Kickstarter - Hero-U - Kickstarter Update #14, Interviews

Hero-U has a new update ($217k/$400k, 9 days) with some new reward tiers and Add-On updates but mostly to point out some press articles.

Adventure Gamers has a lengthy interview:

Ingmar: Many people seem to be skeptical about how much "adventure" there will be in this game compared to the RPG elements. Can you give an idea of some of the classic adventure game puzzles you'll offer?

Corey: That might be telling. *smile* We have a strong mystery subplot in Rogue to Redemption. The player will find some hidden clues in the school and catacombs, and will learn more by talking to characters in the game. The player may discover secret messages written in code, and will have the option to decipher the codes himself, or to find additional clues that will help him solve them. There are locked doors to be opened with keys and/or lockpicking skill. Some of the characters will assign tasks to the player – quests, if you will. Some of them contradict each other, and the player will have to choose which to fulfil, perhaps angering some characters and pleasing others.

There is an entirely different category of puzzles relating to Shawn's skills. The player can pick up certain elective skills, and can improve any of them with study and practice. Many of the game's puzzles – particularly in combat, but also the adventure-style puzzles – have multiple solutions depending on clever use of those skills.

There's another interview at Gaming Furever (and I think the pun in intended):

6. I've heard you describe Hero-U as the game you have always wanted to make. Were you originally shooting for a game like Hero-U during your time with Sierra? Was it not deemed possible at the time, technologically?

Sierra tools were designed for making a particular type of adventure game.  I added a layer on top of them to support some role-playing game play, but we frequently ran into limitations of the system.  However, Sierra originally hired Lori because they wanted her to make a role-playing game, so we made a hybrid adventure/RPG.  It certainly fit *our* definition of an RPG. 

Hero-U is again a compromise, but one we are very excited about.  We have an interesting story and characters planned, we're getting to use an upgraded version of our "school for heroes" as a setting, and we have a team that we trust completely.  We're getting to do some interesting things because we have fewer limitations than at Sierra.  Partly that's because of our decision to focus on a single character rather than having to handle many different options for four character classes.