Hands on with Heroes Never Lose
by Marcus Estrada
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[dropcap]D[/dropcap]o you love action/puzzle games such as Puzzle Fighter and Puyo Puyo but wish they had more comic book flair? If so, Heroes Never Lose: Professor Puzzler’s Perplexing Ploy may just be the game for you. As of this writing, a small development team headed by Osama Dorias is well on the path of making their game a reality. In fact, the project has already been funded and is currently looking toward stretch goals! But how is Heroes Never Lose? Will it be able to encompass the fun vibe of its inspirations? I was lucky enough to be given access to the development build and will do my best to answer this (and other) questions!
So far, Heroes Never Lose already has the solid base functionality you’d expect from such a title. Of course it’s lacking in many of the bells and whistles that will come with further development. As of right now you can play Arcade or Versus mode. Versus mode lets you play with another local player or against the CPU. Of course, in that case you might as just play Arcade. Whichever of these modes you select the gameplay remains the same.
Gameplay is comprised of a very basic concept: Match colored blocks on your side of the field without letting them stack up to the top of the screen. Blocks fall in pairs of two and can be moved anywhere on the field as well as rotated. However, unlike other similar puzzle games, they don’t disappear after being matched with 3 or 4 same-colored blocks. Instead you need to get a special block (of the same color) which will destroy all connecting blocks of the same type. Things get a little more complex when each character’s special abilities come into play.
Fitting with the superhero style, Heroes Never Lose is sure to give each character a signature special move. There are only three playable heroes in the current build, but it gives you a good idea for what’s to come. For example, Brainfreeze is able to freeze all enemy blocks currently on screen. When that happens you can no longer match other blocks with the frozen ones. It’s such an annoying ability that I loved playing as Brainfreeze in particular! There are slots for nine characters so far so I’m looking forward to seeing the entire roster fleshed out. Hopefully each will be sure to have their own totally unique abilities matching with their superpowers.
So far it’s exciting to mess around with the game. Although it works with both keyboard and controller, my preferred method of play is definitely with a Xbox 360 gamepad. It just feels the most natural after playing other action puzzlers on consoles. And again, though this is an early development build, Heroes Never Lose already has the basic mechanics and visuals in place. It’s just really difficult when playing against NPCs. Here’s hoping a difficulty selector gets added in sometime, as most of us don’t have continuous access to friends for local or online multiplayer.
I’m pleased with how readily playable the game already is and feel confident the developer has the skills to turn Heroes Never Lose into a fantastic finished game if given the resources. And, since they’ve already been fully funded, we’re basically guaranteed a fun new puzzle party game!
[divider][facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/marcus.jpg” ] Marcus is a fellow with a love for video games, horror, and Japanese food. When he’s not writing about games for a multitude of sites, he’s usually still playing one. One day when he became fed up with the way sites would ignore niche titles he decided to start his own site by the name of Pixel Pacas. Writing about video games is something he hopes to continue doing for many years to come. Some of Marcus’s favorite games include Silent Hill 2, Killer7, and The Sims. [/author]
