Advent Heroes cover
Advent Heroes screenshot
Steam
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Indie

Advent Heroes

PSA: Advent Heroes Release on Hold, Next Fest Inclusion to be Canceled
This is the hardest update to write at the moment, and I really hate making these decisions without reason. But unfortunately, there's no other way out of this. During the final level of testing in advance of Next Fest, a multitude of unplanned issues have been discovered that will not be easily fixed in the available time that I have. Regrettably, the issues are so extensive and involved that a complete review of the game's content is going to be required in order to ensure that I can meet the expectations of the general public in regard to what I intend to deliver. As a result of this, I have made the difficult decision to completely delay the release of Advent Heroes until further notice and to immediately withdraw from Next Fest until such time as I can determine as to whether or not the game will live up to the intended standards of quality content that players deserve.

This is not the kind of decision that I make lightly, however the fact of the matter is that meeting player expectations is a cornerstone of the Zero Break philosophy, and although I had every intention to make sure that at least a sufficient part of the game would be ready for inclusion once the issues came to my attention the reality is that making wholesale changes of this magnitude on such a tight schedule is simply not feasible.

I will share more information once I have an idea on when or if I will be able to proceed with the release of Advent Heroes, but for now I am stepping aside from all public activity regarding the game until all options have been considered with respect for the situation.

Advent Heroes Demo Version 2.0 is Now in Planning!
After careful consideration, it has been decided that Advent Heroes will receive an updated demo to coincide with Steam Next Fest which will premiere on June 10. The goals for this demo go far beyond the concept preview established by the first version and will change the demo package significantly. Tentatively speaking, the goals for version 2.0 of the Advent Heroes demo are as follows:


  • Change of presentation to start from the beginning of the story rather than a selection of predetermined chapters.
  • Implementation of the final dungeon designs for the first three missions in order to fine-tune the presentation for additional quality and aesthetic design.
  • Implementation of cutscenes for the initial portions of the story. Please note that these cutscenes are anticipated to be heavy on material and may not be suitable for all audiences, so discretion is advised (or alternatively, you may skip past them or activate a story simplification mode that presents the information from the cutscenes in a more approachable format in the event of any sort of sensory issues that the cutscenes may impact).
  • Implementation of a visual mitigation mode for photosensitive and colorblind players which resembles the visuals found on retro mobile gameplay devices and tones down the intensity of certain visual effects.
  • The addition of a save function that will transfer over to the final version of the game.


More information will be made available as the demo release and other aspects of Advent Heroes get closer to release.

Advent Heroes to Feature in Steam Next Fest
With the release of Advent Heroes just around the corner, the time has come to showcase the game to the full Steam community! Prerelease activities will begin as a part of Steam Next Fest, running from June 10-17, with release scheduled by early August. Here's a quick look at what the schedule will bring during this time:

June 10: Kickoff at 12pm CDT
June 12: North America Live Gameplay Session at 3pm CDT
June 14: North America Development Q&A at 1pm CDT
June 15: International Live Gameplay Session at 7am CDT
June 16: International Development Q&A at 8am CDT
June 17: Conclusion of Event at 12pm CDT

As a side note for Asian and European customers, the game is not legal in China, Germany or the Middle East due to content reasons, and is also not available in Russia or Belarus due to the economic sanctions against those territories. Therefore, the game is blacked out in the affected regions as its content does not apply to the circumstance. It is advised not to promote the use of artificial means to spoof the location of your participation as it is both a breach of copyright for the game and a violation of Steam rules and sales policy.

More information regarding the schedule can be found in the respective announcement details for each individual portion of the event. And as always, additional information will be provided as it becomes available!

Final Demo Update Released
This has been a very sobering experience for me, but I have now finalized all aspects of the Advent Heroes demo! The biggest change is that the demo had a very big oversight that was left over from before the compliance runtime was deleted from the package, which may have possibly resulted in launch errors requesting that the game not be run from the main executable. As this does not currently apply, I have removed the code that is responsible for reading the information that the compliance executable saved to disk, thereby alleviating this issue while I prepare to reimplement the launcher.

If you have encountered this issue, I deeply apologize and promise to check for these things more thoroughly in the future. It is with this change that the demo reaches its final state and should be in working order. Please note, however, that once the compliance executable is reprogrammed the code which caused this issue will be restored and the game will stop working on Windows 8.1 and earlier.

As always, I will have more to share as it becomes available.

Visual Updates, Steam Overlay Provisions Applied to Demo
A quick demo update has been released for Advent Heroes to bring the game in line with the state of the design as it is currently set in the development builds. This affects the Bunnyback quest and moves the main visual aspect of the dungeon away from the default assets so that it stands on its own from a visual perspective. In addition, I have set options for the demo which are applied at launch so that the Steam overlay is functional and unimpeded, as the game's code structure and client executable require the configuration of these launch options so that the game functions correctly with the overlay turned on in Steam settings.

These changes will be carried over to the final version of Advent Heroes and represent the final appearance for tower dungeons. As a side note, due to a lack of available assets to match the new visual style thereof, the game has been changed to display a black screen in the background during battle sequences which is more in line with the style of the game as it existed in the design limitations of the era from which the game is constructed from a visual perspective, so that it more closely resembles classic JRPG titles from the late 1980s in terms of presentation.

As always, more updates on the progress of Advent Heroes will be provided upon availability.

Demo Updated with Frostpoint Mission, Binary Processor Target Changed
As promised in the previous update, the Advent Heroes demo has been updated! While there may still be a few rough edges, the updated demo has the following two changes:


  • Frostpoint has been added as a scene selection. In this scene, our heroes have reached the point where two guardians have been restored to their sacred duties, however the ice queen of Chang'Li remains unaccounted for in recent events and may prove to be the most formidable challenge yet.
  • The binaries have been changed to comply with Microsoft developer requirements. Although the verification binary has not yet been rebuilt, the demo has been changed to require a 64-bit version of Windows. In other words, those of you with a 32-bit system will no longer be able to play the demo (or even the final product, for that matter). I apologize for this oversight and promise to do better with compliance matters in the future.


As always, updates regarding Advent Heroes will be posted as they become available.

The Advent Heroes Demo is Back
It's been a long time coming, but the Advent Heroes demo has finally been updated! Yes, that means you can now sample the game prior to release with four distinct scenes to choose from:


  • Estarke: Venture into the fortress of Remment Estarke in search of Watson, whose departure for the fortress may have placed him in an unintended predicament.
  • Bunnyback: Locate the missing sacrificial subject Cera, who suspects that her fate may not be as it appears with relation to the appeasement of her region's sacred guardian.
  • Depths of Fate: The elven king's son has gone missing over a matter of forbidden love, and the consequences have resulted in the placement of a curse upon the Order of Wukong. His last known whereabouts were in the underground caverns near the hidden village, which demands an urgent investigation.
  • Devil: Separated from the rest of the destined heroes en route to their ultimate goal, Alan Larson finds himself facing up against his worst nightmare - a menacing devil machine with the ability to split itself into pieces to unleash a massive swarm attack.


Although I intended for the demo to be based around content which is currently being redeveloped as part of a jam project, that content is not quite ready yet (and there are also circumstances which prompted a much quicker availability of demo content that I will not be mentioning at this time). Nevertheless, I am releasing content which is known to be ready so that the demo can be out in the public forum quicker than I originally planned for. Rest assured that the originally planned content will be released upon completion, but as an addition to the demo that I have prepared in its place rather than being a standalone experience.

As a side note, I no longer have the files required to detect the user's system compliance and will be reprogramming them from scratch at a later date. With that said, for the purpose of the Steam version of the Advent Heroes demo that provision is now automatically accommodated as the Steam client is no longer supported on the affected versions of Windows. Therefore, I will not be enforcing the stated requirements until the compliance runtime is rebuilt so for at least the time being I will support the demo on any compatible version of Windows until such time as the compliance libraries have been reimplemented, after which it will cease to function on Windows 8.1 and earlier.

As always, more information on Advent Heroes will be released as it becomes available.

Announcing the Final Name of Project Able Heroes
For those of you who have following my development process, you'll know that I started with Advent Heroes, which I canceled in its original form back in mid-2023. In its place I have been developing Project Able Heroes off the foundation of that project, working on a story that highlights the adventures of heroes who come from backgrounds of physical and/or mental challenges who nonetheless are called to a greater cause than that which defines who they are from a matter of their inner challenges. Today, however, I am pleased to finally announce the official name for the project, and that name is...

Wait for it...

This will take one minute...

Okay, screw it. And I'm not kidding.

(cue drumroll)

The final name of Project Able Heroes is...



Advent Heroes.

Yes, that's right. I'm back to where it all began some four years ago. As it turns out, despite the many attempts to update the branding to a more fitting name for what I have created, I was ultimately unable to do so across all of the channels for which the game is scheduled to release, therefore I made the difficult decision to reactivate the original project name (which for better or worse is something that I never fully deactivated on one of the originally-planned retail channels!) In fact, with this announcement I am adding that one final platform back to the schedule: at the time of release, the game will also be available on Steam. Beyond this, the first playable content dump for Advent Heroes, tentatively titled "Wrath of the Ice Queen", will begin development in just a few days to add onto what I already have. This will be released first to itch.io as a jam project and will be available on Steam as a demo shortly thereafter. Please note that the existing Steam demo package may still error out with the original cancellation notice, however you can safely disregard that as the package will be updated once the jam project has been completed.

I hope that all of the hard work that went into restoring the release plan for Advent Heroes is worth the time and effort that I put into making it a reality once more. There's more to come as the release inches ever closer - stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

PSA: Announcing the Return of Zero Break Games, Plans for First Project Unveiled
Welcome back! Previously I was hard at work on a portfolio branding provision that I referred to as Zero Break Game Design, whereby I had previously worked on projects across a small number of game jams, consulted on a project for another developer and was also developing my own retro-style roleplay adventure. Sadly, due to a multitude of circumstances (some of them from outside influence) I had to dismantle that prior effort and step away from involvement with video game development...

Until now.

Today I announce that I'm back to work on game development projects, this time under the shorter name of Zero Break Games - same goals, just a slight bit of difference (and a shorter overall name structure). With this announcement I am also revisiting the project that was at the center of the hasty decision that led to the prior effort's collapse, but with a brand-new overall goal for what I intend to do in terms of character and story. That renewed effort, Project Able Heroes, picks up where I left off with Advent Heroes and recasts the structure of the plot and characters around the new mission of Zero Break Games - to build on classic video game mechanics with a modern touch in a way that builds awareness of the everyday issues arising from the prospect of biological limitations, perspectives and challenges, and to explore the many ways in which current provisions and ongoing research can better the lives of people who deal with these circumstances on an ongoing basis. In that respect, Project Able Heroes will center around characters defined as much by their destiny as they are by their mental and physical limitations and other circumstances - some mitigated through innovative ideas built around actual forms of technological research, others accounted for in how the characters both approach and react to their situations - all under the lens of either physical or mental disorders (or a combination of both).

I hope to share more about both Project Able Heroes and the overall renewed effort as time goes on, but hopefully this reintroduction will suffice for now. Please note that some elements of the online presence of Zero Break Games (most particularly in terms of its social media pages) may still display assets and images associated with the original branding from the prior efforts, but these will be gradually updated as time goes on.

PSA: Sunsetting the Development of Advent Heroes
It is with a heavy heart that I am sunsetting the development of Advent Heroes and ceasing the operations of Zero Break Game Design, effective immediately. As this is a permanent decision, materials related to Advent Heroes should be considered terminated and must be removed from customer computer systems, including any demo versions. A patch is in the process of being released in order to denote the end of service condition. The Zero Break Game Design website itself will go offline within the next month.

While I had hoped to initiate a new era of retro-style projects with my game development efforts, the realities of market conditions and the general expectations that I have been given are of a higher factor of importance at this time. I will be notifying the applicable parties of the decision to cease development and will not be pursuing any form of wide release for any products for which I have been involved, whether they are my own or those of other individuals whom I have consulted with. This was not an easy decision by any means; however, the expectations and realities are not in line with what I had hoped to do within a reasonable amount of time by the applicable standards thereof, and I must respect the wishes of all parties who are involved with this matter.

I will continue to support the RPG Maker community in ways that I still can, even if it is not as the developer of a project intended for mass release. Going forward, you can contact me on the forums for RPG Maker MV and MZ with any concerns you may have.

Thank you all for your interest, and I wish you the best in the future.
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