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This site originally started back on December 8, 2008!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/summer-daze-at-hero-u?ref=ksr_email_user_watched_project_launched_y2019

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/summer-daze-at-hero-u

About

Join Lori and Corey Cole, award-winning game designers of the Quest for Glory game series, Castle of Dr. Brain, Shannara, Mixed-Up Fairy Tales, and Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption in a new Hero-U story adventure.Page Summer Daze en françaisSummer Daze Seite auf DeutschPágina de Summer Daze en español

Summer Daze at Hero-U is a light-hearted interactive tale of friendship, fun, and folly suitable for all ages. It’s up to you to save the upcoming Harvest Festival at Hero University from imminent disaster… or make it even worse! Will you forge life-long friendships? It all depends on how you play the game.

With a diverse cast, and narrative-driven gameplay, Summer Daze is part visual novel, part adventure game, and a dash of “light RPG” for everyone who enjoys great storytelling. New players will enjoy the simple point-and-click interactions and lighthearted humor.  More experienced players will dig into the nuanced puzzles and masterful game design by two of the most acclaimed game designers.

“Summer Daze at Hero-U is a new direction for us. We’ve crystallized the story and characters into a fast-paced illustrated adventure that can be played anywhere.” – Corey ColePlay day 1 of Tilly’s story

The best way to learn about Summer Daze at Hero-U is to try our playable demo. You can download it now from itch.io at https://transolar-games.itch.io/summer-daze. You’ll be able to play the full first day of Tilly’s game.

NOTE: Anything in this demo is subject to change in the full game. That may include editing, adding more player choices, and additional art, animation, music, etc.

• Interactive adventure story with role-playing elements
• Light-hearted game filled with humor and charm
• Choice of two playable characters – and two very different stories
• Set at Hero University – the school from Rogue to Redemption
• Meaningful and memorable interactions with 23 unique characters
• 25 beautifully-rendered locations
• Playable on PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and Switch

Summer Daze is an interactive story game that changes through your choices. You play as the studious Wizard Ifeyo or the mischievous Rogue Tilly. Your choices will help you make friends, have exciting adventures, and help the Harvest Festival succeed (or fail gloriously).

This is a dialogue-driven point-and-click game with choice menus and an interactive game map. The focus is on the story and characters. There is no “hunt the pixel,” juggling dozens of inventory items, or getting lost in a maze. It’s a purer, more focused form of adventure game play.

Try out the free gameplay demo. Players of all ages have praised the intuitive game controls and gentle sense of humor in Summer Daze at Hero-U. 

Corey and Lori Cole, the husband and wife team behind Transolar Games, have designed many great games including the Quest for Glory series, Castle of Dr. Brain, and Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. With the support of their talented development teams and devoted fans, they continue to create role-playing, adventure, and story-telling games full of lore, mystery, wonder, and beauty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coles

https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,3681/

https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,3682/

Lead developer Cidney Hamilton wrote e-commerce and enterprise software before joining the development team for Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. She does gameplay scripting, web infrastructure, playtest coordination, UI design, and systems programming. Cidney is also a major contributor to Archive of Our Own, which won this year’s prestigious Hugo Award for Best Related Work to science fiction & fantasy.

https://www.funimation.com/blog/women-game-development-cidney-hamilton/

Our lead artist is the extraordinarily-talented John Paul Selwood. “JP” was a key artist on Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. He has also created backgrounds and character art for Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements, and other games from Himalaya Studios, Tierra Entertainment, and Crystal Shard.

https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,284644/

Character designer and animator Al Eufrasio created animation art for Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. He is also known for his contributions to Sierra games such as Torin’s Passage, Space Quest 6, The Realm, Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail, and many others.

https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,94437/

New to the team is composer and musician Brandon Blume. Brandon composed the soundtrack for Mage’s Initiation. His previous work includes soundtracks for AGD Interactive on several Sierra game remakes.

https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,470088/

Follow us on Facebook!Join the conversation on the Transolar Games Discord serverCheck out the Summer Daze at Hero-U website

Here’s a project expense breakdown assuming we make just above our minimum goal at $100,000:

We’ve been working on Summer Daze at Hero-U for over a year. Kickstarter funds will mainly be devoted to current and future operations, in addition to repaying some of our expenses to date.

The percentages will shift to some extent if this campaign earns enough for us to reach stretch goals. I’ll adjust this breakdown as the campaign progresses.

Some potential stretch goal upgrades might include:

• One or more foreign translations (“localized versions”)
• Professional voice-acting
• Additional choices, animation, and sound effects
• Pre-production on Hero-U: Wizards Way
• Plush Meerbat Toy add-on option

Risks and challenges

We could miss the delivery estimate. Our policy is to keep working on a game until it’s ready. We had to add years to the schedules of two of our previous projects to get them right. However, we’ve developed seven other games within a few months of the original estimate. Every game project is unpredictable, but we have never failed to deliver a game we promised; some just took longer than others.

Another potential challenge is that we rely heavily on every member of our team. If illness or accident affects our writers, programmers, or artists, that could add a substantial amount of time to the schedule.

We’ve sought to prevent some of these challenges by putting a full year of development into the game prior to bringing it to Kickstarter. In contrast, our previous project was still in an early concept stage when we sought crowdfunding for it. We believe we’ve scheduled Summer Daze conservatively.

If this campaign is wildly successful, fulfilling stretch goals and managing the player community may add additional delays to the schedule. We want to keep our players and backers happy, and sometimes that can take time away from game development.Learn about accountability on Kickstarter Questions about this project? Check out the FAQ

Scott McAfee took these pictures and shared them!

It’s July 2019, exactly one year since we released Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. Since then we’ve updated it with five patches, fixing bugs and adding features. Back in the Quest for Glory days at Sierra, the project would be considered long gone, and we would be close to releasing the next game.

We’ve recently uploaded part 1 of the Art of Hero-U to BackerKit for premium backers. Once the art book is done, we’ll be selling it, along with the soundtrack and bestiary, on Steam and the Hero-U website.

Celebration at Hero-U

A Painful History Lesson – Quest for Glory IV

There was one major exception – Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness. That’s a game we were still working on a year past the original release. One of the reasons for that was that we (at management’s behest) pushed the game out the door long before it was ready, so it needed more than a few patches.

To be fair, that wasn’t strictly Sierra management’s fault. Lori and I were back working together for the first time since Quest for Glory II: Trial By Fire, and we got over-ambitious with QGIV. We wanted to create a richer story, and most challenging puzzles, than in any previous Sierra game. The other major delay is that the systems group was developing a new version of SCI, which left our team unable to test their work for several months. Without, of course, any additional time added to our deadline.

Previously there was an unwritten rule at Sierra that a game project should take under a year, start to finish. When the games were drawn on a computer screen in 16 colors at 320×200 resolution, that was possible and treated as normal. It was still a major challenge every time, especially when we added RPG features to Sierra’s graphic adventure game formula.

With painted full-color artwork and animation at higher resolutions, film-quality soundtracks, and ever more ambitious game designs, one year wasn’t enough time to get a game right. That certainly proved to be the case for QGIV, which went out the door with insufficient testing and many known problems.

To Sierra’s credit, they made up for that launch mistake by assigning a programmer – Kevin Ray – to fix most of the game bugs for a major re-release. Of course, fixing bugs doesn’t make much of a selling point, so we also got the opportunity – for our first time at Sierra – to go into the studio and add professional voice acting to the game. The white box version of Shadows of Darkness went from our buggiest Quest for Glory release to one of the best.

Enough History – What About Hero-U?

We took a number of lessons from the near-disaster of the Quest for Glory IV release. One was that you can’t put a time limit on quality assurance and testing for a game. It will be ready when it’s done. On Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, that meant the alpha and beta testing phases took as long as the entire development and testing of Hero’s Quest. In fact, it took about as much time as I originally estimated developing and testing the game would take together. Oops.

We also decided that “done is not done.” We had to release the game before we ran out of money to pay developers, but we didn’t have to stop development there. The nice thing about today’s connected world is that we can patch and improve a game without worrying about how to get the new versions to players. That’s why we’ve made five updates to the game so far.

Just A Minor Bug?

Where In the World Is This Going?

Everywhere. Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is on every continent and dozens (possibly hundreds) of countries. But so far the game is only available in English.

We are currently working on three language translations and localizations – French, German, and Simplified Chinese. If these are successful, we’ll look into additional translations – Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Korean are all possibilities, but are currently well outside our budget.

If you are fluent in German, French, or Chinese, and would like to help us verify and improve the translated versions, please click on “Corey Cole” and use the “Contact Me” button to send us a message with your qualifications and interest. We want to make sure Hero-U is equally fun in any language.

We expect to start testing the localized versions this Fall – late September to early November, most likely.

But Where are Corey and Lori Going?

Next week – July 17-21, 2019 – we’ll be at Comic-con in San Diego along with our publicist, Roberta Vaughan, musician Paul Korman, and our business guy, Michael Cole and his wife. We won’t be showing our games there, but we’ve love to meet any of our backers who are attending SDCC or will just be in the area. Again, use the Contact Me button and provide some contact details if you will be there.

The following month, we’ll all be up at PAX in Seattle. This time we’ll have space in the Indie Megabooth to show off Summer Daze at Hero-U and the latest patch to Rogue to Redemption. We’ll also hand out stickers, postcards, and other swag, and will sell and autograph Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption boxes. The convention runs from August 30 to Sept. 2, 2019. It will feature lots of great indie games in addition to ours.

Then it will be time (late September to October) to Kickstart Summer Daze at Hero-U! This time, we’ll present a game that is well along in production – the first two days of one of the stories are already fully playable. We hope many of you will consider backing Summer Daze to help us finish and market it in style.

Sure, But Where Are You Now?

Corey and Lori are on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/coreyloricole. That’s a great place to learn more about us and our work, and to help us keep doing it. Many posts are open to all visitors; a few require becoming a patron.

We’re active on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheSchoolForHeroes. We also each have a personal Facebook page. Lori’s is https://www.facebook.com/lori.cole.948, and Corey’s is https://www.facebook.com/corey.cole.792. Warning – We can be unabashedly progressive on our personal pages. You might or might not like every opinion we post there. But Lori’s page is the only place she is posting a photograph or artwork every day.

We also have an active Discord server for Transolar Games backers and fans (including Hero-U, Quest for Glory, and our other work). Use this link to join us there: https://discord.gg/WA5navb. Several team members pop in from time to time, but the discussions are great whether or not we’re there.

School Grounds In Summer Daze at Hero-U

Hey everyone! We have some new stuff to show you all for SpaceVenture. First up, the artwork for the SpaceVenture game box is complete and we are going to be placing the order for them very soon. We are buying enough for all the backers that backed at a high enough level to receive one and some extra that will be sold in the Guys From Andromeda store. Those will go on sale once the game is out. 

Mark got a reference box from the company that is printing them. Have a look below!

The back of the box was not complete when the reference box came, but here is a look at what the back will look like:

We put together some images of scenes that happen towards the end of the game for you all. Here is an image of Office Quicksilver after he has pulled Ace over.

Last time we showed you a Quicksilver video, we had “Bad to the Bone” playing in the background. We’ve created a parody of it for you all to check out. This is a video cutscene featuring our parody “Bad to the Chrome”. Lyrics were written by Mark Crowe. The song was performed by Jason Charles Miller. Check out the interview with Jason below as well!https://youtu.be/Wv1xFEYxB_c

The text was blurred due to plot spoilers.

 The text was blurred due to plot spoilers.

INTERVIEWS WITH MORE OF OUR VOICE ACTORS

VINCE CASO

JASON CHARLES MILLER

 SUPPORT LORI AND COREY COLE 

If you’ve been living under an asteroid and haven’t heard, Lori and Corey Cole(makers of the Quest for Glory series) have released their new game, “Hero U”. If you haven’t already checked it out, you should! It’s getting great reviews!  

Here are some links of interest: Hero U Website: http://www.hero-u.com/  

Review on Metacritic  

YouTube video explaining “Why you should buy”  

Thanks everyone!

Scott Murphy tweeted an update in regards to his health issues:

https://twitter.com/slashvohaul/status/1125204024246976512?s=11

Hey there, all. Sorry I haven’t been around here for a bit. Oddly, the side effects from radiation treatment that I was supposed to experience weeks ago finally hunted me down. Each day since the end of my radiation treatments, I’ve felt a little worse. I don’t mean to complain. It could have been a lot worse, and a lot longer. The fatigue drains everything you have. And it made me incredibly mean. Really, really fucking mean. And it’s not all gone. I think it is but then – mean. Aside from having little energy I feel like it further sapped my intellect, as if there’s any sparable quantity. But I was so f#$king mean. Those two things kept me from posting. I mean really mean. I didn’t break anything. That’s amazing.

I wanted to get on here though and give you all an update. You’ve all been incredibly supportive and that’s helped me. I feel like I’m headed in the right direction again. My sense of well-being is spending more time in the positive zone, so that’s a good thing. I’ll be trying to get caught up. I have lots to do that’s fallen behind in hour-to-hour and day-to-day life system things as well as lots of communication. I hope everyone’s had a good weekend. More later.

We’re doing a livestream tonight (May 4, 2019) on YouTube starting at 6 pm PDT (3 a.m. UTC on May 5) and ending at midnight (9 a.m. UTC). Corey and Lori will play partway through Quest for Glory III: Wages of War (aka Seekers of the Lost City) and answer questions. Roberta Vaughan is hosting and will be running contests and giving away several amazing prizes donated by Himalaya Studios, artists, and the Coles.May the Fourth Be With… Lori and Corey Cole

The stream is supposed to be at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJLMIcRLZWw. If you don’t find it there, find the Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption channel on YouTube and look for the livestream there. We’ll also be saving the entire livestream as a video so you can watch it later. Subscribe to the channel to keep up with all of our YouTube content posts.

While you’re at it, subscribe to our Facebook page –  https://www.facebook.com/TheSchoolForHeroes/ – to keep up with Hero-U projects including next year’s Summer Daze at Hero-U.

We’ve also created a Discord server for discussion of our games and related topics. Join us at https://discord.gg/Z7dp47M. This will be our main discussion forum in the future.

Finally, after many requests, Corey and Lori have set up a Patreon page for fans who would like to help us afford to continue making games. We’ll be posting a lot of unique content there including comics and articles from our 1980’s fantasy gaming newsletter, The Spell Book. We’ll also include articles from Corey and Lori’s Quest Blog on the original School for Heroes website as well as new articles, artwork, and art photography.

The Patreon page is  https://www.patreon.com/coreyloricole . Our tiers are $2/month, which will get you most of the Patreon material and access to a special Discord channel for patrons, and $10/month, which will also include a new desktop wallpaper each month and occasional special rewards.