Hero Hours Contract 2: A Factory for Magical Girls

For a game with such an anti-capitalist story, the game mechanics are ironically very pro-capitalist: no matter how much you grind or how well you strategize, luck is mandatory for success. The first game has actual puzzles in its Summer Vacation segment: no matter how much you grind or how many times you play them, the levels (and your stats within them) are always the same, so you know they can be beaten with what you have. Even the tower, which does eventually require you to get the bazooka power-up from Summer Vacation, always has consistent level design and enemy placement. In contrast, this game's equivalent (the monkey clones) only have tile placement (ground and walls) consistent; enemy placement--and even party member placement--are always randomized. Worse, since this game lets you spend money to upgrade your attack, you can end up under-leveled with no chance of success at all until you grind a bunch more. The game is also really gimmicky. The first game's Summer Vacation puzzles worked because they used the same mechanics as the standard tactics game-play. However, this game has a part where it suddenly switches to real-time combat and gives you no indication that yo…

A wonderful Magical Girl game! I bit rough around the edges, but for its price, it's not bad at all.

A very cute little sequel to the first game! While it is a tad more grindy in some ways (or at least in the way that I played it) than the original, the many other Magical Workers you can get into your union do change things up with various neat little gimmicks of their own, and I won't pretend that wasn't kind of neat to mess around with itself. Plus, if you do like the gameplay enough as something mindless to play, then it does offer a lot of flexibility in that area even when you do finish the main storyline! So that's nice. Cute little story as per usual, and I liked seeing all the different magical outfits and more ridiculous magical names. If you liked the first game, then you'll probably like this game just as much.

Hero Hours Contract 2: A Factory for Magical Girls is an unusual indie tactical RPG that takes the colorful conventions of magical-girl fiction and mixes them with workplace satire, economic commentary, grid-based battles, and intentionally ridiculous humor. Developed and published by Steve O'Gorman, the game builds its identity around the idea that receiving magical powers is considerably less glamorous when the contract effectively turns heroism into unpaid labor. Instead of simply accepting their miserable conditions, the magical girls decide to organize, fight back against their familiars, and seize control of their supernatural careers. The story follows Magical Science Angel, Genius Beauty Knight, and Magical Girl (Provisional) 917B, better known as Bea. Their struggle extends beyond ordinary monsters when magical girls begin disappearing, a suspicious application gains control over the magical job market, and an unexplained problem starts draining electricity across the city. These mysteries give the adventure enough narrative direction to keep its satire from becoming a collection of unrelated jokes. The characters are essentially trying to survive a supernatural gig econo…

socialism

"Hero Hours Contract 2: A Factory for Magical Girls" is, wow, a genuinely made product... and I'm not being sarcastic, a lot of work evidently went into this, although as we know from experience and the 120,000 other games on Steam, hard work doesn't mean good work. This is a turn based tactical combat game with an adventure/RPG element on top, basically a JRPG but with a different theme than the usual anime club dropout stuff we usually see (that's also welcome). Regardless, the game was a failure. What do you do in the game? The game revolves around turn based combat and a theme of "hero girls vs. modern capitalism" which is I guess a bit more thoughtful than your average Unity asset flipped first person horror jumpscare adventure game. But the ugly pixelcrap and, err, everything being kinda pink and garish probably deterred gamers from this. And the old dead obsolete GameMaker Studio kitbash look and feel. This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters…