finished playing: hero core (2010)

a discord pal mentioned a short freeware game called hero core during a bigger conversation the server was having around combat design and i thought, what the hell, why not, it’s saturday, let’s download this bad boy and give it a go.

hero core is retro-designed – arrows to move, z/x to fire left/right, enter for map, 1-bit graphics, chunky chiptune music. it’s a non-linear metroidvania where you’re exploring an asteroid base to find and kill the biggest baddie while killing an optional number of smaller baddies along the way. you don’t have to fight the bosses in a strict order, although the game does default to hinting where the next logical progression boss is on your map with a ? (disable-able in options). i didn’t find that knowing this info affected my experience, i like doing things in their natural difficulty progression even if i stumble onto something harder earlier than i was meant to. they’re optional but you get upgrades for each boss you do kill, so obvi you’re incentivized to do it.

overall really really well executed! game is only an hour-or-so long for 100%, but i found the difficulty curve and pacing spot-on. never a dull moment. highly recommend if you’re into uncovering a map and some light bullet-hell combat. also, it’s free!

as far as the combat design discussion that sparked playing this goes, the topic at hand had to do with difficulty, threat, and tension during multiple-enemy encounters and how that shifts over the course of the encounter as the player is able to thin the enemies’ numbers. theoretically there’s a “tipping point” where the player no longer feels actively threatened and is otherwise in a clean-up phase of the encounter, just finishing off the stragglers who aren’t scary anymore now that they are mostly alone (however it’s possible there’s never a tipping point if a single enemy is still threatening). hero core‘s boss fights would often spawn smaller enemies in addition to their own bullet patterns to stop you from getting too comfortable with simply knowing its pattern. taking down the additional enemies and going back to the normal pattern gave bosses a sort of sine-wave-shaped threat level throughout the fight instead of only ramping upward or staying at one level. fairly simple in all honesty, and plenty of older games utilize this kind of design, but hero core‘s short length and excellent pacing really put it on display as a sort of masterclass execution.

thanks chris for the rec!