When they say "based on," that's an understatement. It has the same 7 resources as HoMM, units spawn in a castle on day 1 of every 7 day week, there are treasure chests that give gold or experience, and many of the adventure map objects are identical to ones from HoMM (Fountain, Rally Flag, Idol of Fortune). The town mechanics are most similar to HoMM VI, with a "town level" that increments when you build enough, unlocking more buildings (hope I'm remembering HoMM VI correctly). Main difference is the real-time combat, of course, though there are also differences in the magic system, and the "hospital mechanic," by which some of your lost creatures will very slowly become available to hire back at the castle.Hero's Hour is a game based on the Heroes of Might and Magic turnbased strategy games. "Hour" refers to the more fast-paced gameplay, with combat taking place on a real-time simulated battlefield.
The game is currently close to finished, but there's still more features to come. Please comment with any suggestions to changes or what the next update should be.
It doesn't come with instructions, and, on my machine, had a problem that the mouse's hitbox wasn't under the cursor (meaning I thought many buttons were broken and unusable), and that tooltips appeared pretty far from what I was mousing over (meaning I initially had no idea the strength of what I was fighting). Once I got the hang of it though, it was a pretty cool game.
I don't know how much longevity it has (I'm finding the real-time combat rather shallow --- past the early game, I usually just watch my army fight by itself and win with no casualties), but it's an interesting twist on the HoMM series. One thing that impresses me game-design wise is that it manages to make the obelisk/buried treasure mechanic actually fun. No hunting down obelisks all across the map and then spending days doing nothing but digging in some forgotten corner of the map. Instead, each obelisk gives you a flavorful paragraph like "Ki-g Ragna- left his treas-re som-where n-ear the mino-r shrine," you walk over to the nearest minor shrine, and watch as your "Dig for treasure" button turns from gray to black when you get close enough.
It's pay-what-you-want right now. I've played about 5 hours the last 2 days. Still buggy (e.g.: the win-condition doesn't work; it just keeps going), and has a terrible AI (I let it run around an area for weeks....and it still never reclaimed a Sawmill I took). Still, I had fun, and I'll be giving him some of my money.
