Has-Been Heroes

Description

Has-Been Heroes released in the weeks after the Nintendo Switch launch. This is hybrid genre title with a darkly humorous premise: once‑great knights who’ve been reduced to escort duty, guiding them and two princesses through procedurally generated maps with lane‑based turn‑timed combat.

The premise is deliberately tongue‑in‑cheek: players control a band of ageing heroes tasked with escorting twin princesses to school. This whimsical framing contrasts with the game’s punishing difficulty, as each run requires mastering timing, spell management, and lane control against waves of enemies. Combat unfolds across three lanes, with heroes attacking in sequence, forcing players to juggle cooldowns, repositioning, and spellcasting to survive.

Thematically, the game plays with the idea of faded glory: heroes past their prime still proving their worth in absurd circumstances. Its roguelike structure reinforces this, as repeated failures are part of the journey, gradually unlocking new spells, items, and characters that expand strategic options.

On Switch, it was one of the early third‑party titles, helping to showcase the console’s indie support, though it never reached mainstream popularity. Like many, I found the games pretty mediocre at best. Apparently it gets better if you persevere but at some point you just have to call it. It felt like a game happy to jump on the near-launch bandwagon of a new console and was not doing anything technically that even the Wii U couldn’t have handled.