Heroes of Dire

Heroes of Dire is a new massively-multiplayer tatical role-playing game developed by Spellbook. It was Kickstarter funded in May 2016 with release expected later in the year. It features cross-server play between mobile and desktop devices.

Overview

Heroes of Dire is all about assembling squads of fighters to make war with other guilds, monsters, and players!

Fighters come in many fantasy archetype flavors such as Mages, Paladins, and Healers. No two are ever the same, with unique names, races, stories, stats, titles, and equipment constructed by complex procedural generation algorithms with impressive and/or hilarious results that will always keep the game freshly entertaining.

The One-Eyed Knight, Two-Fingered Pete, The Laughing Horror, Georgia the Peach, or Screaming Ethel are just a few examples of the trillions of possibilities. For a few Silvers (the in-game currency) players can randomly roll for new fighter names to discover the perfect moniker, or work with a live Dungeon Master to create the perfect name! Fighters have four gear slots: Weapon, Offhand, Armor, and Trinket.

Different items help determine what role a fighter plays, such as holy wands and bandages for Healers, or poisoned dual-wielded daggers for Rogues to maximize backstabs. Like Fighters, almost all items in Heroes of Dire are procedurally generated with no two ever the same. Dungeon Masters will regularly appear in the world as traveling magicians or blacksmiths who can enhance your gear, or as merchants offering unique treasures.

The Non-Human Fighter gift is our way of giving supporters something unique that will become extremely valuable with time.

Under normal circumstances players mostly control humans unless they get lucky during a special event, or buy a non-human fighter from you! Having non-humans on your team is the mark of a total badass that, like a fine wine, will only get better with time. After the influx of tens-of-thousands of regular players, your exclusive backer rewards will be highly coveted and extremely valuable! All non-human fighters begin at Level 1 with common gear, a random class, and random race (unless otherwise noted in your reward tier).

Combat

When in combat, fighters take turns moving and attacking; each action has a time cost that determines when they get to go again.

More expensive actions, such as splitting an enemy archer in half with a greatsword, might push your fighter to the bottom of the action list for 14 rounds, while simply moving would only cost 3 or 4. This turn-based combat system creates an incredibly rich strategy simulation where each decision has a direct and immediate impact on who wins or loses.

Skilled players won't waste a single turn -- One move in the wrong direction or an attack at the wrong time can immediately swing your massive lead into a crippling loss.

Battles can involve anywhere from 2 to 32 fighters, however our playtesting hints that it's most fun with 12 or less. This is due to the turn-based nature of combat, as you would not want to wait more than a few seconds between actions. Each battle is part of a greater narrative, such as a guild war or a quest chain, and players can have multiple squads involved in many fights at the same time.

When a player exits battle the AI takes over and the fight continues uninterrupted. They can return at any time, thus allowing multiple battles to be managed concurrently without breaking the real-time and multiplayer nature of the game. This creates a truly "massive" multiplayer experience as guild wars rage across the world map involving hundreds or thousands of players.