the Official Hero Interactive Blog

Those of you who are looking forward to Bubble Tanks Arenas will be happy to know that we’ve been making a lot of progress on the game these past few weeks, and as most of the team is on the project we should have a lot more updates and progress in the weeks to come.  From here on out we’re going full throttle on the production of BTA till it’s completion.  How much is left to do?  A TON.  The game brings a lot of new and complicated features which are taking a long time to develop.  But be patient, because we’ll get there.

I thought I’d do some Q&A.  If you have questions, feel free to leave them as comments.  I can’t promise I’ll answer them, but I may make another post with some more information.  Well, here we go…

Q: Is Bubble Tanks Arenas the same as Bubble Tanks 3?
A: No.  BT3 is not BTA.  Arena’s is a different game that has a slightly different spin on the game.  Bubble Tanks 3 will be more similar to the standard BT fare.

Q: Is BTA multiplayer?
A: No.  I think multiplayer would be awesome and some day we may have the money, time, and knowledge of how to go about it.

Q: What makes BTA different?
A: BTA allows you to make and share your own bubble tanks.  You can also make enemy tanks and arenas.  You can store saved content on your computer or you can upload your creations to our servers and share them with the world.  You can also download other people’s creations.

Rather than being able to float around the world freely, this will be a more intense game played inside arenas.  An arena is a series of bubblefields with some sort of challenge, usually to defeat all the enemies within a set amount of time (ex. Defeat all the enemies in 10 bubblefields in 5 minutes).  You will be able to die in an Arena which will bring you back to the Arena select screen, in BT2 death wasn’t possible.  Completing Arenas will earn you new parts for your tanks, increased size, etc…

Q:  Do you know the release date for BTA?
A: No.  There is no release date set yet.  Stop asking.

Q: Can you tell us how far you are through the game development process?
A: No, we don’t know the exact percentage.  We can decide to add or change things up until we release, so we’re never 100% sure if we’re going to make the project larger.  Also, if we discover a huge bug right at the end, it could push us back a week or so.  We just don’t know.

Q: Can you release a demo at least?
A: No.  There is not going to be a demo for BTA.  Making a demo would take far too long and add weeks to BTA’s development time.  We can’t just release the tank creator.  It doesn’t work that way.

Q: Is BTA going to be free to play?
A: Yes.  There are no paid-for expansions.  All the content will be free.

Q: Will BTA have Extra Content?
A: Yes.  Enemy and Arena creation are likely to be part of the Extra Content version.  Please note: The money we receive from EC versions of our games is what is making BTA possible!

Q: Will there be a limit to how big I can make my tanks?
A: Of course.  Size wise, you can make them pretty huge by the end of the game, larger even than the BFT from BT2.  You also have Gun Points and Bubble Points.  Weapons and abilities cost GP.  The more GP you have, the more you’ll be able to purchase bigger weapons and dish out more damage.   Then there is BP- the more bubbles and parts you use, the more BP you’ll use.  BP is used to help keep the complexity down on the tanks, otherwise we’re sure some tanks would get out of hand and crash people’s computers.

Q: Do you HAVE to create your own tanks?
A: Nope!  We’ll have plenty of pre-built tanks ready for you and the game will recommend tanks that are perfect for you.  You can even modify and edit our pre-built tanks.

Q: Will BTA save my progress?
A: Yes, the game will automatically save in between arenas.

That’s all for now!  If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section and some day you might see them answered in a post like this!

A really great big thanks to everybody who voted for us in the Best of 2009 Awards on JayIsGames.com!  We were nominated for a Best of 2009 or the best Tactical or Strategy game of the year…and we won! We’re actually sharing the title with another game but we’re SO excited and so appreciative for all of you who turned out to vote for us each day.  Check out the full list of winners here!

You guys rock!

As you probably already know, recently we held a contest for the best Hero Interactive fan art.  We didn’t have many entries but the ones that we did have were pretty darn cool!  We’re really excited to announce that we had a tie for the first place prize!  A BIG congratulations to Jem K. and Chris M.!!  Their art pieces were both very original and very different from one another.  Check out the winning entries below!

(Left to Right: Jem K. and Chris M.)

Both Jem and Chris will be receiving awesome prize packages full of HI gear.  (We’ll be contacting the two of you with the details.)

Congrats again and thanks for entering!

That’s on ArmorGames alone!  This is fantastic…we’re so excited to see this game doing so well!  A BIG thanks goes out to all of you!

The 2010 Flash Gaming Summit is upon us!  In March, the team is going to be venturing to San Francisco for the summit which we are also sponsoring!  Last year we were awarded with the Mochi award for Best Shooter of 2008 for Bubble Tanks 2.  We have a sporting chance to come home with another award THIS year for Bubble Tanks Tower Defense, but we’re going to need YOUR help!  Click here to check out the summit details and to nominate BTTD for the Best Strategy Game of 2009.  It’s easy!  Just click on the button in the lower right corner (you know, the one that says “Nominate Games”), answer five very quick and easy questions about your nominated game, and get back to playing your favorite HI games.  It only takes a minute so if you’ve enjoyed BTTD please give us a minute of your time and nominate the game!  We can’t exist as a company without the support of awesome fans like you!

Nominate Bubble Tanks Tower Defense here! 

We just wanted to remind you that Hero Interactive wallpapers are now available for your computer AND mobile device.  More are going to be added so keep checking back for updates!  Grab one here!

Well I guess award season is in full swing as we’ve got lots of cool things for you to vote for!  First we asked you to look into your hearts and nominate BTTD for a Best Strategy Mochi award and now BTTD has been nominated for a Best of 2009 award by JayIsGames!  If you enjoyed playing BTTD and felt like it was an awesome strategy game, CLICK HERE and vote for it!  There are lots of other categories, too, so check out which games were nominated elsewhere.  You can actually vote once per day so either bookmark that page or you can keep using our link.  I know I’ve been voting for BTTD as well as MY favorite games every day…will you?

Click here to vote BTTD as the Best of 2009 in the strategy category!

On a more personal note, thank you all very much for all of your support in 2009.  Our blog has been booming these past few months, our games are doing very well, and we’ve made lots of new friends.  This is largely because we have an awesome fan-base who are very loyal and proud of our games.  YOU ROCK!  Now let’s make 2010 an even BETTER year!

We’ve had lots of cool interns in the past and we’re excited to have another one!  Our newest intern, Pete, has officially spent four days with us - he joined us right after the new year.  He’s looking forward to learning about all the cool things that Hero Interactive does including coding, Flash, and business administration.  He says he’s also interested all of “Jared’s life lessons…I hear there are a few,” he jokes.

Pete is originally from the central part of Michigan and HEY, what do you know?  He went to Central Michigan University!  He’s going to be graduating in May with a degree in Information Technology (IT).

In his free time Pete enjoys running (he’s run in a 25k race!), playing music on the guitar (he especially enjoys jazz), photography, and travel.  He’s been to many countries in Europe and particularly enjoyed Germany (”I speak poor German.”), the Netherlands, and France where he once got lost…EEP!

He says that his favorite games include classics like the Super Nintendo Mario Brothers games and PC games like Bioshock.

We’re very excited to have Pete with us for the next few months!  Everybody give him a very warm welcome!

If you like Bubble Tanks 2 this might be right up your alley!

Stoneman and DyslexicWombat have teamed up to produce three walkthrough videos with full commentary!  They’ll get you through the whole game, give you some pointers, and hopefully even make you laugh!

Check out the videos here on youtube! 

We’ve had our holiday break, we’ve gotten lots of rest, we’ve visited with lots of family and friends, and here we are back in the office ready to kick off 2010!

And on our very first day we have a new intern!  His name is Pete!  Welcome, Pete!

P.S. This is a bit random, but have you seen Avatar?  We saw it over the break and were VERY impressed especially with the special effects!  Wow…