  We’ve got 3 more magnets and 2 shirts featuring the “limited edition” BLUE Triangles Hero logo.

Go check it out.

It’s not much, but we thought we’d throw out a short video just showing the title screen as well as a few new enemies. Check it out!

The rise of men abandoning their wives to play video games all day has led one brave woman where no man… or woman… has gone before: game controllers built into undergarments near *ahem* arousal areas that rely on touch to play the game! After a lot of investigation on the Widows of Warcraft support group, JennyLC dared to seek out a solution to the problem.

My initial reaction was: “that’s hot!” But then, rationality fell in and I ultimately came to the conclusion that families falling apart due to video games was, in fact, not hot. Does this make normal games “serious”?

Final Note: What IS hot is the Rez vibrator all the way back from 2002!

Here’s something we’ve been laughing at here at Hero Interactive:
Westwood College Online Advertisement

I know very little about Westwood College Online, but I do think we need to write them and ask them to stop demeaning our industry. Either that, or enroll. Both would be equally as funny to me.. Shortly after watching the advertisement, we found this: WCO Phone Conversation

I’m fully aware that tightening up your graphics after level 3 isn’t a matter to be taken lightly, but I’m surprised she stayed on the line the entire time. For more information, click here…

On a side note, I hope you all enjoyed triangles. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed neutering your brains. I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite comments on the game from digg.com:

“Um, I’m a cyclops, so this is kinda difficult for me…”
- gmprunner

“I am still looking for the hypotenuse of Drop Dead Fred. http://bayimg.com/BadCnAABj”
- CDoug03

“Annnnnd… I just had a seizure. Thanks fellas.”
- volvinator

“DAMN YOU ROTATE!!!!!”
- amrush4th

“i was expecting like wario ware and half-life 2….that would be hard.”
- gamemaster357

“I was doing great until….”ROTATE!”"
- TheKidd

“This is giving me bad memories of trying to play Nibbles (”snake” written in QBASIC) in 2 player mode by myself when I was young…”
- dvsbastard

“Thank god someone invented this game. I was sick of playing one game at a time.”
- ledguitar

“So when are those dual core brains coming out?”
- JayRD

with warm regards,
Eric Ottati @ Hero Interactive