The puns! The puns! If there’s one thing marking this game out from others, it’s the sheer weight of verbal gags, there’s a metric pun of them throughout the game. (Seriously, there’s hundreds, if not thousands of puns here.) Whether you’re investigating a flaming sconce, a painting of a panther, or even rifling through sheet music of a piano, there’s always, always going to be some funny, amusing, or cringe-worthy pun.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Hero-U Rogue to Redemption is a curious and somewhat charming point-and-click style adventure. In it, players take on the role of Shawn (who happens to be smooth shaved, and thus living up to his name). This young lad finds himself enrolled in the Hero University, training to become a rogue – a staple class of fantasy adventures, who specialize in skills such as stealth, lockpicking, traps and the like (as distinct from tank-like warriors or healing paladins). During this time, Shawn will learn skills, make friends and enemies, and embark on numerous adventures in the Hogswart-ish university. This process will take 50 in-game days, and once that time is up, the game finishes.
As such, one of the central conceits of the game is time management. Each action, whether it’s training a skill, picking a lock, engaging in dialogue or fighting a vicious Dire Rat (shortened to ‘drat’), takes a particular amount of time. And you only have so much time spare each day between lessons and meals. In fact, once the clock hits 1am, you’re whisked back to your bedroom for a night’s sleep.
Within this, the game provides both extraordinary freedom, as well as some peculiar restraints. As the game is literally on a timer, story progression is not linked to player actions. Yes you’re given some tasks, but you’re at liberty to complete them, or completely ignore them. The effect is that each time you play through the game, depending on where you focus and literally invest your time, Shawn’s story, and the story of those around him will be different – sometimes with characters living or dying as a result of Shawn’s actions. This really gives the game a massively open feeling, with it simply presenting possibilities to you, and trusting on your own tastes, interests and sense of curiosity to guide you.
On the flip side, because this is quite an unusual way to design a game, it does take a while (and a small amount of frustration) to wrap your head around. A few times you will be given a task (or discover it for yourself), and get stuck searching for how to achieve it, only to realize that you literally have to do nothing but wait for the game to hit a certain timing mark. In this sense, the game blends almost total freedom with quite strict restraints. This can be seen in your options to interact with the world. If it’s something the game wants you to do, it will allow it. If not, you’ll be rewarded with a (usually quite amusing) pun explaining why it’s a bad, stupid or downright idiotic idea.
Ironically, this mix of freedom and constraint actually led me into a fight with the ‘you will play as I’ve decided’ element in the design in one quest – a race to save the life of a student. Why this had become a race was because I had only discovered the relevant location on literally the day before that student will die, should Shawn not help, leaving me only a few hours of game-time spare. Unwilling to let the student die, and equally unwilling to start the game over so I could budget my time and coin now that I was forewarned, it resulted in multiple reloads until I found the correct combination of moves and items which let me beat what was an otherwise impossible situation with only a few minutes before the game would forcibly teleport Shawn back to his bedroom. Also, there seemed to be no way to force the clock to advance except by doing actions, so a certain amount of repetitive grinding is inherent in its very design.
Putting that to one side, Hero-U has created quite a unique setting for players to explore. While the graphics are quite basic, the mix of 3D and hand-drawn art give it a very distinct, stylized look which is friendly to younger audiences and has a certain quirky charm all of its own. It’s not perfect – particularly in combat where the camera repositions and makes it look like you’re fighting upside down (don’t ask me why this happens, but it does; perhaps it’s because you’ve turned the usually fight-avoiding rogue-class on its head) – but it does the job of conveying a rich and interesting world.
And the world keeps expanding. Just as you’ve come to grips with it, you invariably discover a new location, secret passageway, or engaging story line which opens up whole new areas and stories to explore. The way the stories, quests and characters are integrated into the game-world is masterful, with each adventure growing out of your interaction with the world, and the conclusions feeling suitably heroic and benevolent. In keeping with the freeform side of the design, there’s often more than one way to solve a challenge. For example, you may attempt to fight a monster by yourself, or enlist the aid of an ally (with a simple, but still fun combat system which would be familiar to anyone who has played the old D&D games). Perhaps you won’t even bother to fight the monster, and simply sneak past it, or even negotiate with it. Or perhaps you’ll just leave it alone altogether. Once you get used to the flow of the game, and its reliance on time to drive the story forwards, it becomes quite enjoyable – particularly because you’re working towards a goal that you’ve chosen to aim for, in the manner of your choosing. Also, the game is very forgiving, and with the exception of a few bosses, the only penalty for losing a combat encounter is to wake up in the infirmary, losing several hours of time (fine, unless you’re racing the clock).
Worth a mention, and praise, are also the various puzzles scattered throughout the games, some reliant upon pattern recognition, some on lateral thinking, and some on wordplay. Disarming traps, for example, start a neat version of what is effectively hangman (a game I haven’t played in years). In all cases though, the answer, whether it’s activating switches in a sequence or picking the correct letters to disarm a trap, can all be found through careful observation of the game world and the context in which the puzzle appears. Not only do these provide a fun change of pace, they reward thoughtful observation of the game world – not just the environment, but the characters as well.
Ultimately, despite my struggle with parts of the design, and the fact that I initially had to ‘stick at’ the game until the world opened up (which, in all fairness, was down to me not realizing I had missed exploring parts of the map), I ultimately ended up having a pleasant time with Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. The sense of humour alone was enough to keep me engaged. Whether it was the silly poems that attend Shawn’s demise should you lose a boss fight, pop culture references (like a tombstone labeled ‘Doctor Tennant’ with the epitaph “I don’t want to go”), the chicken sound that plays when you run from a fight, the innumerable puns, strange paintings or quirky in-game labels (such as the plants which, when you put the mouse over them display the names “plants - thither” and “plants - yon”), I found all of them delightful.
While those looking for a stiff challenge and fast-pace gameplay, and especially those who hate puns will want steer clear of this. Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is definitely worth considering for those who love word-play, and are looking for a slow-paced but amusing diversion laden with puns and engaging stories. ■