Heroes of Orn: Darkness Demo
A downloadable game for Windows
This is a demo for the upcoming game, Heroes of Orn: Darkness. It consists of 1 level that typically takes 1-2 hours to complete.
Heroes of Orn: Darkness is a fantasy base building RTS with a twist - you cannot directly control your units. Build and manage your kingdom and watch as your heroes explore, fight, and grow stronger.
Game Features
- Build your kingdom. You can defend an area with a Guard Tower, increase your gold with a Marketplace, and provide new equipment to heroes with a Blacksmith. Many buildings can be built and upgraded to gain various benefits as you build up your power.
- Recruit heroes to fight for you. Heroes will make their own decisions but can be influenced by you. They will fight, do quests, shop, and take on dungeons. Your heroes will become more powerful in many ways: gaining increased stats, new abilities, new masteries, and more.
- Choose between different classes for your heroes. There are four starting hero classes to choose from, each with their own strengths: the Fighter, a tough and durable melee hero; the Scout, a quick and nimble hero that poisons with each attack; the Evoker, a powerful magic user that deals damage from a distance; and the Healer, a supportive magic user that can heal allies. As your heroes gain experience and level up, they can be upgraded into more powerful classes that are more specialized.
- Use quests to influence your heroes. Quests are a powerful tool for influencing your heroes' actions in Heroes of Orn: Darkness. By paying gold to start a quest, you can influence your heroes to explore an area, kill an enemy, defend a location, or escort a target. Completing these quests will earn your heroes the very gold you spent, which they can use to purchase upgrades. Quests provide a direct and engaging way to interact with your heroes and shape the course of your kingdom's growth.
- Research upgrades for your kingdom. The research system offers a diverse range of possible upgrades to improve your kingdom's economy, defenses, stats of your units, and more. These upgrades provide valuable utility to help your kingdom thrive, and can offer different playstyles depending on the choices you make. Researching upgrades requires mana, but the benefits can be substantial and are crucial to your kingdom's long-term success. Choose your upgrades wisely to shape the strengths of your kingdom and ensure its prosperity.
- Use spells to give yourself an advantage. The spells system allows you to cast a variety of spells to gain an advantage in combat or to aid your kingdom's development. You can purchase and cast spells that deal damage to enemies, buff your units, increase your resource production, and other effects. Using the multicast mechanic, you can quickly cast the same spell multiple times in a row, but at the cost of mana, a valuable resource.
Note: This game is still actively in development and may have bugs, balance issues, or crashes. Please let us know if you run into any problems so we can continue to improve the game. Thank you!
Download
Development log
- Update - Worker Changes and Hero VoicesDec 01, 2023
- Update - Difficulty Options, Settlements, and MoreJul 20, 2023
- Demo now available on SteamMay 09, 2023
- Research UpdateMay 06, 2023
Comments
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I created an account especially to give my impression on this game. The following is merely my impression on my playthrough, how I felt and the ideas that came to mind. I hope any of this can be of some help to you. Spoilers ahead.
PROS
+Nice music (could evolve into a full soundtrack)
+Upgrades of all sorts
+Classes variety
+Nice spells
+Nice visuals
CONS
-Classes are merely variations of fighting styles
-Characters are WAY more interested in monetary gain than survival of the kingdom (even the castle)
-Too dark, I had to zoom to appreciate the buildings’ artstyle
-Need more information on upgrades (buildings, classes, purchasable items)
SUGGESTIONS
=Could partly go for a cartoon style, for a more distinct style. (‘’Kicking butt’’, fonts)
=Since there is not much voice acting for now, NPCs could have their thoughts/battlecries/comments appear over their heads as texts. Heck, have it in cartoonish text bubbles, or as stylish medieval font. Possibilities abound!
=Classes could have more distinct interests / goals for them other than fighting. Ex. collecting herbs, performing in an inn for more money, worshipping in a temple for more mana, etc. This way, they really have their own personnality, and the kingdom gets more layers of complexity rather than « fighting, and how to fight better ».
=Buildings could have distinct ambient sounds. Statues, being one-of-a-time purchase, could emit different visual/sound effects that make each playthrough more unique. Heck, have upgrades that give a different style to buildings so they emit different atmosphere effects. Ex. Gothic town, high fantasy town, tribal town, etc. Just suggestions so you can get the picture.
=More customization on gameplay messages (Kingdom name is a nice start. I had fun goofing around as « William Wallace » ruling « Scotland ».)
=Right now items/inventory are not that interesting to look at. Uniques/upgrades could get a flavourful 10-20 words description. Artsy/stylish/fancy icon to catch the eye.
=Defeat message...maybe a positive ending note to a playthrough or something else than plain diminishing the player?
DEMO SCENARIO SUGGESTION (SPOILERS)
#Have a way to let the player decide when to attack goblins. Allows the players to explore everything he wants from the game.
#If not, introduce difficulty levels to allow a progressive learning of the game.
#Even though my adventurers are high-leveled, getting nearly double their numbers of goblins, level 25, is a bit of a game-crusher. Especially considering how heroes aren't motivated to defend cities.
#Saves?
ENDING NOTE
There you go. I think you have a solid foundation for a great game, and plenty of possibilities for flavourful details to introduce into the game that’s not so much about balance/technical points, but more about breathing life into your kingdom’s people. I don’t pretend to know what’s in your mind about the final version of your project, but some things do make me think you want some humour in it; actions’ descriptives, for example. Right now the focus is mostly about ‘’how to win this fight’’ by choosing characters, order of upgrades and buildings, but each of these points could, by the sum of each of them, make a truly lively portrayal of a different kingdom, on each playthrough.
Well done on your project, congratulations for all the hard work, and thank you for offering us this unique game, and polished gem to come. Cheers!
Thank you so much for the extensive comment! I'll try to respond to most of this.
- I think adding more personality to the different classes is a great idea and something I'd love to do. I don't know how much effort I'll be able to devote to this, as it's already a very ambitious project for me, but I will definitely keep it in mind going forward.
- Different ambience for buildings is a great idea! And I also agree that the statues could have more unique feels to them. I will also keep these things in mind and should be able to improve on them (eventually, heh).
- I definitely want to expand on flavor and variety of items. I have kept this relatively simple for now to be able to focus on more critical aspects of the game. But I plan on improving this.
- Apologies about the defeat message. This is mostly just something I overlooked and was never really meant to be seen by players. I'll make sure both the lose and win screens are fixed up in my next update.
- I have been considering adding difficulty options in the next update or possibly soon after. This seems like a good idea, especially for the demo, since it makes the game more accessible to different players who want different levels of challenge.
- Saving will definitely be added at some point. It may still be a while before it's added though.
THANK YOU!.
I have seen 100 games say their Majesty Styled and be nothing like Majesty. This one TRULY felt like a Majesty game.
I didn't run into any bugs, thou some might think a warrior leaving the guild and walking all the way to the edge of the map at level one while rats are biting him is a bug - it honestly just gave me nostalgia of the wizards in majesty spawning and doing the same thing. Some hero's are just meant to be sacrificed.
I did note there are only the two class paths for each person(WHICH IS AWESOME THEY EVOLVE FROM BASE UP). Did you have plans for like advanced guilds or different race guilds with different perks and advantages(kind of like picking dwarves or elves as a choice but now an elf/dwarf guild)?
Very excited and look forward to this release it has jumped to top 3 of my Wishlist.
EDIT P.S. - I love the evoker magic missile
Thank you so much for the comment, I'm glad you liked it!
There will be a final tier of hero classes added at some point (probably not for a while), meaning there will be 4 final classes for each base class.
The guilds currently have a randomized bonus stat(s) that the heroes of that guild receive and it goes up as the guild gains more renown. I do think this system is a bit shallow and could be expanded on.
Different races isn't very likely, as the different models for each class/race combo would be outside the scope of what I can probably manage. But I do think there's a lot of room for expanding the renown system to serve a similar purpose and I will keep this in mind for future updates!
I loved this demo, you've captured a lot of what made Majesty fun. Really great work. The demo ran smooth and bug free for me.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it.
This game is really awesome! It definitely has that Majesty feel to it (in the best way possible), but it also feels like you have a lot of fun new ideas to bring to the core gameplay that make it stand out as its own game. The dungeon mechanic and the ability to spectate, the expanded quest flags, and the Hero class mechanics are some of the things that really stood out to me. I also appreciated the places where you allowed randomness, like with hiring from the Guild Hall or selecting a class at level-up. It felt like a nice way to have more of a storytelling aspect to the game. I've been looking for a game like this one for a long time, so I'll definitely be keeping my eye on it!
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it and appreciate the comment. There will be some updates coming in the nearish future that I think will make the game even better, so stay tuned!
nice game
Thanks!
A fun demo. Heroes of Orn is very much reminiscent of Majesty but with it's own unique gameplay additions and refinements. Your heroes can even enter an actual dungeon (like Diablo level).
Looking forward to the full release (or at least an EA).
Thanks for playing!