Heroic City is a Party-/Minigame MMO. It uses a Pixel visual design, which I am usually not the biggest fan of, but it does actually look quite nice here. That being said, the visuals are of course nothing really impressive either, but they do fit the game.
Heroic City has a hub world from which you can join different activities. There are 6 minigames in total, from which only 3 are proper minigames.
Whooshball is certainly my favourite activity in Heroic City. It is a football minigame, which reminded me of Rocket League, just without the cars. The gameplay is pretty fast, but the controls feel quite satisfying. There are a couple of different variations of Whooshball, which differ from each other by the form and amount of obstacles being placed on the football pitch. This brings a decent variety to the minigame.
The Bomber Game is like a 3D version of Bomberman, just without any power-up items. There are a couple of different bomb types, but no shrinking arena, like in the Bomberman games. Instead, you have to try not to fall of the map. Every player has 3 lives and the last man standing wins. Bomber Game is simple, but actually enjoyable.
Skeleton Survival is a wave-based Survival Game. You can pick up to 2 weapons and your character automatically shoots at the waves of skeletons, zombies and the like. You can only move your character around, trying to dodge the masses of enemies and occasionally pick up new weapons. Everything else is done automatically. Skeleton Survival isn't bad, but I can't say that I enjoyed it too much.
Then there are also 3 smaller minigames, which in contrast to the other minigames have no Bot support. The 'Dodgeball' arena is a bit hidden away. You pick up gigantic balls and throw them at the other players in a small arena. It is pretty basic. The other two minigames are located in the art museum. It is a relaxing place, in which you can look at paintings, which you can also buy for your player house. The first of the museum minigame is 'Deathmatch', which feels like a out of place Roblox FPS. The other is a Painting minigame, in which some players have to spoil paintings with a paintgun, while the other players have to prevent them from doing so with a shotgun. These 3 smaller minigames are really basic and not even really worth trying out. Having only 3 proper minigames is definitely one of the games biggest weaknesses.
There was a seventh Disco minigame planed, which was supposed to release once the game reaches one of its contribution goals, which they didn't even get close to. You can actually see a couple of areas in the hub world, which were supposed to later turn into unique places and where the devs invite the players to contribute ideas on their discord channel. It is actually a bit sad to see, that the game apparently never got a stable playerbase and was probably abandoned.
As already indicated Heroic City also has a housing system, where players can decorate their own homes and gardens with decor. Nothing spectacular, but nothing wrong with it either.
Pretty interesting is the Battle Pass system in Heroic City. There are multiple NPCs in Heroic City, which have Battle Passes you can activate by talking to them. You can only actively collect XP for one of those, to get free and premium rewards, but you can switch freely between them in the Hub World. The Heroic Battle Pass for example lets you earn Superhero costumes, while the art museum Battle Pass rewards you with paintings.
Another really interesting feature is the real life impact system of the game. You can purchase, or earn via the minigames and the Battle Passes, impact items. For each of these impact items for example a tree is being planted in Tanzania or animals, like sea turtles, being saved by the partner companies of the game. This is actually a real cool concept.
Another aspect actually worth praising is the, in my eyes, surprisingly strong soundtrack in the game. I found the background music to mostly be relaxing and also always fitting to the different minigame activities.
The other really big issue with the game (apart from the lack of content) is the missing playerbase. The developers originally hoped to reach 100 Million players. The steam player peak however is 12 and that was more than a year ago. I have only ever met one other player. Usually you are unfortunately alone in this game.
Result:
Heroic City is not a bad game and I really like the idea of a Party-/Minigame MMO. The real life impact system is commendable and soundtrack as well as visuals are fitting. Unfortunately there is not nearly enough content in the game for an MMO and the lack of players hurts the experience a lot. If they had 15-20 more minigames like Whooshball and the Bomber Game and at least 100 regular players, than I would probably highly recommend the game. If you have a couple of friends to play Heroic City with, than it might still be worth spending an afternoon with. It's an okay experience with the Bots, but nothing that really stands out from the crowd.
5.5/10
