Has-Been Heroes
Frozenbyte · 2017 · Action Roguelike, Strategy, RPG, Indie, Action
PC
Mostly Positive79% · 26363Metacritic
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About Has-Been Heroes
Has-Been Heroes is a challenging, lane-based roguelike game of strategy and action, featuring a band of heroes on a quest to escort the King's twin princesses to school!
Players control three characters during the journey and must focus on coordinating melee attacks, managing cooldowns and combining hundreds of different spells to create devastating combo effects, all in order to defeat an endless army of undead, summoned in their path by the Great Ghoul!
The rewarding strategy game features irreverent humor, expanding world maps and increasing levels of difficulty, compounded by the specter of permadeath. The massive quantity and randomness of spells and items, as well as additional unlockable heroes allow for thousands of new experiences, forcing players to change their playstyle each time they start a new game.
The teeth of time chew on even the bravest of champions, and there comes a time when wizened old mages and warriors are just one last adventure away from retirement. Thankfully, a young rogue joins the heroic Has-Been Heroes, for who else can read the tiny text on those potion bottles and assist the “rusty” crew? The rogue comes along not a moment too soon, for King Fortinbrax has summoned his oldest, most trusted heroes for a final, epic quest. The heroes must escort the twin Princesses Avaline and Beatrix to a faraway Academy (to school!)- but the road is long and fraught with peril.
Players control three characters during the journey and must focus on coordinating melee attacks, managing cooldowns and combining hundreds of different spells to create devastating combo effects, all in order to defeat an endless army of undead, summoned in their path by the Great Ghoul!
The rewarding strategy game features irreverent humor, expanding world maps and increasing levels of difficulty, compounded by the specter of permadeath. The massive quantity and randomness of spells and items, as well as additional unlockable heroes allow for thousands of new experiences, forcing players to change their playstyle each time they start a new game.
STORYLINE
The teeth of time chew on even the bravest of champions, and there comes a time when wizened old mages and warriors are just one last adventure away from retirement. Thankfully, a young rogue joins the heroic Has-Been Heroes, for who else can read the tiny text on those potion bottles and assist the “rusty” crew? The rogue comes along not a moment too soon, for King Fortinbrax has summoned his oldest, most trusted heroes for a final, epic quest. The heroes must escort the twin Princesses Avaline and Beatrix to a faraway Academy (to school!)- but the road is long and fraught with peril.
FEATURES
- Control three characters across three lanes, coordinate their attacks and spells to defeat an incoming horde of enemies!
- Plan your route carefully on the randomly generated maps filled with surprises! Travel through merchants, spell vendors, treasure chests and other crossroad locations to boost your character’s powers… but be vary not to succumb to the darkness!
- A combination of turn-based and RTS game mechanics featuring easy-to-learn basics that are tough to master and evolve into frantic complexity. Discover new tricks and hidden features after hours of gameplay!
- Meet the epic band of heroes as the young and eager Rogue, joining the company of the wise monk Metacles and the giant-wrestling warrior Crux… and discover a band of long lost friends, such as the Anthropologist turned Mexican Wrestler, the ever-vigilant and paranoid Bodyguard, and many more!
- Unlock and collect hundreds of game-changing items and spells, boosting the heroes' powers and making each run unique! 300+ spells, 200+ items, 13 regions, and 12 playable heroes!
- In roguelike fashion, die and try again! Each run is different due to randomized maps, spells, items, and enemies. With each level the length of gameplay increases, compounded by the peril of instant death, which forces the player to start over from the beginning.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
I wish they would make a part two. A sequel. Something. This game is one of a kind and everything about it is unique. Sadly we will probably never see anything like it ever again.1 found this helpful
Has-Been Heroes, developed by Frozenbyte and published by GameTrust Games, is a roguelike strategy adventure that dares to do something unusual with its genre. It blends real-time lane-based combat with a turn-based layer of planning, creating a system that demands precision, timing, and adaptability. The game follows a group of washed-up heroes tasked with a deceptively simple mission—escort twin princesses to school. What begins as a humorous premise quickly turns into a grueling test of endurance and tactical thinking. Beneath its colorful exterior and cartoonish art style lies one of the most punishing and methodical roguelikes of its kind, designed to reward mastery and punish complacency in equal measure. At the center of Has-Been Heroes is its combat system, which takes place across three lanes. Each lane corresponds to one of your heroes, and enemies approach relentlessly from the opposite side. Every time you attack, your character becomes temporarily exhausted, forcing you to rotate your heroes strategically between lanes while managing cooldowns and spell effects. Success requires understanding the rhythm of combat—knowing when to strike, when to pause, and when to swap…1 found this helpful
This was one of my most favorite games. I firmly believe the only reason it didn't take off was because folks could not perform at the level the game asked you to. The game was super challenging, and very rewarding.
I've kept an eye on Has-Been Heroes since it's launch. Partly because it stood out as as one of the few games available on the Switch close to the consoles release, but also because it looked like an interesting and challenging idea to translate over a strategy game of this complexity to a controller/console design. It turns out, it is. Controlling the lanes feels clumsy and stiff, the heroes are weaker than wet noodles, and information is often difficult to parse with little text boxes and symbols all over the place. The difficult felt unfair and instantly punishing in a way that took awhile to understand what went wrong, and by the time I was starting to understand how to play the game, I'd lost all desire to play any more of it.
Once you get the mechanics, it's smooth sailing, and quite the fun ride!
If the devs would play their game enough, they'd know this one needs balance. You roll on everything, then get a boss that is imune to physical damage, with nothing to counter it cause of rng. Then it's just turns into a fight where you control all enemies, they can't kill you, but you can't kill the boss. I got some bosses where I just had to start a new game cause the boss couldn't kill me (unless I'd stay for an hour to fight maybe), and I couldn't kill it either... It's just one exemple, but does happens in many more situations than in should. To unlock heroes and items, have fun ! Grind fest, each run becomes way too long after you beat the game 4 or 5 times (as rather than 3 map to beat so 3 bosses, it will be 8 or 9 at the end, and expect unforgiving enemies and bosses mechanics later on) So, as the game needs a lot of skill and good rng + takes a lot of time for a run, when you lose (and when it does happen, you feel like there is really nothing else you can do, you didn't play bad), it feels really too frustrating. If you add some crashes I got (on last boss for the fun...but not only), you get out of this with a mixed feeling. Imo, this shows that they didn't test the…
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