Indie MMO fans have long watched the progress of Ship of Heroes, the last City of Heroes spiritual successor and the one we’ve typical considered furthest along in development. But there’s no denying the game has lingered long in that development, with sporadic tests along the way. And here comes another one: Heroic Games is releasing a game demo for Steam Next Fest next week.
“Come and play the Ship of Heroes demo on Steam as we participate in Steam Next Fest, Oct 9 through October 16. This will be our 10th public event, and it is completely free. Three times a year, Steam holds Next Fest, a game festival where studios can let the public play a demo of their unpublished games. Each game can only participate once. Players typically come in and try out a demo for anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more, but there’s no actual time limit.”
Heroic says the event is open to everyone, whether or not you’ve ever tested out Ship of Heroes before, and the Steam downloading ought to make it pretty seamless (although if you already do have the game on Steam, you’ll apparently be on a different server). Worth noting is that it is indeed a demo and not the whole game
“[W]e’ll be disabling most other content in the game to focus on the character creator and the first Sword Blossom story arc,” the team says. “The first Sword Blossom story arc focuses on the Engineering department aboard the FHS Justice and their quiet struggle against the Promethean menace and the evil Dr. Cornish. The arc contains seven missions, culminating in an intense battle to protect the FHS Justice and its inhabitants from assimilation.” That’ll mean you’re getting access not just to the interiors but the exteriors of the game world, plus player accounts will be buffed up with currency (that you can keep at launch) so they can buy whatever they need.
Oh yeah, and as for that character creator? Heroic says the number of costume pieces has “probably doubled or tripled since the last beta.”
