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Once a fabled assassin, you hunted those who jeopardized the order and balance of your home planet, Odorus. Now, after a blinding flash of light during a routine mission to stop a murderer who calls himself The Apprentice, you find yourself alone on a mysterious island with little recollection of the task at hand. Can you complete your original mission and stop this mysterious killer before he gets to Andoru?

Heroes of Umbra is short 2D side-scrolling multiplayer RPG that plays similar to games like MapleStory, Super Metroid, and Diablo. You can hack and slash away slimes or duke it out with your buddies in the battle arena. Target platforms include Desktop (cross-platform), Android, and OUYA.

Unlike its paraquel, Starless Umbra, HoU features 100% original assets and music. I'm retaining a strict 16-color palette for all game assets to maintain visual integrity and capture the SNES-era look-and-feel. The game emphasizes gameplay over storytelling like many classic 8- and 16-bit adventure games.

Updates
Because it's so easy to push builds with dropbox, you can always get the latest version of the game at play.heroesofumbra.com. I will still try to update the RMN links regularly, but I generally deploy new builds a few times a week. Search #HeroesOfUmbra on twitter for a changelog.

Latest Blog

Heroes of Umbra Launching June 1st



It's finally done and ready. And only about 4 years later than I had hoped!

Heroes of Umbra on Steam

The game will launch for $9.99 (USD) with plans to provide free updates if there's some demand. It includes English, Portuguese (BR), German, and Russian localizations, with more to come!

Please wishlist and consider picking up a copy June 1st if you enjoyed the previous iterations of the game. Your support will help pay artists for my other project, Starless Umbra, and help complete it at a (more) reasonable pace.

With respect,
--dhm

PS I mentioned having a demo up, that is still planned when I have a moment. I took the one posted her temporarily down because it was really old.
  • Completed
  • Commercial
  • dragonheartman
  • Custom
  • Adventure Platformer RPG
  • 02/18/2013 09:09 PM
  • 05/14/2018 12:30 AM
  • 05/12/2018
  • 144159
  • 86
  • 310

Posts

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SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323
Wow! This is a pretty good game. I might do a review when you complete this.

Suggestions:

I noticed somewhere in the first area that there was a crab on a platform that you needed to jump on, but the crab did't move. And you needed to jump and attack it. I found this a bit tedious and difficult.

The enemies re-spawn too quickly. You either need to make re-spawn happen when you leave the screen or put a timer on it.

There are other characters in the battle areas. You can talk to them while you are fighting enemies. And then the enemies are re-spawning just after talking to them... Don't put the characters near enemies (a large distance is recommended.)

What I liked:

The jumping / attack key are right beside each other.
The hot keys are near the attack button.
Leveling up is cool, spending points, gaining skills.
Saving it automatic and takes you back to wherever you just were.
The hit detection is great, battle system feels solid.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
Right, the movement is random and I notice at times crabs just sort of sit around. Thankfully their touch damage is low so it's easy to just plow through.

The spawn rate is set to a timer, with two main variables: enemies on the map and players on the map. If more people are on a map or there are fewer monsters on the map, there's going to be a much quicker spawn rate. My thought process was to keep the number of enemies on the map high so you always have something to kill. Generally, people feel the spawn rate for solo play is a bit high so I'll probably be tweaking it. If you build your character right and start to plow through enemies, it does feel really rewarding to have lots of enemies around you to mow down.

I should probably remove those NPCs, as they are temporary.

Thanks for the feedback!
Tau
RMN sex symbol
3293
And here I'd thought you forgot about us little rpgmaker people. How's progress anyway?
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
author=dragonheartman
If you build your character right and start to plow through enemies, it does feel really rewarding to have lots of enemies around you to mow down.


Have you considered tracking how many enemies the player has killed in, say, the last few seconds, and scaling your spawn rate based on that?
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=Tau
And here I'd thought you forgot about us little rpgmaker people. How's progress anyway?
Very very close to completion I would say! I'm ready to work on SU again. :)

author=LouisCyphre
Have you considered tracking how many enemies the player has killed in, say, the last few seconds, and scaling your spawn rate based on that?
My oversimplified formula was to set the time between enemy spawns equal to the number of monsters already on the map in seconds, up to the max of 30. For multiplayer this seems to be okay but not so much for single-player. Tracking the number of enemies killed in some past amount of time is not as straightforward -- I suppose because unless I am overlooking something it requires the server to track for every enemy death maintain a list of timestamps and pruning that list every second or so. It might provide more desireable results. Some scaling dependent on the number of players on the map is a must and your solution indirectly and cleverly accounts for that.
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
Yeah the time stamps is exactly what I was picturing, actually.

I'd definitely want a horn that calls more enemies or something, though; or for certain zones to spawn more enemies based on recent kills. A graveyard, maybe? I don't know your setting that well.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
I have a bacon hat that doubles the spawn rate. It stacks so if everyone on the map wears one things get a little crazy. *g*
Seiromem
I would have more makerscore If I did things.
6375
A perfect lure, yes, nothing can resist the allure of bacon, not even crabs or monstrous plants! Everything hungers for bacon!

So yes, approval is what I'm trying to convey here.
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