Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption Update #130

Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, Transolar Games’ spiritual successor to the Quest for Glory series, will soon be coming to Nintendo Switch. And apart from letting us know that, the game’s latest Kickstarter update shares some holiday well wishes, announces an upcoming developer livestream, showcases the physical Hero-U yearbook, and briefly mentions Transolar’s next project.

Here are the text parts:

The Yule/Solstice/Christmas/Chanukah season is the time when we celebrate the lengthening of days and hopes for a healthy and prosperous new year. That has never been quite as needed as this year!

To celebrate the season, we’ve commissioned JP Selwood to create these four Hero-U-themed Christmas Cards for all of you – friends, fans, and supporters. Let’s face it – We may say “Happy Holidays,” but Christmas is the best of the holidays with decorations, feasting, cookies, gifts, and time with family.

If you’re like Lori in loving Christmas ornaments, you might want to visit her Cafe Press store. It’s a little hard to find stores on the site, so bookmark this link:

https://www.cafepress.com/herouniversitystore

This is where she designs ornaments, mugs, and things for our own gifts, as well as to share them with you.

Solstice Stream

It’s that time again! From 3 – 5 pm PST today, Lori and I will livestream our Hero-U holiday party on Twitch. Come join us at https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames for games, contests, game developer tales, and holiday cheer! If I have time, I’ll get a little farther into Heroine’s Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok for its snowy Winter theme.

The Hero-U Yearbook

After six years of hard work, trials, and tribulations, the Yearbook is at the printer and will go out to backers over the next few weeks. They sent us a proof, and it’s gorgeous!

I’ve also sent the yearbook printer 600 or so autographed bookplates. Since the same backers were promised autographed game boxes and autographed yearbooks, I’m having them enclose two stickers in each package. The second one can go on the game box or in the Hero-U manual or student handbook.

Special thanks go to Eric Varnes for creating the Yearbook layout and most of the portraits, to JP Selwood for additional portraits and illustration, and especially to Steve Coupe for putting everything together and getting it printer-ready. I like to talk about the 90-90 rule in game development, and that definitely applies to this book – 90% of the work gets it 90% complete, and the last 10% takes the other 90% of the work. That last “little part” was all Steve’s contribution.

Finally Fully Fulfilled! Mostly…

And with that, the Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption Kickstarter project is complete. It took us eight years, but we’ve now fulfilled everything that we promised in the Kickstarter. Well, ok, just about everything – Many backers preordered Hero-U: Wizard’s Way, and we’re still working on Summer Daze at Hero-U as the replacement for that apocryphal game.

In the meantime, we’ve added some things that we didn’t originally promise. There’s the interactive hint guide – https://transolar-games.itch.io/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption-hint-guide. William Bertin translated the game into French. A German fan is working on an amazing German-language translation.

Secret sneak preview for anyone reading this far. . . Next month, we’ll announce a new Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption release on the Nintendo Switch! I promised our publicist that I wouldn’t reveal the release date here, but the game is ready to go, and we’re going to treat this as a brand new launch event!

Summer Daze Speaks!

Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games is directing voice recordings for Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale. We have a fabulous cast of amazing voice actors. Starring as Tilly Appleberry is the wonderful and versatile Zehra Fazal. Zehra confided to Dave that she’s a Quest for Glory fan; she was thrilled to learn that Tilly is the adopted daughter of Amelia Appleberry, the healer in Hero’s Quest 1: So You Want To Be A Hero.

Here’s a small taste of the craziness of the voice recording process. Cyrus Nemati – you might know him as Ares or Dionysus from Hades – plays Kalbin, a student chef at Hero-U who is running the kitchen while Ifetaya and Riki are on their Summer Sabbatical culinary tour.