Monthly Archives: June 2012

Robot Entertainment has announced that their critically acclaimed mobile strategy game, Hero Academy, is coming to Steam on August 8, 2012. Players who purchase the game on Steam will unlock an exclusive new heroic team featuring the mercenaries from Valve Corporation’s wildly popular Team Fortress 2. Additionally, each heroic expansion team purchased in Hero Academy on Steam will unlock a unique cosmetic item in Team Fortress 2. Read the complete blog entry here. 

Statements earlier this week revealed that Robot Entertainment is working to expand into the Chinese mobile market. In a statement to venturebeat.com, Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson said the following.

“By adapting the game for Chinese players, we can deliver Hero Academy to a much larger audience in China. We chose Yodo1 for this work because they have a deep understanding of the Chinese gaming culture, are very trustworthy with our game design and IP, and have a full appreciation for what makes Hero Academy unique and fun.”

Robot Entertainment also recently announced that Hero Academy will be available for play on the PC via the steam platform in early August 2012.

Articles for reference and additional information.

Gamasutra, Techcrunch, Venturebeat, The Next web

Robot Entertainment has today released their latest update to Hero Academy, version 1.2.3. This update brings an exciting set of single player missions to the table called “Challenges”. For the first time players can now play through single player challenges to boost their skills. The 28 strong challenges have a range of difficulty, some are quite easy – others are particularly tough and will test your wits greatly.

The 28 challenges allow players to play through all the available teams regardless as to whether they have been purchased or not. Each team as 7 of there own challenges to play through. This is great news for those who want to try out a team before committing to buy.

In other news, the update brings a far more detailed tutorial system which includes 8 new interactive tutorials to help new players get up to speed and reduce the learning curve. There have also been changes to the taunt system, where previously taunts have been purchasable they can now be unlocked  each time a player wins a match. Don’t worry, you wont lose any taunts that you have already purchased.

Be sure to check out Robot Entertainment’s latest blog post which details the latest update in full.

Now.. to the Academy, Heroes!

Jason McIntosh of Orangepeel Softworks has a released a new Hero Academy move tracker. This particular tracker runs on the iPhone or iPad as a standalone app. Whilst the app isnt able to record events as they happen it does allow Hero Academy players to quickly record player moves to determine what reserves the oponenet player might still have. This can certainly be a useful tool for competitive play or for playing against opponents who take a long time to make moves and you cant always remember which units they have previously used.

From Jason’s blog over at The Gameshelf he writes:

Hero Tracker is a free, simple tool for iPhone and iPod Touch that lets players track the progress of their active games, mainly to note which pieces have been played by either side.

Now I can remind myself with certainty that the Council player who finally took their turn after a fortnight is out of Inferno spells but still has one high-powered Cleric in reserve. I can calculate the chance that that Cleric sits on their rack, ready to deploy next turn, and plan my own move accordingly.

The app is certainly well worth checking out and it can be found right here: – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hero-tracker/id532915889

Looks like we have a firm date on the release of Orcs Must Die 2!
July 30th! All of the details were released earlier via the Robot Entertainment blog post.

It wont be long until we’ll be enjoying co-op Orc killing action!

Orcs Must Die! 2 thrusts players and their friends back into battle against a terrifying mob of orcs and other monsters. With a redesigned spellbook, players will have a broader range of options to build a deadly arsenal of defenses. Investing hard-earned skulls in an enormous new upgrade system will allow players to cater to their favorite methods of burning, grinding, tossing, or dismembering orcs.

Orcs Must Die! 2 begins days after the ending of the original game. With the rifts closed and the magical Order dead, the War Mage finds himself suddenly thrust into a new battle against the mindless orc mob. He has a powerful, if questionable, new companion in the Sorceress, an ex-War Mage responsible for the destruction of the Order.

In a recent post in the Robot Entertainment forums, Robot community manager Justin Korthof (SixOkay) told players more about the upgrade system in OMD2. He wrote the following

“Regarding the extra combo points… we’ve made that system a ton better. Are you sitting down?  

Okay, so in the first game, upgrading the archers to flaming archers granted the extra combo point. This time around, we’ve taken that idea and attached it to the effects themselves. So, for example, if you buy the archer upgrade in the spellbook that gives them burning arrow, the burning brings an extra combo point with it. But this also works on any trap with a similar status effect upgrade. So if you have Arrow Walls with the upgrade to burning arrows, those burning arrows will also carry an extra combo point with them. If you have spike traps with the “chill” upgrade on them, they’ll grant an extra combo point, too.” 

This means that giant combos should be possible in the new game. Can anyone say x20? Join the conversation here.