Comic Book Hero: The Greatest Cape

The year is 2024, and for the fourth(?) time in my life, I have attempted to like this game. With the fourth time still failing to be the charm, I'm finally ready to say this game is bad.

The combat is truly miserable, and the game world is lifeless. The balancing seems way off, as you're forced to either go into fights without recuperating, ensuring that you'll lose and damage your "fulfillment", or recuperate, hurting your "fulfillment" anyways. I'm sure there's some strategic way to handle the balance, but I don't get the impression that succeeding will make this game any more fun. Every encounter I've experienced has either been a quick and easy win, or a slow and predictable loss.

I will say I enjoyed making Photon Boy into my psuedo-sidekick, and I thought it was very funny when he died. The mental image of that blue-spandexed nerd being beaten to death while my lone-wolf anti-hero sat at home doing nothing makes me chuckle...

Very boring game. Even by GDS standards.

Wasted Potential: The Video Game.

There's so many ways this game could have been great, but it feels more like a proof of concept with shallow mechanics instead of a full fledged game. The Author actually made a sequel, but for some reason threw out the main selling point (superhero simulation) for a higher level "good vs evil". where you just contorl every super hero instead of one. I can't recommend unless you want a game to kill a few hours with and nothing more.

This game was actually extremely fun with lots of options to customize. Great way to make your own hero, just sad it wasnt continued with villains would make it alot more interesting to play as both.

Worth the value whenever on sale. Graphics are lame, but one can replace the hideous pictures by moving new art into the folder and editing the characters. Editing tool allows for change when it gets too much or one wants to rush an op character. Mods around to add new characters, or one can take the time to add them manually. Power have generic names, but they are named after what they do and it is up to the user to rename them if they want to a move that does what is described, for example, Heat Impact Melee being akin to moves like Ryu's Shoryuken or Captain Falcon's Falcon Punch. This game is a make your own adventure with starter generic characters and moves to edit. Lots of room for customization. Lots of clicking though.

26 hours of gameplay and here's what I've learned. It's a great text based superhero game. Tons and tons of powers and abilities, unending customization, and an open living world that you can interact with and change in meaningful ways. The game has no tutorial but isn't hard to understand. It's very intentional about creating different heroes, villains, teams, and cities that can fit into any heroic theme I can think of. There's a deity thing if you want a Wonder Woman or Hercules feel, There's the alien and ultra modern if you want the super powered gods among us Superman type feel. There's a supernatural city full of undead and spirits and magic if you want a Zantanna feel. There's a mutant island full of politically charged mutant tyrants and rebels battling for control if you want an X-Men feel. There's a dark gothic gritty city for the Daredevil/ Batman fans. There's a lot.

Quick tutorial: Learn the stats. Don't skimp on your cunning. Cunning is the most important stat. Nothing sucks more than getting ambushed by Mutant tyrant kings while you're an undercover cop with a hood and a trusty club to bring justice to purse snatchers. Also, nothing sucks more than being a good hero but having to quit because you got depressed because you couldn't ever find anyone to interact with. Which brings me to my next point, social interaction. Keep an eye on your psychological health and manage it. Find a civilian or hero with low cunning and make friends. Ideally, you want more than one in case one moves to another city or gets their ass kicked by a villain when you really need some social attention. Track villains and demand information to discover their plans, or find heroes with information broker to bring your fulfillment up quickly. You can also just patrol or track villains and beat them up to increase your fulfillment. Low fulfillment and social depression will destroy more heroes than anything.

Here's more in depth concept to help you enjoy the game as well as some more advice.

Stats:

Strength: your damage and wrestling ability. How important it is depends on your build. Wanna make Bane? take strength. Wanna make Cyclops? Maybe put your points somewhere else.
Agility: defense for ranged attacks. Depends on build. Nobody should skimp on it too much. A lot of the thugs you run into can do decent damage with a gun.
Reactions: defense for melee attacks. Depends on build again. Thugs and gangs tend to have bad melee skills and better shooting, but the higher level villains are melee monsters.
Toughness: health. Good if you don't like dying.
Recovery: how quickly you recover health. Good if you don't like spending several rounds recovering.
Stamina: your energy. Use energy to use more powerful attacks. Good to have, but only really important if you use powers while fighting.
Endurance: how quickly you recover energy. Meh. Kind of important. More important if you rely on your powers for fighting.
Reasoning: How smart you are/ how well you are at solving criminal plots. Good to have once you start to level up and can take on several baddies at once or start tangling with the puppet masters who control the lower guys. If you want to ignore this, team up with a smart guy and you can be the muscle. Important to have on the team, but you don't necessarily need to have it as all reasoning problems are team based events.
Cunning: How hard you are to track down and how well you can track down other heroes/ villains. MOST IMPORTANT STAT.
Willpower: offense and defense for mental attacks. Only important for mental based characters but your superman can be stomped by someone who is mental based if you completely ignore this one.
Technological: How tech savvy the hero is. Some criminal plots are technological plots which require you not so much to solve the mystery, but disarm the whats-it-called to save the day. Not very important unless you specifically put yourself in those circumstances.
Magical: Offense and defense for magical based stuff. This one is really only important if you're a magic based character. While normally I'd suggest not having anything too low just so you have some defense against it, thematically this one makes sense to not put anything into if you're not a magic user yourself.

Your skills, powers, and stats will all work their way into a number. You will then "roll" a random number between 1 and whatever your skill number is (1000 is game max, 750 is max without a special power), so higher is better. Your character level determines how many rolls you get and you take the best of those rolls. So, you want suplex the robber? Suplex is based on strength and you are a level 2 hero with a strength of 450. You roll two rolls, let's say you get 89 and 210. Not great, but not bad. The robber is level 3 but with a strength of 250, so he gets three rolls; let's say his best roll was only 150, so you successfully suplex the robber and deal damage. This system has more depth by your use of battlefield strategy (shooting a lot if you're flying over your opponents or mixing up your strikes if you're in close melee combat with them for several rounds), what powers are in effect (armor reduces damage, specialized skills can increase or decrease the number of rolls you or your opponent gets), and how you're fighting (taking an aggressive stance, hiding in the shadows all Daredevil style, flying above, running cover to cover, etc). There's really a lot of depth to a simple mechanic with the number of powers they have in the game. This combat system also works for detective work. Yin Yang, the supervillain has crafted some master plot? He gets X number of reason rolls which become your difficulty check for your reason rolls to solve the mystery. Successfully solve it and you may have to take down some henchmen before facing off against the big bad. Fail to solve the mystery and the criminals remain at large robbing places, making your city less safe, and potentially injuring or killing your hero friends.

Psychological health of heroes will be the downfall of your first couple of heroes. Just how it is. Have good cunning so you can find friends and link up with other heroes. Obviously look for heroes around your same level because even if your cunning is 750 and your target's cunning is only 500, if you get one roll you could still end up with a 4. They will likely beat you with a lower stat and more rolls, so aim for people your level or lower. Maybe one level up if you're particularly good. Keep your social life active, your secret identity in check (or for an easier start just have a public ID), and keep busting villain asses to keep your fulfillment up. In character creation you create your personality. DON'T MESS WITH IT. Unless it's critical to your build you want to make, don't touch it. I don't want to say its a broken mechanic, but it sucks when you're too far extreme in one thing or another and everybody snubs your social advances and then you lose from depression. Pro tip: sometimes this happens anyway, even when you have a balanced personality, so go into the editor and give yourself irresistible to everyone. Again, I don't want to say this social aspect of the game is broken, but it definitely needs fixed. Ok, fine, it's broken.

The editor. So yes, you can fight tooth and nail and travel around the world fighting villains to scrape enough points together to marginally move your strength up and maybe sweat a little bit less when you fight the next bad guy OR you can just go into the editor and max all your stats out, give yourself the best powers, and slam all but the highest leveled and most powerful heroes. It's an option but it really ruins the game. Use the editor for irresistible because relationships are broken, and to fix thematic things like not being able to start a team until level 7, even though there are leaders of teams who aren't level 7 in the base game....

Hope this helps.

It's baffling. It's the only word for this game. Hell, I'm not even sure you can class CBH: TGC as a game. It's like a storytelling application or, perhaps, weird simulation of nothing at all.

It's an interesting idea. At its core, CBH: TGC is supposed to allow you to create a superheroic character and simulate their lives with a complex, tabletop-esque system. And, to a certain extent, it does do this. The problem with this program is, just about every aspect of it is incredibly flawed.

The most immediate problem is that the UI is atrocious on just about every level. It's unclear what a lot of buttons do and there's far too much clicking involved for what is, ultimately, a very passive experience.

The poor UI is exacerbated by the one-two blow of there being a very detailed system underpinning this 'game' and no tutorial to explain any of it. What help there is comes down to a question mark on certain options and the advice provided therein is extremely limited. Additionally, just about every design choice feels backward.

For example, when you create a character, you can set the moves they use in combat. You aren't given any indication as to how the system works or how melee and ranged abilities interact or anything like that. Disregard that, for the moment, as I point out what I feel best illustrates the issues at the heart of this program.

So, instead of, say, grouping the attacks by ranged or melee and then categories of stab, explosive, blast and so on and then, within that, the flavors of fire, ice, energy, whatever, for ease of use and understanding, the game throws at you an alphabetised and numericised list of every single type of attack and every single flavor of that attack. So, you'll get a dozen different presentations of Energy-Melee with the only difference being a descriptor (small, medium, large) and a number that's 1-6.

Good luck figuring out if you want SmallEnergyMelee-1 or LargeEnergyMelee-3 if you're a ruleshound. Good luck figuring out which one fits your character concept if you're a roleplayer.

Similarly, you have skills that are rated 0-1000. But there's no indication as to what the numbers correspond to. Is 500 average, or is 500 great? There's no indication. Personality traits are similar, a sliding scale of, say, optimism vs pessimism without any indication as to what it means in a practical sense.

Even within the game, there are baffling decisions. Take combat, where you essentially click half a dozen times to pass through a single round. Combat can take a dozen rounds easily. But what stuck out to me was that there is no option to retreat, flee or run away from combat. Once you're in a fight, you're in it until one person is knocked out.

Another issue that stuck out to me was the presentation of the game. While you are creating a character, and the game seems to be a roleplaying exercise, the game is then framed like you're a comic book author creating a story for a new publication. But, beyond that brief discussion at the start, this framing device doesn't seem to factor into the game in any significant way. Comic Book Tycoon could be an interesting game, but this isn't it. And nor is it a particularly interesting storytelling device when the system is unclear, when characters take so long to make, and when it's hard to tell if there's any simulating going on or it's just entirely random.

All in all, CBH: TGC feels like one person's passion project where they had zero outside perspectives and absolutely no feedback provided. No one asking, like, what's the point of this? No one asking if it was fun. No one who sat down and said, hey, what's the system to engage people who aren't the author. No one who pointed out how clunky and unwieldy it is to use. No one who pointed out how to turn this into an idea that could capture the imagination. No one who pointed out that the whole endeavour is backwards: instead of creating this in-depth system with a shallow game to show it off, they should've made a deeper sandbox game about being a newbie superhero which people could make custom characters, events, and so on for. Just no one but the creator.

And that's unfortunate. Because a game where you're a comic book writer trying to make stories that resonate with the audience could be quite fun. As could a little storytelling tool that allowed to sketch some comic book characters out and simulate their lives, melodrama and all. But CBH: TGC isn't either of these things, and I struggle to think who this little program could possibly appeal to.

Additionally, I noticed what is absolutely a recolored Iron Man for one of the game's stock characters.

This is one i wish i could have a middle of the road option for on reviews, but alas all i have is a thumbs up and down.

The game is bad, hoenstly almost pure RNG with a system that has absolutly unexplained mechanics. The game,however is Gleeming with potential, a game like this SHOULD exist, but with more controll over your actions
and perhaps a more linar kind of game play style, with new threats arising every so often. I think this game has a lot of potential if someone took the idea up.

And then made sure not to make it as RANDOM as this game. Becasue yea, playing this game will show you the side of RNGesus you never knew existed. It can be fun if you really like your spreadsheets but i'd honestly just wait and hope someone improves on the idea

I like this simulator. I like coming back to it after some time, I enjoy diving in the imaginary world and fight powerful villains. But it doesn't quite do what the steam page says...
- point first, create a custom hero. Yes, you can do that, customisation options are fairly wide and you can unlock more of them with certain points you get basically for everything. There is no other currency in this game than those points.
- customizing perfect hero by choosing from hundreds of superpowers, abilities and attributes... Not quite. There are 12 abilities that serve as your standard power level and roll checks. There are bunch of attributes, maybe over a hundred, maybe more. But most of them are plain copies of others, or upgrades of existing ones. If you want to count absorbing toxic attacks level 1 and level 3 as two different attributes, sure. I don't. There are quite repetitive and serve as boosts to rolls, damage modifiers and sometimes even as a travelling means. Superpowers... Well, game allows you to create combat superpowers. Sort of. You choose from a set of attacks, most likely one that will go with your abilities and attributes to get highest damage output. Then you can choose a type of damage, if it is stap or grapple, or impact. You can custom name it and then buy it's levels and after that upgrade it. Pretty good system in my opinion.
- choose one of four game modes... There is only one game mode truly, whether you play as your own hero, or as preset character. Two other "modes" are creating hero with selected backstory and cloning one of the preset heroes. Gameplay is absolutely the same, it should have been called difficulty levels, because as fresh character yo ustart with less currency to spend on powers.
- 10 vs 10 fights... largest I had was like 5 against 6. And it's horrible. Even if you set options to skip all the roll messages AI turns take forever and continue button appears in several different places. Took me a while to figure out that I can skip everything just by mashing my poor space. Solo fights, or up to 3 vs 3 are fine. You can easily figure out which enemy to target and which ally is in danger.
- foiling evil schemes... Yes, you can do that. But most probably not in the beginning of the game. Figuring out schemes is purely roll based and you need to invest in proper ability to have a higher chance at figuring them out. There is a treshold that will give you a 100 % chance to figuring out a scheme, but that leads only to next fight in most cases. You do not solve puzzles on your own (well, at least it didn't happen to me during my 40 hours of gameplay), it is all purely roll based.
- getting popularity... it is basically a level of your character. I don't like progression system tied to "selling comics". That means you can only level by doing heroic missions/fighting, and no other interactions truly matter.
- "Word on the street feature" - it is extremely random. During missions you might get a message that there is something happening in few turns. That's all. Didn't happen to me during one extended gameplay session (like 6 hous), happened to me after that 3 times in 15 minutes.
- managing character relationships. It is bad and percentage based. You also need to be extremely lucky to find your match if you want to go down with someone in the love life, since most of characters will stop improving relations with you after reaching some treshold. Apparently it is personality based, but game doesn't tell player how personality sliders affect of characters with those sliders as well. You can also be an ally or a friend of set people. And you can only be an enemy with villains, which is kinda disappointing. Oh, and by the way. You can't play as villain.
- protecting secret identity brings you absolutely nothing. In fact it's better to have none, since you might get ambushed and then defeat some extra enemies which brings more points.
- team system is lacking. I found myself way too often in a fight with other hero team since there were no villains to beat. Joining a team is also lacking, since all you can do is train with fellow hero, which is essentially just a fight.
- "the in-depth world"... does anyone knows what that means? I certainly lost the meaning of that word long ago. World in this game is as in depth as you want. You can fully immerse yourself, or you can just laugh at the engine limitations. Yes, you can customise some things, but all you do is basically changing numbers and pictures. You can also edit yourself to make this godly being, and in my opinion game should have this feature turned off, or available to access maybe through some special mode.
- yes, we can create the world from scratch and design a complete comicverse on our own. There are a couple of good mods to this game that do this. But essentially all they do is just adding characters and portraits. They do not change the game or games mechanics in any meaningful way. You will find yourself doing the same things, just watching different pictures.

So is the game worth it? Yes. In my opinion, if you are a giant comic book fan and if you are looking for a simple superhero experience, then playing it might bring you sense of joy.
But it should receive some more love from developer(s?). It should get expanded mechanics, maybe few updates on resolution that it would bring game to HD, a picture pack, or at least a balancing of skills (some of attribute/abilities combos are absolutely overpowered and cheap).

This is nice and good game but unfortunately dev has abandoned this game and we may not receive any update for this game which a pity that this game has lot of potential.

i got this game on sale for 5 bucks its normal price of 20 seems way to over priced but i think the game is fun i see other reviews saying it is confusing i understood it in the first 5 mins its not hard to realize going on patrol means looking for crime if you hover your mouse over the crime level it tells you how many crimes are being planed so cmon thats when their are crimes another review complained about the track feature but it depends on who you track or what tracking skills your charcter has i think the game is fun and easy to understand thats my opion and all i got to say

I tried. I really did. This just isn't really a game.

This is basically a comic book simulator. You create a character (or use a precreated one) and start simming. You can pick the powers and build relationships and start a super hero team. It's a DREAM for super hero nerds. Except wait... it isn't.

Those features are great on paper. And I hope you LOVE paper because that's all this is. You click an action, it sims a turn. And about 70% of those actions yield no results. Go on patrol? Nothing found. Go on patrol 30 times in a row? Notta. Did I ever have fun with this game? Yes. Could I have more fun with this game? Nope.

I know it sounds great guys and gals, but don't get this game. Some day we will have a terrific superhero sandbox... someday. Today isn't that day.

Listen, I love superhero games and feel there should be more. I would love a game where you can make your own character and sandbox it, like Mass Effect or Skyrim. This... this is not that game. I wanted to give it a chance. I really wanted to like it. However, you will be bored. You spend most of your time tracking villains and not finding them. So maybe you want to search for another hero to help out, well... they are hard to find as well. This was a very disappointing game.

PROS: You can make your own hero and rename the powers.
Modding

CONS: In a city full of supervillians you'll spend a real hour looking for them only to have them beat you.
Text based.
A bit corny, I wished he took the genre more seriously.

This guy should have made the game more like Loren, Amazon Princess. That would have made a killer game. However, all you have is a 'simulator'. How many comics have you read where the hero spends 20 issues tracking a nobody? With heavy heart I cannot recommend this game.

Please do not buy it! This is not a $20 game! It is overpriced. It should be $1 and that is being generous.

I found this game to be dull and poorly executed. I decided to purchase this game despite the negative reviews because I enjoy pen-and-paper RPGs and I enjoy text-based adventures. This game feels at best unpolished and at worst unfinished. There are a number of diamonds in the rough, but in my opinion the game is severely hobbled by the expectations that are set and a lack of gameplay that feels like it suits your hero. I would like to share the "high points" of my hours-long playthrough so I can show you what I mean.

First of all, there are four options, Roleplay (in which you take one of the pre-existing heroes and "roleplay" as him or her,) "Clone" (in which you take one of the pre-existing heroes and play him or her as you like,) "Background" (in which you choose one of a nice variety of backgrounds,) or Custom (in which you build your hero from the ground up.)

I chose background and got a fire-user, which I didn't really want so I decided to reroll the character ... only to find that the origin you take gives you pretty much the same hero each time, no input on powers you want or even any reason for you to have those powers. It doesn't randomly generate (unless I somehow managed to get the same powers three times in a row.) So then I start looking through the poor 3d portraits they supply with their game (some in clear violation of copyright); ironically, several of the established heroes have multiple color schemes ... but the portraits intended for the player-created character use only one color set per model. See a hero/heroine you like but the colors are all wrong for a fire-wielder? Too bad.

So finally, I get my character and I start, and it gives a choice of cities. It doesn't really explain why you should choose one over another, and it doesn't seem to matter given my experience, except in encounter frequency (maybe.) The city tailor-made for mutants doesn't seem to have any particular benefit or penalize mutants, or so it seems. Now, since I've read previous reviews, I know I probably don't want to patrol, so I search for a villain I think I can take. I find her, and also find she has two accomplices. Naturally, I don't stand a chance, and the weird combat system certainly doesn't help at all. A sticking point: my character has the power of flight. No defensive benefit, even against a villain whose attacks are clearly melee-based (at one point, he used a press-slam on me while I was flying. The move described involves lifting an opponent over your head and letting them drop to the ground. I am a flyer who was in flight when this move hits. How am I damaged again?) but you do get extra damage when you get hit, from falling out of the sky. It doesn't seem to matter if you do ranged or melee attacks (except in regards to the stat your target defends with) and you should never taunt alone (because any benefit you get is instantly and wholly negated if you get hit) even if you are a wisecracker. After my ignominious defeat, I lost half of my Hero Points, which, starting with 5000 means half of that is far more than I ever received for winning, doing training, or community service following.

OK, so now I have to wait several turns to recover from this terrible beating, so then I decide I should find an ally and waste another five or so turns trying to chase anyone down. I finally come into contact with a low-powered heroine and as I develop a relationship with her (choosing 'professional' rather than social,) somehow, my secret identity is revealed to the world and, guess what, if your identity is ever known, I don't see any way to fix that. So several fights after which every villain escapes, I still can't afford to improve my abilites and my morale keeps dropping. At this point, I declare this character hopeless because no amount of patrol, searching or anything really ever finds me a villain, just when my super friend who exposed my ID to the world invites me on patrol do we ever see anyone (oh, and if you make a super friend and they lose, expect them to drop off the face of the Earth for many turns while they recover.)

So I decide to do a custom hero, and try to make a Speedster ... only on normal mode, just having the Speedster perk is over double my starting points. I don't see a lot of disadvantages that would make sense so this character is aborted before I start.

Finally, I decide to try a character from the future and for powers I get ... a laser gun. That's it. The future is a laser gun.

This game suffers from an extreme lack of balancing in my opinion, in terms of it doesn't balance action with the seemingly unending string of searching, patrolling, et cetera without ever adding up to finding anything to do while your hero continues to spiral down down down into depression. I think the game has incredible potential, but needs significant improvements to every single aspect, from encounter distribution to interactivity, to interface to art assets. For $20, there are a LOT of better games out there.

As of the typing of this I've played this 110 hours. I guess I like it, so here's a review!

Anyone remember Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII? That's 8 for you youngsters. You make a character during the China's war filled Han Dynasty and proceed to do whatever. Join a lord and fight battles, be a bandit, go farming, wander the lands learning crap, or take over territory to call your own. Whatever you do, everyone else does their own thing. Wars can start and end without you being involved in any way. You're a single fish in a big pond.

That's what I like about this game. You're a lone super hero in a world full of heroes and villains. It does practically everything RTK8 does (only without flashy graphics and no sound) and has an awesome hero creation system. Whoever your favorite hero is, you can make them in this game. Any combination of powers you can think of can be done. Think Wolverine would be cool if he could fly and travel through time? Do it in this game. What about Batman if he read minds and can split in to 8 other Batmans (Batmen)? This game can do it.

The game also includes an editor. You can edit your own hero whenever you like. I'd suggest moderation when doing that. Don't max out everything you can. That'll take away the fun and leave nothing to spend your points upgrading. I mostly have used it to add relationships. It's a tad annoying when you can't find someone you are searching for within 30 searches. Adding a relationship saves time and prevents rage. Unless you like to rage, then by all means have at it.

For $19.99: 4 out of 10.
For $9.99: 6 out of 10
For $5.99: 7.5 out of 10.

Honestly, it really depends on the price you pay for this game. I REALLY LOVE THIS DEVELOPER, TEW 2013 and WMMA 3 and 4, are so damn good. Unfortunately this isn't as well off. It isn't bad by any means, but it could get boring for most players as you play for a couple hours. Please don't pay $19.99 for this game. It isn't worth it. I paid $6.99 and I think that is a good enough price to play this game. Also check out the above greydogsoftware games, you won't regret it.

The game has potential. Unfotunately, that's all that it has at this point. While this is one of the most customizable games I have seen in a long while, customization on its own is hardly enough to carry the title. The lack of any kind of documenation or tutorial leaves users to flounder about (usually maddingly as one gets defeated right off the bat). The lack of goals (other than simply leveling up) also is a little bit of a let down.

Finally, I am NOT against text-based games (I'm olde enough to have thoroughly enjoyed Zork...when it was released), this game does not use the text to actually carry the game forward. With a lack of story, with a lack of goals, and with a lack of direction, the user is left scratching his/her head trying to figure out "what is all of this for?"

While I see potential, the lack of goals and the complete lack of instruction leave this game a little cold for me.

The game is badly designed and has very little progression. When you start out you have 2 options grab an existing character or struggle with your own to make an emotionally stable character before they have a breakdown. If you do happen to make one either by exploiting the flaws in the system or pure luck then you are stuck grinding away for any progress. This isn't really even a game but a design your own hero concept on computer without any of the flaws resolved.

Learning the game is a chore for most people as there is no manual or tutorial so while it looks like there is a lot of content but there really isn't. This is more of a fan made concept world for people who wish to play out their fantasies with their favorite superheroes.

Cannot recommend it as there are much better games out there and while they might not give as many customization options at least they work like a sim or another type of game should.

Should you want to create your own world it is possible through this program unlike the others but the system of making heroes doesn't work well. You will end up spending much more time in the editor than actual gameplay and sooner or later just jumping into premade character to mess around for a bit. In order for this to be a good game they will need to overhaul the system to make it more enjoyable or at least put options in to make it more live fast die young rather than breaking people's will to be a superhero.

This is one of those games where it doesnt do anything that makes you want to shout about it from the rooftops. However it is very fun if you like text based sims.

basically this game is about, you the player, being a comic writer not a hero. you are writing your heros story as you play the game. choices will arise that will affect many things from powers gained or penalties incurred, or even death. its broken into volumes (levels - described as popularity among readers from 1-10) and chapters (major encounters like battles, death, etc.)

there are 4 ways to start with a hero. use one that is premade, choose a backstory and have one generated, clone one from the list, or create a custom hero altogether. i chose the latter myself.

your skills, powers, and attributes are minimal if this is your chosen path. you can build your hero up from there but it will take time. if you are looking for a more powerful hero id choose another route. i kind of liked it. felt like the birth of a hero and you get to guide him along his story from the very start.

its broken into turns that dont always equate to a chapter as chapters are only major occurences. you search for baddies or friendlies, visit your friends and allies, patrol, train, etc. etc. these choices will mold your story step by step.

some of the choices dont always result into anything meaningful however. for example, patrolling doesnt always result in finding a struggle and searching for other NPCs often times result in an uneventful turn. this is probably the only major downside imo. between each turn you get a run down of what other heros and vilians are doing so if you string together a few of these uneventful encounters you find your self clicking through the sea of notifications at times. not a huge issue, but can get frustrating.

combat take a bit of getting used to. once you understand it though it can be fun, and frustrating at times. its not a perfect system but it does the job. it will create nailbiting fights, but will also create some pretty boring or hairpulling ones as well. again not perfect, but it does the job.

being text based, the graphics wont excite anyone. the writing is ok, but wont blow your mind by any means. i have yet to complete a story so not sure if there is some kind of epic journal somewhere yet, but i dont really expect one. in fact, i hope i can take my hero on for some time as i have found myself connected to hero in a short time.

there is a great editor in the game and some nice mods floating around as are with most games made by Grey Dog. if you are the creative type, this is probably a good choice for you if you wish to create your own universe of supers.

if you like these type of games, then you will enjoy this one. Grey Dog creates some fun games and this one does as well. for the price is was worth it to me, but i can see why some wont feel the same way. these games arent for everyone.

tldr: fun game if you like text based sims. lots of options and great editor + mods. wont blow your mind, but shouldnt dissappoint if these games are your thing.

I haven't played hours and hours of this game, yet, but I think it's good.
Okay, so that's the simple bit. Now I'll go a bit more in depth.

This game is almost entirely text, but it does come with quite a few images of the characters that are very interesting and well-made. It doesn't have a tutorial, which would have been nice, but it is fairly easy to get the hang of once you know what you're doing.
The default universe/database is fun with a number of comedic references to existing comic book characters.

I do believe that this game would be somewhat improved with a soundtrack and a tutorial, but otherwise it's a good game. You can also go online to find mods for the game including skins and new databases, which is cool (it would be nice if these mods ended up in the Steam Workshop).

Don't be put off from this game. It has a learning curve, and aspects of the game are dictated by luck, but it's great fun.

The only other review on here says the game doesn't explain much, and that's definitely true. On the other hand, the base engine built for this game seems incredibly customizable, think gurps or mutants and masterminds, and I think I'll enjoy the challenge of figuring out the mechanics of the game. I should note that you will absolutely hate this game if you don't enjoy pen and paper games, or are expecting a world you can actually see, instead of read about. If on the other hand you don't mind a lot of reading (and I mean a lot of reading), and you don't mind having to guess at how elements of the game world work, then you can have a lot of fun with this.

Also, don't go patrolling for your first few turns, there's a gauge on your sheet which says how much criminal activity there is, random patrols don't do so well when there aren't people to patrol for, and you can help with civilian projects/hunt for people instead.

I very much wanted to like this game. I have enjoyed text-based adventures in the past, and I hoped that this would be a fun way to role-play as my own created hero. Right off the bat, the game doesn't really do anything to explain how it works, or what you are suppose to be doing. So with little direction, I created my character and am offered to perform one of ten actions for the "turn". The first action I saw was "go on patrol" (or something similar), so I went ahead and tried it. I saw nothing. So I tried it again. Still nothing to respond to. So I went and used the training option for a few rounds to build up more points to spend on stats/traits/powers for my character. Then I noticed a button to track down villains. So I spent TEN TURNS trying to track down a single opponent at level 1. Finally, I managed to find them and start a battle. Unfortunately, this is where it got even more confusing. The game battles are determined by "seeds" which seem to be the total offensive 'rolls' of the attacker pitted against the total defensive rolls of the one being attacked. If you score high enough offensively, you hit; or vice versa for the defending hero/villain. There are several things that affect rolls such as traits, positioning, move accuracy, stats, and various other factors. But the problem here is that I honestly have yet to figure out what dictates a hit, or a dodge, or a reduced impact, or anything else. It seems to cryptic. One time I actually managed to roll a 421 defensively against a roll of 24 from the attacker, and I still got hit for full damage. It simply doesn't make sense to me.

Now all of this could simply be chalked up to me simply not understanding the game fully, but there is NO EXCUSE for my next experience. I made a new character just to test patrols, and gave him balanced stats. I ran him on patrol over 150 times and never found ANYTHING. My character went depressed from lack of motivation from doing nothing, and that results in a gameover. That was when I decided to quit before I hit two hours so that I could refund the game. Its just poorly done.

Pro's
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-You can create a custom hero from a large selection of portraits and move-types

-Seemed to run fine

Con's
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-Confusing layout
-Unrealisticly low chance of discovering crimes (at least during the early phase of the game)
-Poor explainations of core game mechanics
-Sloppy combat text descriptions - It just seems as if it presumes to much.

(I have removed the no audio Con. In all fairness, BGM or Clicker audio is not required by any means for a text-based game to be enjoyable)

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Update: Take this review with a grain of salt, honestly. I jumped in and purchased the game having been a moderate fan of text games (The Dark Room on IOS, for example), and I was even more motivated by my love for comicbook fiction. After reading some feedback I do realize now that perhaps I would have had a more enjoyable experience had I started a hero at a higher tier so that I could handle and possibly even encounter more villains. But I am sure that the limitations put in place by the lower-ranked hero system are not intentional as it seems to negate any sort of drive to start from the bottom and work your way up; whats a good comic without an origin story?