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After a brief period of downtime on the Hero Academy server for the last few hours, everything is back up and running but now with an added bonus  – the launch of the Shaolin Team! Not only is there this brand new team to pick up there are also some tempting special offers with the other previously released teams in celebration of the Shaolin launch. There’s a whole 50% off The Dark Elves, The Dwarves, and The Tribe Plus there is also 50% off on the Steam Two-Packs and Gold Packs. Now is a great time to pick up any missing teams you might have!

Just in case you have forgotten what the Shaolin team is all about – here is a quick reminder of the units you can now play with! You can’t go wrong for less than $5 / £3!

Heroes

• Monk – A melee brawler whose attack reduce a single enemy’s maximum health by 25%.
• Windblade – Her attack chains to additional enemies.
• Poisoner – Her attack weakens the opponent’s Defense and Resist.
• Taoist – A Healer who can resurrect, clear debuffs from allies, and remove buffs from enemies.
• Shadow – Turns the tide of battle by reviving KO’d units into specters to fight on his side.

Spells and Equipment

• Dragon – Cast this spell to summon a dragon that breathes fire along a row, dealing damage to three squares directly in front of the target.
• Combo Potion – A consumable that heals an ally for 1000 health and makes their next attack worth two combo points.
• Bamboo – Place a destructible bamboo tile that blocks enemy line of sight.

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Robot Entertainment have announced the next DLC pack to arrive for Orcs Must Die! 2 – “Are we there Yeti?”. This DLC pack features three brand new levels in the form of frozen ice caverns plus new enemies in the form of Yeti’s and Goblin Sapper mobs to test your wits. The Yeti’s feature as a new large enemy which become enraged after taking damage to shake things up – beware, enraged Yeti’s can smash through your barricades! The Goblin Sappers are also a little bit different, they dont target you, they go straight for your traps. When the Goblin Sappers find a trap they like they explode disabling it and nearby traps. These are sure to cause a headache for the War Mage and Sorceress! Its good to see a new dynamic of gameplay from these two new enemy additions.

Beware the Goblin Sappers who can take out your traps!

New levels and enemies isn’t all that’s coming our way in this $5 DLC pack, it also includes a new trinket, the Guardian Trinket which when equipped heals and revives guardians like Archers and Paladins so that they can fight again. Similar to one of the weaver choices in OMD1. The spike wall trap is also introduced and can be placed on near by walls. The spike trap then launches at the enemy, stabbing them in the face and pushing them away.

In your face!

A new weapon, the Dwarven Missile Launcher also makes its first appearance. This meaty new secondary weapon fires mana shots which can blast enemies in all directions. A perfect defense for the tricky new enemies coming our way in this new DLC pack.

Braving the cold caverns isn’t easy, luckily the War Mage and Sorceress are kitting themselves out with new costumes to keep them cosy and prepared. The brand new costumes are available with the DLC package and are a hat-trip to the Orcs Must Die! 2 community. Eagle eyed fans might recognise who the costumes may resemble. Perhaps a certain video blogger!

Fiery new costumes available with the DLC

When is the DLC coming?

Fans won’t have long to wait at all! The DLC is due out today, November 1st for just $4.99. The game can be pre-purchased now from Steam and it will be playable shortly. See you in the caverns everyone!

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Robot Entertainment have today revealed the next team to enter the fray in Hero Academy – The Shaolin! This is a brand new team focusing on combos and some interesting new bonus characteristics  For every turn a unique unit does damage to an enemy the units attack get gradually more powerful each turn making it even more important than ever to take down the unique units quickly before being overwhelmed. Not only that but the Shaolin”s Heros can also reduce the strength of enemy units. A formidable team that’s for sure! Here is the stats breakdown:

Heroes

• Monk – A melee brawler whose attack reduce a single enemy’s maximum health by 25%.
• Windblade – Her attack chains to additional enemies.
• Poisoner – Her attack weakens the opponent’s Defense and Resist.
• Taoist – A Healer who can resurrect, clear debuffs from allies, and remove buffs from enemies.
• Shadow – Turns the tide of battle by reviving KO’d units into specters to fight on his side.

Spells and Equipment

• Dragon – Cast this spell to summon a dragon that breathes fire along a row, dealing damage to three squares directly in front of the target.
• Combo Potion – A consumable that heals an ally for 1000 health and makes their next attack worth two combo points.
• Bamboo – Place a destructible bamboo tile that blocks enemy line of sight.

When is it coming?

The Shaolin team will be available on iOS and Steam some time in November – so not long away. Oh and did we mention the team also brings with it a new map for everyone to play plus some more new challenges! Keep your eyes peeled for the November release!

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There are only two days left for voting in the Golden Joystick awards, so if you haven’t already dont forget to vote for Hero Academy in the “Best Mobile / Tablet” category. The Golden Joystick awards are widely recognised in the industry so if you feel like making Robot’s day go ahead an nominate them on the link below!

http://www.goldenjoystick.com/best-mobile-tablet/hero-academy

Time is running out to vote! Voting closes on the 22nd!

Robot Fans audio interview extraordinaire Kenny Newell has recently been invited to an interview by Tony Goodman in his own home over dinner. In case you don’t know, Tony Goodman one of the key founders of Ensemble Studios and served as CEO and Studio Head for the lifetime of Ensemble Studios. He then went on to head up and create Robot Entertainment after Ensemble closed its doors.

If you ever wondered how Robot Entertainment came to form, and how it came about that they started working on Age of Empires Online your going to want to check out this fantastic interview between Kenny and Tony Goodman. You can also find out about Tony’s brand new venture, PeopleFun and their first game  – Word Chums!

Listen now:

http://remember-ensemblestudios.com/2012/10/kenny-newell-interviews-tony-goodman-ensemble-studios-robot-entertainment-and-peoplefun-founder/

The second DLC booster pack for Orcs Must Die! 2 has been announced today. Titled “Family Ties” the new DLC features new enemies, new levels weapons and a new character skin. Oh and not to mention a new trinket and skull definition.

New enemies – Ball & Chain

If you’re a fan of Orcs one of the main attractions in this new DLC will be the new enemies in particular, Ball & Chain who is an enraged female Orc on a mission of destruction. She has a large mace which can be thrown hurtling towards the War Mage or Sorceress. The mace packs a big punch and big damage, she is one certainly one to watch.

There’s an old saying beyond the rifts that says, “Behind every bumbling male orc army, there’s a huge, enraged female orc wielding a giant mace.” 

However, she is not the only new enemy in this DLC pack, there are also healers called “Hobgoblin Healers” they have the ability to heal enemy Orcs up to 100% with an aditional healing over time thereafter. The Hobgoblin’s may be small, but left unchecked and they can certainly cause players a headache. You’ll want to target these quickly!

 Three new levels

No DLC pack is complete without a few new levels. Family Ties features three new levels Triple Threat, Breakneck Triad, and Rush Hour. Not only that but there are three new endless mode conversions in the form of Breakneck Triad, Stairs of Doom, and Servant Entrance. Plenty to get stuck into!

New weapons & trinket

The Stone Staff is one of the new weapons available for the War Mage and Sorceress allowing players to turn enemy Orcs to stone to effectively freeze them in their path. The weapon is piercing (the first piercing main weapon thus far) which means that Orcs or turned to stone in a straight line which can be very handy.

Also new in the toolkit is the Teleportation Ring. Two of these can be placed on walls and allows players to teleport to another location on the map. In terms of trinkets a brand new ghouly “Jar of Ghosts” trinket allows players to let loose a scary image that scares even the most hardest of small Orcs away.

New costume & skull definition

Two new cosy costumes are available for both War Mage and Sorceress. Available for 35 skulls players can be suited and booted when facing off against the new enemies and levels. Finally a new skull definition has been introduced, the “Zero Mana” definition. It pretty much does what it says on the tin,  if you manage to complete a level without using any mana you can gain an extra bonus skull – handy if you are an all traps, no magic type.

When is it coming?

Players won’t have long to wait at all! The brand new Family Ties DLC is launching on Steam tomorrow for just $4.99. You cant get a better deal than that folks! Keep an eye on Steam tomorrow for the launch.

Screenshots

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More information is available on the Robot Entertainment blog post. Here is a summary of all the new features.

Family Ties Booster Pack Features:

 

• Three Exciting New Levels – The entire orc family is coming to visit in three completely new levels! Jump into single-player or co-op to defend Triple Threat, Breakneck Triad, and Rush Hour.
   
• New Endless Mode Conversions – Empowered by the Ball and Chain, the orcs just keep coming! Defend the rifts in three harrowing new Endless Mode conversions – Breakneck Triad, Stairs of Doom, and Servant Entrance.
   
• Amazing New Weapons – Master the powers of the Earth to turn enemies to stone with the new Stone Staff. Become the master of your domain with the Teleportation Ring that lets you decide when and where you want to teleport across a level!
   
• A Terrifying New Trinket – Strike fear into your enemies with the mysterious Jar of Ghosts! Pop the top to release a spectral fear image that sends your enemies running home with their tails tucked between their legs!
   
• The Most Frightening Enemy Yet – Come face-to-mace with the menacing new Ball and Chain, an enormous female Orc wielding a powerful mace that’s bigger than you are! Keep a sharp eye out for her consorts, the Hobgoblin Healers!
   
• New Character Costumes! – Show the Ball and Chain that this isn’t your first fight by suiting up in these fashionable new orc-skin costumes for the War Mage and Sorceress.
   
• New Bonus Skull Definition – Not the magic type? Now there’s a skull reward just for you. If you can make it through a level without using a single drop of your mana, you’ll toss a “Zero Mana Use” bonus skull atop your pile of spoils!

 

Hero Academy fans may remember that back in late June this year Robot Entertainment announced that it was partnering with YoDo1, a Chinese video game studio, in order to bring Hero Academy to the mass Chinese market. Hero Academy has been available in China for a number of weeks now and the launch has been a great success. So much so that the YoDo1 localized version of Hero Academy made the Top 10 list in free games, and Top 25 iPhone apps overall in just 48 hours after going live on the App Store.

Localizing the game & servers

The results are very impressive and it is great news that Hero Academy is reaching a global audience. Robot Entertainment partnering with YoDo1 have really shown the industry the kind of results that can be achieved by localizing games for the Chinese market. Recently Henry Fong, CEO and founder of YoDo1 took part in an interview with Gamasutra to give us an insight to how we arrived at this point. There were a number of considerations and challenges that Robot Entertainment and YoDo 1 had to address to achieve this success. One of the key decisions was to provision the servers in China and have a separate Chinese version of the game rather than connecting players to the same USA based servers. This was an important consideration not only for technical reasons (connectivity from China to USA servers was slow) but also it was important to give Chinese players and experience they were familiar with. As Henry Fong tells Gamasutra:

As a multi-player turn-based game, Hero Academy needed a local server presence in Asia. Otherwise, it would take forever for Chinese players to find opponents, and cause long delays in between moves. On top of that, the Western version of Hero Academy has a lot of connectivity to Twitter and Facebook, so players can share content with their friends, and find fellow players on those social networks. Trouble is, neither Twitter nor Facebook are even accessible in China.

Robot and YoDo1 set about replacing the existing US based social network links (Facebook & Twitter) and replaced them with Chinese social network Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo. After all its no good having functionality to invite friends by Twitter if all the Chinese players are using Weibo. This move was certainly important to allow players to connect with friends in China.

A brand new exclusive team

In order to help entice the Chinese players a brand new team was created based on the Chinese equivalent of Middle Earth “Jiang Hu”. Think “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon“. As Henry describes:

Hero Academy is full of elves, orcs, and other character types that Western gamers are totally familiar with, from Lord of the Rings and other classics. So what if we introduced a China themed heroic team to the game? We thought that this would certainly be a bigger draw to the Chinese gamer audience.

New marketing materials

The concerns that Chinese players wouldn’t be familiar with the Western style characters also centred around the need to create new marketing materials such as a new video trailer to promote the Chinese launch of the game. YoDo1 went about creating a brand new trailer unique to the Chinese market and the results are pretty impressive – check out the trailer below!

Its fantastic to see that the Chinese version of Hero Academy has had such great success. YoDo1 are continuing to work with Robot to add new content to the game. The Chinese launch of Hero Academy is clearly a beacon of success that says Western games with the right level of localization can make it big in China. Hero Academy is now at the forefront of this kind of game localization. Congratulations Robot and Yodo1!

Further reading

Check out the full article with Henry Fong and Gamasutra here:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177767/How_Hero_Academy_went_big_in_China.php