Hero Generations levels up and acquires the mobility trait

Thanks to all the trash and trash business model clogging up my iPad, I’m so disenchanted with the iOS as a gaming platform that I can hardly recall a time when I used to see a cool little PC game and think “I wish that was on the iPad”. But occasionally, a vague memory of that sentiment burbles up. For example, Axes and Acres would be a perfect fit for dinking around on my iPad in the waiting room of the dentist’s office when I can’t play it on my PC (stay tuned for more on that videogame boardgame, which was just released today).

But then someone actually goes and ports his cool little PC game to the iOS. Now I have to remind myself what I did with my iPad. Is it in the garage with my copy of that Tony Hawk skateboarding game? Underneath all my copies of Game Informer in the attic? In the spot reserved for the Oculus Rift I can’t be arsed to get yet? Nope, there it is next to my Friends VHS tapes! Do I still even have a cord to charge it?

I’m prepping my iPad for actual gaming again for when Scott Brodie releases the just announced updated version of Hero Generations.

[Hero Generations] ReGen was created because of the overwhelming demand we’ve received for a phone and tablet version of Hero Generations. But this isn’t just a port. We’re also taking a lot of the ideas and feedback we’ve received from fans of the original game, and integrating them into one kick-ass, definitive remake of HG.

From the screenshots, Hero Generations might look like your garden variety rogue-like. It is no such thing. You don’t level up a character so much as you level up the maps. Your heroes develop cities and beat back monsters over the course of multiple generations. One of the improvements Brodie intends is a large connected map rather than interconnected separate screens. Great idea. Hopefully it will make it easier to wrap your head around how the game progresses. A tricky part of the learning curve is figuring out that your dynasty has to strike out beyond the first map and, hopefully, not die out.

Here’s Brodie’s stream of an early build, which opens with a demonstration of how to flee a battle: “I’m going to run away from this guy because he is huge and we are young.” The non-iOS version of Heroes Generation is available on Steam. Some dude over there wrote this review:

This is not your father’s roguelike. It’s your grandfather’s roguelike. And his father’s before his. And his father’s before his.

Such a clever concept, so refreshingly different from the usual dungeon crawls. It reminds me of a line from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: “For all the points on the compass, there is only one direction. And time is its only measure.”