Do not rise. You must rest, dearest. Rest, and I will tell you a story.

No. Five stories.

Only one is true. But it would not have mattered which.

You will understand soon enough

A villain seeks to acquire a magic gem with mysterious powers. Choose to play one of five heroes--an adventurer, a thief, a mage, the ruler of the lands, or a dragon--who will stop at nothing to prevent the gem from falling into the villain's hands.

But all is not as simple as it seems.

"I can't say enough about how much I loved [the multiple viewpoints]" -- Paul O'Brian

"This is a perfect example of what I expect from an adventure game, all things considered. Kudos!" -- Gilles Duchesne

"In IF I want to see an entertaining story, good writing, interesting uses of interactivity. And any fantasy quest where you have to recover a magic gem is, by definition, none of the above." -- Stephen Bond

The game file. You will need a "Z-code" interpreter to play it; for example, on a Windows PC, I recommend WinFrotz.

Behind the Scenes

The following files contain severe spoilers for Heroes. Do not read them unless you've already finishe playing it as much as you plan to.

• the story -- this file documents the complete backstory of Heroes, the "what was really going on", drawing from material that is available in-game if you do the right commands.
• design journal -- this file documents the process of designing the story and the puzzles in Heroes; it is intended to "document creativity", to try to help illustrate the process by which these things get put together.

home : sean at nothings dot org