Spellbook has been hard at work on their MMORPG Heroes of Dire for the last couple of months, and are now asking for funding through Kickstarter—$20,000 to be precise—to bring their heroes to the fore. Although I’m a fan of the art style—which brings back memories of Borderlands’ wacky character designs—I’m not so sure about some of the things they’re boasting about on the Kickstarter page.

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For one, it definitely takes more than $20,000 to make a game of Heroes of Dire’s size, especially since Spellbook claims that it’s going to be one of those games you just “keep coming back to”—a game that “lasts for years.” That being said, Heroes of Dire will supposedly have “six fighter classes, ten races, fifty weapon classes and four armor classes” which is nothing to frown at. But I don’t see much in the way of gameplay on the Kickstarter page, which I presume has to do with the fact that Spellbook began full production on the game in December 2015.

My editor, Greg Micek noted that the stretch goals seem “overly aggressive”—it takes a mere $20,000 to make the game but a whopping $100,000 to add “fully-animated pets” onto the battlefield? What?! And then from $200,000 to $300,000, they’ll add some “epic boss raids”? It all seems rather peculiar to me. Then again, I may be in the minority; Heroes of Dire has already raised more than twice the amount they are asking for, and their campaign has only just begun.

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You can track Heroes of Dire’s progress on our Campaign Calendar.

Author’s note: If Spellbook is reading this, I’d be interested in hearing your response to some of the queries I’ve listed above. My contact information is listed below.

Edit 5/4: We’ve posted a follow-up article titled Addressing Concerns Raised Over Heroes of Dire.

About the Author

Felix Wong

Felix spent a large chunk of his youth behind a 24 inch monitor and intends to do the same with the rest of his adult life. For reasons still unbeknownst to friends and family, he decided to eschew a more conventional career path to instead become a guy who writes about video games for cash and coin.

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