Hero-U Sheds Light on Improved Visuals And Upcoming Access

The impossibly long awaited RPG Adventure, Hero-U, is finally (almost) ready to enter alpha/beta testing. Created by the makers of Quest for Glory, over 6K backers helped fund the project in 2012. One supplemental Kickstarter campaign and nearly five years later, the project may finally make it into (some) backers’ hands.

A recent Kickstarter update has revealed an initial testing schedule set to begin in a few months. The first stage has the team wrapping up “a feature complete” version of Hero-U in May. This will be followed by a “Castle Alpha” and “Castle Targeted Beta” for team members and special “insider” backers.

The developers hope to set up a database for testers before assigning each volunteer a particular area to focus on. This ensures thorough testing of all areas and events. While the testing is important, the developers warned backers that it wouldn’t be particularly glamorous.

“Beta testing is much more than playing the game—you’ll need to keep a critical eye on everything you see, and play through the same sequence multiple times with small variations to identify bugs that only show up after a certain sequence of actions.”

Let There Be Light

The update also highlighted the shift from Unity 4.7 to version 5.5. This upgrade allows far more dramatic lighting of scenes as demonstrated in a few before and after pictures.

No lighting

All the lighting

It certainly looks nice, but the lack of a deadline for the final build is still troubling. After the first campaign raised $409,150 some backers were unhappy to see the devs return to Kickstarter asking for more. Even so, they managed to pull in $116,888 in additional funding with their second campaign. The testing schedule certainly shows progress, but this isn’t the first time (or year) that the developers have claimed to be nearing completion.