Hero Hours Contract Reviews

Nice game i really love the art

Excellent little game! I can't wait to play more (I'm writing a review before I've finished because I'm just so excited about it!). The characters and writing are delightful and the game play is clever and fun! I especially love the whole premise of magical girls unionizing. Honestly so fresh. I loved The Rainsdowne Players, so when I saw the developer was working on a new game, I knew I had to play it as soon as it came out. And it's living up to the first game! There are a couple very small things that I wish could be added (or maybe they're already there and I'm just too dense to figure them out) like being able to cancel your attack and move again, but overall I'm having a ton of fun and the small things don't get in the way of that!

The half-baked possibility of a great game. The soundtrack, the premise and the visual style are there, but the gameplay needed a some more time in the oven.

I bought this game because I like both Magic Girl and labor unions, but I was surprised to find it's actually a decent little puzzle game. Pros: Sokoban-esque puzzles are fun and engaging Charming character portraits Staunchly anti-capitalist plot Soothing soundtrack It's like five bucks Cons: The game doesn't do a good job of explaining it's mechanics. I'd recommend checking out a guide. Pixel art is kind of meh. The game is pretty easy. Leveling up can be a grind. Enemy AI is non-existent. As far as I can they just move and attack randomly. Some minor glitches, like text boxes disappearing before they have displayed all the dialog. Overall it's a pretty decent time for the price. It lends itself well to killing ten minutes between tasks. If you like Magic Girl anime, light puzzle games, and leftist labor policies, I would recommend checking it out.

This game is a delightful little gem, with a surprising amount of hear that I'm very happy to have come across! The gameplay loop provided by the core combat mechanic could do with some improvements (or more levels/puzzles to avoid repetitive map grinding), but it's enjoyable enough for the duration of the main storyline, although some of the mechanics (such as the ability to switch character order, the controls etc are not explicitly explained in the game itself until one is deeper into the game - a control scheme in the main menu would be very helpful!) The artwork for this game is fantastic, the music is an absolute bop and kept me playing for way longer than is reasonable and my wee queer heart was repeatedly and deliberately targeted by the characters in the story, whose characterisation is wonderful for such a short game. And of course the union themes which are what drew me here in the first place! Shame we don't see any of the active organising & conversations amongst the magical girls! If I have one complaint, it's the inclusion of the conservative adage "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work" in one of the blurbs. The owning class *loves* to tut this saying at working class folks to deny people the provision of their needs and our unions must demand more than this. People's survival should not be tied to their capacity to generate profits for the owning class and so we must say instead: "Abolish the wage system!" Anyhow, loved the game, is cute. <3

I had fun playing this game. Just be aware that there are quite a few puzzles in here that are only solvable by using your character's powers correctly. If you don't understand how your characters powers' work by the time the tutorial ends, I would advise doing it over again because its important.

really good, would reccomend! its a fairly fun turn combat based game, but magical girl themed. there's an ongoing story, though there's really only one hint in the story that tells you where to go. i'm not too observant so i didn't notice the tower had multiple floors, lol. hero hours contract's already cheap for the price, so you may as well give it a try if you think turn based combat is your thing!

Sieze the means of magical production. Your familiar needs you, you don't need it! Organize in a turn-based way!

Oh man, what a delightfully fun little game. And a steal at 3.99. Hero Hours Contract is about 3 Magical Girls who decide to go on strike and negotiate with the magical creatures that turned them into magical girls for better pay and more time off while they fight against the Conglomerate who makes mindless zombies. Yes, the game is not trying to go for subtle as to what this is about. That being said, it is extremely light-hearted. The dialogue is funny, cute and the situations are never mean-spirited or serious, honestly. It has great diversity and representation with a good cast of characters that I'll get into in a second. So what is the gameplay loop? It looks like a strategy RPG but trust me, it is 100% not. It is more of a puzzle strategy than anything. Each magical girl has different abilities; one makes clones that deal contact damage if you move them into enemies, one can chain lightning enemies with a bazooka that deal more damage the longer the chain and one can push enemies with the potential to go again. Using them you want to try and kill the enemies as fast as you can by making chains and combos to earn as many Happiness Crystals as you can. The girls don't take damage so it's basically fighting against the stage and special enemies than anything risky. Each combat has 10 rounds every time and is randomly generated. There are special enemies that can make life hard for you; vacuums that suck up crystals near them, baristas that cover you in foam, non-Copyright infringing Mermaids that can push you and so on. With your crystals you then negotiate with the magical creatures to earn pay, time off or some special other options. Then you can use that money and time off to hang out with people at your home. Each time you make better friends with someone they have a better chance to appear as a clone for your main character in battle. You also get to interact with a bunch of fun characters. Eventually you can challenge the Conglomerate Tower when you feel like it which is where more complicated and pre-generated maps come in. Those are way more like puzzles as you have to contend with stage hazards and other win conditions. So how is it all? Pretty good! It's fun and fast to do levels, you need very little to level up your friendships and there's no stress involved. I will say that as a smaller bite-sized game, there is not a ton of stages, a lot of enemy variety and your abilities always remain the same (for the most part). So if you grind a lot...it may begin to bore you doing the same thing over and over. Luckily, you don't really need too. Honestly, you could probably beat the game without doing a single grind stage. But that being said, take in consideration that it is a small 4 dollar game. You're not gonna get the next coming of Final Fantasy Tactics so be realistic. One negative I will say is that the controls can sometimes be...frustrating. Like, if you commit to a moving a character...that's it. You can't leave them til you're done. Or if you accidentally press the button to do an attack and you don't want to...you can't cancel out. So the game doesn't really allow you to fix mistakes. It's not so hard that you need that ability but having controls that can lead to mix-ups that are not the players fault are lame. That said, the developer has already done an update fixing stuff so I don't expect their to be many problems for long. The art style is absolutely wonderful, with really cartoony but sleek designs. Very stylish. I loved meeting characters and seeing what they looked like. The graphics for the gameplay itself are nice, but are very minimalistic. This can either work for you or not. I thought it was cute but nothing amazing. I like a few more bits in my sprites. But it didn't worsen the game. for me. The music is pretty dece, I honestly didn't mind listening to the same song a bunch. Just don't expect a ton of variety or mind-blowing tracks. All in all, this entertained me a ton and for 4 bucks that's a better ratio than I can say for some games I've spent way more on. It won't stay on your playlist for long but I think you'll have fun with it while it's there.

It feels like this game is on the precipice of being genuinely well done, but the base gameplay is just too unrefined. Still not going to risk crippling its future with a negative recommendation right off launch. Play it and see for yourself, it has a charming story. It's only a few dollars and you can just refund it if you end up agreeing with me. From the beginning it's very confusing how players are presented with very sloppy, randomly generated maps where they can grind currency. The game gives the impression that the gameplay loop is players grinding currency to buy the resources required to advance character dialogue in the hub. When in actuality there is an entire linear story mode, in the tower, which is where the actual story happens. The tower is referenced to players but in a way that suggests it's the final area, the place players should go when they're ready to finish the game. Surprise, most of the game is actually there. Players control three main characters which each function in very specific ways and are meant to be used sequentially to set up strategic plays. One character chains damage between enemies, one randomly spawns damage around them, and another can push enemies. However, most of the time players cannot strategically use said abilities. Pushing enemies around is only possible if two opposite sides of the enemy are currently vacant, one side for the pusher and another for the pushee to get moved to. This is a very uncommon situation in the actual gameplay, and even when it does happen pushing an enemy doesn't always yield any strategic result. It usually doesn't. Meanwhile, the chain damage character depends on enemies being close together to be effective, which requires luck with their movement patterns lining up; or pushing, both of which are basically a random chance set up. Even the amount of pushes players can use each turn is seemingly randomized. And finally the character who spawns damage around them, spawns it in random places. So those places have to be convenient or otherwise they'll just spawn damage in a spot that is unusable. So that's more random chance. The characters spend a surprising amount of time not really even being able to function. The push character can't push if there's no one to push, the chain character can't chain if there's no one to chain, the damage character can't damage if they keep spawning it in bad places. Meanwhile the only real influence the player has over any of this is by pushing enemies into good positions, which again is a random and often uncommon situation to occur. And the amount of pushes is randomized per turn, seemingly. Each level additionally takes a very long time to complete. Players whittle down enemies turn by turn, performing any kind of big strategy super chain is entirely random so otherwise players are just stuck chipping at enemies with characters who are locked in places where their gimmicks don't work well. Even barring the sometimes strategic but mostly random combat the sheer length of each stage, the tedious whittling of enemies with ineffective attacks because it's not possible to purposely set up effective ones, makes the levels get boring quickly. The level design bounces between puzzles which are impossible to complete without the player one for one performing the exact movements and actions the developer did when they made it, which is just extreme trial and error to a tactless degree, while others are borderline nonsensical. Players will be given a special objective item they're supposed to use to survive better, but the objective item has been put in a spot where you can't move it. You're supposed to move it to use it, if it's been purposely put into a spot where it can't be moved then what's the point. The music is nice, the actual talksprites are very well drawn, awkward how the pixel sprites all have black lines beneath or around their heads. The story and dialogue overall are cute, although having extremely erratically dressed zombies as the main enemy type isn't too interesting. There's a surprising amount of content for the price of the game itself. Has a decent production value although the way enemies will sometimes move excessively for no reason and perform their unique actions every turn even if there's no target; doesn't look very good. The lack of achievements is also disappointing. It really is just on the very edge of being a cute strategy and story game. But for a strategy game there's so much fundamental random chance with the characters gimmicks and not enough actual strategy with how their gimmicks can be used, nor enough strategic options for actually playing the levels. Most of the time it's just about the player whittling them slowly down with ineffective attacks, occasionally setting up an effective attack when the game allows it. Yet some levels are way too strategic to the point where there's zero breathing room and it's just the player figuring out what exact choices the developer made to get through the stage. But I won't give it a negative recommendation. It's clear that a degree of effort was put into this, it's got the story, it's got the basis of a strategy system. If the enemy health was reduced so levels didn't take as long, the random elements of the characters gimmicks made consistent, and players given more control over manipulating enemies so they could actually strategize. Could be really great.