Shadow Heroes is an online game where players from around the world compete in epic battles with hundreds of units using weapons, magic and tactics. Yours is the role of commander, responsible for preparing your troops and leading them to war. Can you find the enemy's weak spot and exploit it? React fast enough to counter your opponent's strategy? Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Without knowledge of what lies ahead, how can you prepare for battle?

Post news Report RSS Question Time With The Developers!

There are a number of questions that we have received and a few other ones that we feel that should be answered for the sake of clarity. Today, we take some time to do this in an update.

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Q. What makes this game different than other RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft or Command and Conquer?

A: Quite a bit actually! To begin with these games all require you to focus on many things at once from macro management tasks like resource gathering and tech trees to micro management tasks like repositioning units and focusing down weakened enemies. With Shadow Heroes: Vengeance in Flames, we decided to keep the focus on the action, so we changed the way some of the macro management tasks worked like resource gathering. We also set it up so any unit can have a wide array of abilities depending on how you want to play. This allows you to have either a lot of micromanagement to do or virtually none at all. Either way, your troops won’t suffer.

Q: You said you changed how resource gathering works? How so?

A: There are no workers at all. No production buildings, no physical resources to collect and no war of attrition. Instead you gain income by hiring units. They can cost quite a bit up front but provide you a permanent income boost. You start by gaining one income every second. Hiring more units to fight for you builds your income which hires more troops which… well you get the point. The idea behind this is that, you can stay watching the fight the whole time without ever returning to your base to build again.

Q: This seems like it can snowball quite quickly. How will you deal with this?

A: We are adding a unit cap in some levels where this will be evident. Part of your task will be to manage how many units you have at once and how you control them.

Q: How do units work in Shadow Heroes?

A: Units are not directly controlled. When you hire them, they know where to go, who the enemy is and what to attack. They even spread out their attacks automatically. Essentially, you don’t control the basic attacks of any unit at all. What you can do is equip your units with different items to either provide passive bonus or active abilities.

Q: So, what do you do in Shadow Heroes?

A: I like to compare Shadow Heroes to a coaching position. You are not on the field yourself but you decide what players to put out there, what plays to run and when to run them. There is a lot of thinking and unit composition planning to be done in Shadow Heroes. You need to react to what is on the field and choose the best course of action or guess how your opponent will react and get ahead of them. It’s a battle of wits with a little bit of lady luck thrown in.

Q: You mention equipment in your videos. How does it work?

A: So, every unit type can be equipped with items that can completely change the way that unit works. Items come in two forms, passive and active. Passive items provide constant boosts and sometimes abilities that the AI will use automatically. Active items will provide boosts to the units only when activated and for a short period of time. They also have abilities that you can control. These can be effects like a single target damage ability that will help you focus down stronger enemies with ease.

Q: So are Active items stronger than Passive items?

A: Not exactly. Much like unit composition, item composition on the units means a lot. Choosing the correct items for a strategy is half the battle, then using them effectively is another challenge all on its own. If you are going with a “Tanky” army that will last a long time, Passive items will be your friends, as their abilities will outlast that of the active items. If you want high DPS, Active items will be your friends as they have abilities that can be used to focus down individual targets. It’s very situational.

If you guys have any other comments or questions, be sure to let us know and we'll add them to the next Q/A we do. We have a long way to go but there is still lots of time. We believe in this project and our Steam figures say you guys do too (we are at a 96% approval rate right now). Let’s keep it going, spread the word we are on Kickstarter and show Shadow Heroes to the world!

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