Play NYC 2017 - Hero's Crossing Preview

Published: August 26, 2017 11:00 AM /

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Hero's Crossing Play NYC 2017 Display

Hero's Crossing by One Method Monkey is a game that immediately appealed to me the moment I saw it at Play NYC 2017. I could tell, just by looking, that it had to be some kind of game based on classic top-down RPG games. The makeup of the board and pieces made me think that perhaps it had something to do with managing a town in some fashion, and a few quick questions to the representatives on site confirmed that I was more or less correct.

In this particular tabletop game, your job is to help equip and support a band of heroes in a classic fantasy RPG setting. Normally, this would be done by slaying goblins, collecting loot, and grinding your way through the levels. However, in Hero's Crossing, you aren't playing as the heroes, you're playing as the town. (Well, the people running it, anyway.) Your mission is to generate goods & services for the good guys, expand the town, and fend off threats to the town like saboteurs.

A particularly interesting niche about it is the visual style of the game evolves as you play, similar in vein to Evoland. Tiles can be upgraded from 8-bit to 16-bit and then 32-bit graphical styles, mirroring the evolution of top-down RPGs before Final Fantasy 7 made it all about those short 3D cross-dressing blond guys. In the limited time I had at the booth I wasn't able to glean how exactly this would work, but my guess is that this would be some kind of upgrade mechanic as the game progresses, and it's a really cool way to do things.

Heros Crossing Board Set Up
I didn't get the opportunity to play Hero's Crossing at Play NYC 2017, but this image from the game's official website should give you an idea of what it will look like during gameplay. It looks really cool.

I am a complete and total sucker for a game that lets you build a town. I don't care if it's Cities: Skylines or Dwarf Fortress, if I can plop down a bunch of houses and infrastructure in some kind of vague framework I'll enjoy it. (Surely I was a city planner in another life!) When I play RTS games, I can't help but fall into the "Simcity" style of play where I focus on building out my base more than actually moving units and attacking (one of the many reasons I went 0 and 5 in my first crack at placing on the Starcraft II ladder). This is right up my alley.

Play NYC has a lot of games in varying states of production, and one thing that stood out to me about Hero's Crossing was just how together everything was. The packaging and game pieces on display looked as good as production quality. My first thought was that it was already out or at least in presales. One can't be sure if this will be representative of the final product without actually seeing it, but what they had on display looked like quality stuff. The fine folks behind the game are targeting a $50 or so MSRP for release, and I'd wager a good portion of that is to ensure the quality of the pieces.

This is a game I'd very much like to get my hands on, if only for the nostalgia I have from classic top-down RPGs like LufiaLunar: Silver Star Story Complete, and countless others. I think that One Method Monkey has a really cool concept and I get the feeling that it will be executed well just from what I've seen. I have high hopes for Hero's Crossing, and it's undoubtedly one of the coolest things I saw at Play NYC 2017.

Hero's Crossing will come to Kickstarter sometime in the near future; the developers behind it hope to get it out sometime before 2017 is up. You can learn more about the game by visiting the official website.

What do you think of Hero's Crossing? Do you think it would be fun to run a town in an RPG setting or would you rather take on the role of the heroes themselves? What do you think the game will be like? Let us know in the comments below!

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A photograph of TechRaptor Senior Writer Robert N. Adams.
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One of my earliest memories is playing Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I've had a controller in my hand since I was 4 and I… More about Robert N