Since our community has City of Heroes on the brain of late, let’s recall that there are no less than five games inspired by the late superhero MMORPG on the way, each in a different state of development. One of the newest entries on that list is Ship of Heroes, possibly the most similar to the classic game, except for that whole “oh yeah and the city’s on a spaceship” twist.
This morning, Ship of Heroes’ Heroic Games posted a press release talking up its Unreal Engine 4 progress.
“Epic Games is excited that Ship of Heroes is being built using Unreal Engine 4,” an Epic rep is quoted as saying. “Ship of Heroes is developing quickly and we look forward to having another MMO in the market based on our technology, and the community of artists and coders that utilize it.”
Heroic Games claims it is “using the power of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to break new ground, showing more fully integrated game elements than any other MMO in the Superhero and Space genres, prior to Kickstarter.” You can be your own judge of that by comparing its progress to the Kickstarters of City of Titans (2013), Valiance Online (2014), and Redside (2017), plus the website for Heroes & Villains.
“With just a year of development, Ship of Heroes has followed its original timeline and met its milestones each step of the way. In the interest of complete transparency, they have shared key elements such as game world lore, a video tour of the base level Apotheosis City, a video overview of the ship, a video demo of the Character Creator, the User Interface, background and development for key NPCs, and then a powers/combat demo, all shown in game in Unreal Engine 4. Each new update fits with the lore and contains the previous elements, all building toward a playable Alpha.”
Oh yes, that playable alpha: Expect that later this year and early next year. We’ve previously reported that the game’s Kickstarter is set to begin on April 4th, with a $400,000 base goal.
