Hero Academy Review
Hero Academy – the new iOS game from the ex-Ensemble team at Robot Entertainment – is a nice piece of game design, but a truly great piece of spot-welding. As a turn-based fantasy battler, it’s easy to play yet tricky to play well, it just about survives the implementation of micro-transactions, and it’s delivered with a decent bobble-headed art style. What makes it a little bit more special, though, is the fact that all of this is then stuck behind a front-end that comes straight out of Words With Friends. You search for pals to battle with or select a random match-up, you make a move against your opponent, and then you sit back and wait for them to make theirs. You can message players in-game if you particularly like them (or if you particularly loathe them, I guess), and while you’re waiting for a rival to take their turn, you can start a new match with someone else, safe in the knowledge that the familiar scroll-down interface will keep track of everything. The game itself is pleasantly simple, a multiplayer-only affair in which two teams face each other across a tiled pitch. The object of each battle is to destroy your enemy’s crystal(s) before they destroy yours, and you take turns to play: dropping units onto the field, moving them around, attacking or throwing in items. Each turn allows you to make five moves, and that’s always long enough to put a plan in motion – bring a new guy in, buff him and get him moving towards the front lines, say – but never long enough to ensure that you haven’t left yourself exposed somewhere else. Read more…
