2 reviews
  • Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS


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
  • 144149
  • 86
  • 310

Posts

The green ogre can be difficult without a party, or if you're not a mage. You can kick his ass as a mage if you have enough real-life stamina and perseverance, and learn his pattern.
And you can kill it anyway if you have perseverance.
This game is really good! though the giant green guy (who I assume is the first boss) is a bit more strong then I'd have liked...
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=orochii
Yup, I saw that too. The OUYA reading girl said "there's only one dungeon/boss/somethinglikethat", so I suppose they are with the previous version.

By the way I just had one issue with the Aviator Hat. Description says MATK+5, but it doesn't seems to give it (still the JUMP+10 is great!). Wanted to try it instead of the TopHat, which is the one I'm going now for, but just wanted to mention that.

Also, since TopHat gives +5 Fireball, can it get to lvl14?

EDIT: And another question! Can I continue my previous game to the new version? I first tried overwriting the core files, but sent me an error.
Then I made another try, copied version 2 to a new folder, started a new character, closed the game, copied my old player.dat, and it worked, after some stuff happened (yeah, silly me, didn't copied the items, flags, etc just the player data). Sent me to a location, then to the doors that connect the town with dungeons, then to the green ogre boss which I killed with honor! Then, I had to go to the first map and talk with the first NPC, because I had no HUD! Ahahahahaha!
Still, I probably did something wrong.

The incorrect description is a bug on my part. I need to implement that a bit better. (I manually enter the text.)

Yes, Fireball can go to level 14. :)

To copy old files, it's better to overwrite everything in the data folder. You had a slight issue because you didn't grab the flags.dat file which includes your character's local switches.

author=Adon237
I have sort of the same 'problem' i transferred my data from the previous version to this and now all of my stats are low and I don't have any stat points left over.

Not a big deal if you can't fix, just wondering. :)


Yeah I'm not sure why that happens. If you have enough for a stat reset that should fix everything though.
Adon237
if i had an allowance, i would give it to rmn
1743
I have sort of the same 'problem' i transferred my data from the previous version to this and now all of my stats are low and I don't have any stat points left over.

Not a big deal if you can't fix, just wondering. :)
Yup, I saw that too. The OUYA reading girl said "there's only one dungeon/boss/somethinglikethat", so I suppose they are with the previous version.

By the way I just had one issue with the Aviator Hat. Description says MATK+5, but it doesn't seems to give it (still the JUMP+10 is great!). Wanted to try it instead of the TopHat, which is the one I'm going now for, but just wanted to mention that.

Also, since TopHat gives +5 Fireball, can it get to lvl14?

EDIT: And another question! Can I continue my previous game to the new version? I first tried overwriting the core files, but sent me an error.
Then I made another try, copied version 2 to a new folder, started a new character, closed the game, copied my old player.dat, and it worked, after some stuff happened (yeah, silly me, didn't copied the items, flags, etc just the player data). Sent me to a location, then to the doors that connect the town with dungeons, then to the green ogre boss which I killed with honor! Then, I had to go to the first map and talk with the first NPC, because I had no HUD! Ahahahahaha!
Still, I probably did something wrong.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=orochii
Hey Dragonheartman, just saw this game on the OUYA radar, even if it was a video from yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBTxJDM0wQk
Yeah! I got so excited when I saw that. I'm glad people are trying it, even though it's still in alpha.
Hey Dragonheartman, just saw this game on the OUYA radar, even if it was a video from yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBTxJDM0wQk
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=mangakan
First, this game is really fun! Thanks for that game.
My question is: there any way to play with a joypad/controller?
That would be a dream!
Currently, only on OUYA. I think I can add support for it in the future though!

Thank you.
First, this game is really fun! Thanks for that game.
My question is: there any way to play with a joypad/controller?
That would be a dream!
I like this kind of games. I am keeping an eye on this,
Adon237
if i had an allowance, i would give it to rmn
1743
MOAR

This game is very very very addicting, I am at level 32 right now, doing around 70 damage to hordes of skeletons. Kinda sad that after that ogre battle he just respawns and you can't go further, but I am in love!
author=dragonheartman
author=TheRexion
I found the Android version incredibly fun, though the onscreen buttons were incredibly inprecise and were the cause of many a missed jump. Definitely looking forward to it, though! Ran beautifully ( as far as I could see ) on my Kindle Fire HD.
Thank you for testing! If you have any specific ideas for how I can improve the on-screen controls, I'm all ears! Unfortunately I haven't given the Android version a lot of love, because my focus is OUYA/Desktop, but I should certainly. :)

Hahah, indeed. Also, those Skeletons are still very annoying even with good equipment and a decently leveled character. Their view expands too far and they all come running at me at once. And the respawn rate needs to be tweaked, because as soon as I kill a few and start to get relief, and dozen more flood me and I die/nearly die.

tl;dr Skeletons see too far, and respawn too quickly.

Well, pretty much everything respawns a bit too quickly, but I am sure that is a fairly easy fix.

The controls should be repositioned so the spells are easy to access on the bottom of the screen instead of the top. And maybe increase their hitbox or something, because I have to hit them in a certain spot in order for them to register.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=TheRexion
I found the Android version incredibly fun, though the onscreen buttons were incredibly inprecise and were the cause of many a missed jump. Definitely looking forward to it, though! Ran beautifully ( as far as I could see ) on my Kindle Fire HD.
Thank you for testing! If you have any specific ideas for how I can improve the on-screen controls, I'm all ears! Unfortunately I haven't given the Android version a lot of love, because my focus is OUYA/Desktop, but I should certainly. :)
I found the Android version incredibly fun, though the onscreen buttons were incredibly inprecise and were the cause of many a missed jump. Definitely looking forward to it, though! Ran beautifully ( as far as I could see ) on my Kindle Fire HD.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=Arandomgamemaker
How long are you planning to make this game?
I'm going to keep it short, maybe 2-3 dungeons, but designed in such a way that if there's an interest I can add more "expansions" fairly easily.

Ah. Well I kinda knew that some skills weren't implemented yet, but nice to see they're confirmed as WIP.

Also, I'd rather chat with you through MSN, Skype, or Facebook if you have time since I'm probably going to discuss a lot about gears and weapon types. (And I can possibly make sprites for them too since 8-bit/16-bit spriting is also my forte.)

Just PM me if you wish to exchange contact infos! I'd be more than happy to help you out with your project XD
Help with creating content would be appreciated. :) I'll PM ya.
@dragonheartman

Ah. Well I kinda knew that some skills weren't implemented yet, but nice to see they're confirmed as WIP.

Also, I'd rather chat with you through MSN, Skype, or Facebook if you have time since I'm probably going to discuss a lot about gears and weapon types. (And I can possibly make sprites for them too since 8-bit/16-bit spriting is also my forte.)

Just PM me if you wish to exchange contact infos! I'd be more than happy to help you out with your project XD
How long are you planning to make this game?
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
Thanks for all the comments and interest.

author=Vionneta
So I played the game with a couple of friends and they took a liking to it. In fact, they got addicted for a couple of hours just grinding themselves off in the forest XD

Anyway, during our adventures, I found some things you might want to look at:

- The Boss' earthquake stomp will still get you if you leave the room while he's in the middle of it.
- Some enemies get stuck midair. I don't know if this is a lag issue or not (Since I was playing at a friend's server), but I thought it was worth seeing.
- Weapon throw skill follows your character's y coordinate. Was this on purpose? XD
- Earthquake doesn't work, and so as Massive Attack. Whenever I use them, nothing happens.
- The poison skill can't be seen anywhere on the hotkey list after you've put a skillpoint in it.
- The description box needs to be expanded, cuz some texts can't fit inside them. (That or you can perhaps retain the current size of the description box and change the lengthy messages into scrolling marquees. Just an idea XD)

I might have missed some, but oh well. Can't wait for more updates!

Wow what level did you guys get to? Most of the tier-3 skills and all of the tier-4 skills are unimplemented at this stage, so you must have played a lot. I'm glad. Feel free to suggest things for the game (new gear or ideas) either here or on the facebook page and I'll try to incorporate them.

- The Boss' earthquake stomp will still get you if you leave the room while he's in the middle of it.
Good catch! This is certainly a bug and I've filed a ticket for this.
- Some enemies get stuck midair. I don't know if this is a lag issue or not (Since I was playing at a friend's server), but I thought it was worth seeing.
This is also a bug. The clients do some corrective measures to ensure the server/client doesn't drift too much out-of-sync but it's not perfect yet. The good news is there's already a ticket filed for this, so it's something I am aware of and certainly planning on fixing.
- Weapon throw skill follows your character's y coordinate. Was this on purpose? XD
Yes, this is intentional. My thought is that melee classes should be more mobile, and by giving control over the Y coordinate you can jump around and pull off some really fun kills.
- Earthquake doesn't work, and so as Massive Attack. Whenever I use them, nothing happens.
I haven't implemented these skills just yet. I'm actually still documenting their expected behavior before I write the code.
- The poison skill can't be seen anywhere on the hotkey list after you've put a skillpoint in it.
This is a bug. Whoops!
- The description box needs to be expanded, cuz some texts can't fit inside them. (That or you can perhaps retain the current size of the description box and change the lengthy messages into scrolling marquees. Just an idea XD)
Correct--I need to finalize the descriptions. I don't have a lot of space, so I may also end up narrowing some of the font if I can't give clear descriptions of all the skills.
So I played the game with a couple of friends and they took a liking to it. In fact, they got addicted for a couple of hours just grinding themselves off in the forest XD

Anyway, during our adventures, I found some things you might want to look at:

- The Boss' earthquake stomp will still get you if you leave the room while he's in the middle of it.
- Some enemies get stuck midair. I don't know if this is a lag issue or not (Since I was playing at a friend's server), but I thought it was worth seeing.
- Weapon throw skill follows your character's y coordinate. Was this on purpose? XD
- Earthquake doesn't work, and so as Massive Attack. Whenever I use them, nothing happens.
- The poison skill can't be seen anywhere on the hotkey list after you've put a skillpoint in it.
- The description box needs to be expanded, cuz some texts can't fit inside them. (That or you can perhaps retain the current size of the description box and change the lengthy messages into scrolling marquees. Just an idea XD)

I might have missed some, but oh well. Can't wait for more updates!
It reminded me of the good old Maplestory a bit as well.

I thing there's lots of potential too. The game has a great feel so far. I'm looking forward to more.