Ye Olde Inn

Hi dear Ye Old Inners!

I'm proud to present for the first time a video game that I'm working on with a fellow artist since 6 months.

The goal with this game is to capture and to bring into the digital world the fun of HQ gameplay and from all the other physical-dungeon-crawler boardgames like Descent, Mice & Mystics, Super Dungeon Explore, etc. I know, there are a couple of games out there that already tried but I think none was succesful at capturing our favorite game's intrinsic essence. There is Warhammer Quest on iOS of course (and Steam since a couple of weeks or months) in which I spent something like 50 hours, but the problem with it is it's a perfect Warhammer Quest port, with all the Warhammer Quest flaws: exploration is not really fun, there are almost no scenarios and a limited number of mechanics.

And because "If you want something done right, do it yourself", I did.

Or rather, I'm doing .

Here are some screenshots:



You can see on previous screenshot that for the time being, spells can be learned by reading books but it's not something definitive. I am considering different ways of handling spells learning and heroes progression in general, nothing has been decided yet.









My problem now is to find a good game title. I am requesting the help of Ye Old Inners for this task (in the future I will surely require more help like beta-testing or opinion about features). For the time being working title is QUEST HEROES. Yes I know, it's VERY original . Of course, I have a huge list of potential names, but none seems to be THE right one.

For example, I have considered :

● Last Dungeon Heroes
● Heroic Dens And Mortal Lairs
● Dungeons, Dens and Lairs
● Dungeons: Brotherhood
● Door, Monster, Treasure
● Quests & Dungeons
● A Dungeon, Four Heroes
● A Dungeon Quartet
● Dungeon Tactics
● Dungeon Tactical Squad
● Tactical Dungeon Heroes
● One more Dungeon, Heroes!
● Quests & Heroes
● Heroes of Dens & Lairs
● Heroes of Dungeons & Mysteries

What do you think? Is there any idea here that you like or do you have any other? Thank you in advance for your opinion!

Dungeons: Brotherhood

This is the most evocative name from your list. The rest are too mechanical: "This Is A Game Involving Heroes And Dungeons And Monsters". Functional, but not inspiring.

The drawbacks are that if in future you decide to introduce (a) outside levels or (b) female playable characters, the name no longer fits. But those may be minor quibbles.

However...

Heroes of Dungeons & Mysteries

This isn't far away, either. A bit clumsy, as it stands - it doesn't read well and is awkward to say. How about just "Heroes of Mystery", "Heroes of Legend" or "Heroes of Myth"? Or if you have to go for a double-barrelled subject, how about "Heroes of Myth and Legend"? Wouldn't be surprised to find each of those had already been used, in fairness, but they flow better.

Or how about making up something (a place or time) that they are heroes of? "Heroes of Allemar", or "Heroes of the Epic Era".

(PS. I like the semi-circular health/stamina bars on the characters, works very nicely).

Dungeon Brotherhood... Works just as is.

I'd definitely drop all tactical references as an option. It's similar to the difference between Missions and Quests. Tactical, like Missions sounds modern, where as Quests sounds historic.

There's quite a lot more options to mix and match from what you have already...

• Hero Squad (again sounds modern)
• Heroes liar

New ones

• Fellowship Quest
• The Quest of Fellows
• A Band of Heroes
• Heroes League
• A league of Heroes
• Heroes Guild
• Dungeon Legacy (like this one)
• Heroes Legacy
• Legacy Quest
• Clan Quest (A more barbarian style)
• Guild Odyssey
• Quest of Legends

And load more swirling around my head!

I like Heroes of Legend/Myth etc and the idea of creating an era. They'd all work.

Heroes of Legend and Dungeon Legacy are the 2 I like best so far.

I actually like Dungeon Legacy that mitchiemasha came up with. I'm interested in seeing the final product of this game. Don't know that I could help with beta testing as I run a Mac, but I could try getting it to work in WINE. I can run Windows on my Mac, I just don't prefer to.

StratosVX wrote:I can run Windows on my Mac, I just don't prefer to.

The box says "requires Windows 7 or better" so I installed Linux!

Game looks very nice. The residual appeal of HQ after games like Diablo is that it is a physical board game.

Hi again,

Thank you a lot for all your feedbacks!

About brotherhood I didn't know it was having a strong male connotation... I'm not a native english speaker as you may have noticed, it's my biggest problem with this title research thingy and that's why I value and appreciate your inputs a lot. Actually, there is already a playable female character (the archer on the screenshots... in fact EVERYBODY I showed the game to, has said "oh it's a girl? seriously?"... my graphic designer will have to revamp it ^^). We also hope to put some outside passages but that's not a problem : the center of the game is really underground, towers and dungeons.

So if we still go for this title, would it be better with the comma or not? Plural or not?
● Dungeon Brotherhood
● Dungeons: Brotherhood

Before going further I think I should give you more information about the game so you will have all the variables:

- The player will manage a pool of heroes not only 4 characters. He will choose before each quest which ones he wants to send. And of course death will be permanent as soon as he will leave a dungeon without being able to resurrect a dead character.

- All the rules I'm creating for this video game are entirely compatible with real life boardgaming : all the mechanics are based on dices and simple formulas (between vanilla HQ and Descent). I intend to provide a pdf rulebook along with the tilesets/rooms we made: a free print-and-play boardgame to encourage players to have a look to the video game.

- The background is not very serious: I'm a big Terry Pratchett fan so most of the quests will have funny parody elements and a lot of criticism against our modern society. For instance a mayor will ask to eradicate a zombie threat in his city's sewers. But the heroes will discover that the city's board was actually exploiting zombies to clean the sewers. And now that they are leading a pacific strike to get recognition (1 copper coin and 1 day off per week) the mayor wants to break this strike. Another example: a king is asking to bring him back his daughter that have been abducted "one week before her wedding, my poor little sweetheart, she was so happy". But heroes will find out that it was not a rapt, the princess actually ran away with her true love (a paladin) to avoid an arranged marriage with an old creepy minister. And the heroes will have to slay the paladin while being attacked by the princess to succeed the mission.

Because of this setup and even if the main storyline will be slightly more serious, I think a too serious title like "Heroes of the Epic Era" is not a perfect match.

The idea of giving a name to the land where the heroes are going to travel like "Heroes of Allemar" or "Dungeons of Allemar" is seducing... In this case I need to find a joke for the country name...

Or "Dungeons of the Ancients" / "Dungeons of the Elders"?... the "ancients" and the "elders" being in fact us: the old school games players . Talking about this, I also like the "Legacy" idea, because this game is a direct legacy from the past : HeroQuest, old school D&D dungeons, adventure books... "Dungeon Legacy" already popped in my head some time ago but after a search I found that it was already taken by a web comics. I build up more titles with "Legacy" (by the way, let's share my full title research list, there are more than 200: https://goo.gl/s0UHXB) but none are really cool.
In fact, I'm a little jealous of the "Knights of Pen and Paper" game: it's an original title and it rings immediately in the head of all potentially interested player . That's the kind of title I would love to find.

My attempts of creating a title with "tactical" was coming from the hope that by just reading the title everyone would understand instantly what kind of game it is (when I need to explain what kind of game I'm doing to people who are not aware of the HeroQuest "boardgame genre" I describe it as a crossing between Final Fantasy Tactics and Diablo). Counterparty being as you said that it's not very inspiring.

So, all in all :

● maybe "Dungeon Brotherhood" or "Dungeons: Brotherhood"
● maybe "Heroes of FunnyLandName" or "Dungeons of FunnyLandName"
● maybe a variant of Dungeon Legacy like "Dungeons Legacy"

Thank you again if you have more feedbacks or ideas!

And about the beta testing no worries: the game is developed with Unity so it's plateform agnostic and is already running as good on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android !

Some good thougths discussed here already.

Personally, I'd say Brotherhood does have a strong male gender connotation. I feel (as a father of a Female teen Gamer), if we want new generations of gamers to be drawn to gaming we need to adapt to a less "Old School" male dominated sterotype... That may mean losing these types of assumptions, that gender language is unimportant.

All of that said, as soon as I saw this list the first thing I thought was "Quest of Heroes" was a perfect homage, easy to say and remember, and reminded me of one of my favorite film titles (Blood of Heroes)...*Chuckle*...

However, I do think that Dungeon Legacy is a strong contender because this game is (if I understand correctly), a send up to a whole genre of Crawlers not just Hero Quest.

Cool project, I'll be interested to see how it evolves.

maj!

Scions of the Dungeon
Dungeon Delving
Heroes of Myth
Mythic Dungeons
Epic Quests
Quests and Heroes
Questing Heroes
Hack and Slash: the Game
Swords of the Underworld
Heroes vs. Monsters: the Reckoning
Monster Realm
Hero Quest: Heirs of Glorantha
Adventure and Adversaries
Traps and Treasures
The Misadventures of Northern Wasteland Barbie and Company

You could always just call it Heroquest: 26th Anniversary Edition? And pretend you have the official copyright to the name

Artwork looks go so far

StratosVX wrote:I actually like Dungeon Legacy that mitchiemasha came up with.

I was just about to say that!!!

Sure, it may be a bit generic...
But with the word "Dungeon" you are basically told everything you need to know.
The word "Legacy" evokes thoughts of long forgotten mythical monsters, fabled treasures and lost kingdoms. In addition it also allures to the legacy of HeroQuest which is it's inspiration.

+1 for Dungeon Legacy