Bug Heroes 2 [Foursaken Media] - coming Feb 20!

Hoping to have some in-game screens out soon! In the meantime, I guess we can talk a bit more about the dual heroes, which I don't think I've explained much yet. As you know, you'll choose 2 heroes and both heroes will exist on the battlefield at the same time - you can freely and instantly switch between the two heroes with the tap of a button.

The hero not being controlled directly will have basic AI, dictated by a "behavior toggle." You can switch between "hold ground", where your 2nd hero will stay put and defend themselves/kill nearby enemies, and "follow", which will make them follow your primary hero around, attacking things nearby.

More importantly, you can actually control your 2nd hero indirectly as well, which will be very important in terms of tactics (covering fire, taking cover, flanking, absorbing damage, ability synergy, attacking multiple groups of enemies, defending the base, etc). Simply tap the ground to move your 2nd hero to that spot.

Will post a new hero soon

 

His shields are his weapon. He's a defensive, disruptive hero, so he performs a variety of shield bash type attacks.

Equipment in general is much different in BH2 though. In BH1 you could only upgrade your primary weapon twice, and the upgrades were pretty standardized and universal across heroes. In BH2 you have 4 equipment slots: 1 weapon, 1 armor, and 2 miscellaneous slots, and each hero has all sorts of options (though most are not visually represented, due to sheer quantity of items in BH2 - over 400+). While I mentioned before that each hero has less (but more focused) abilities than in BH1, they can make up for some of their short-comings via the equipment system. For ex Ant, a fighter that is weak against armor, can still save up to get an armor piercing weapon, or an armor piercing piece of equipment (specialized equipment for unspecialized heroes are generally more expensive and weaker though).

Note that a lot of things from BH1 will also return in BH2, but in different forms. Ant's static discharge passive for ex is now built into some of his armor equipment (so as you equip new armor, you'll generally be increasing static discharge). Likewise, where his automated shoulder turret was an ability in BH1, it is now a piece of equipment that you equip, which makes a lot more sense imo. So again, while the actual abilities are more focused and fewer, the strategic options and variety still exists, possibly to an even greater degree than in the 1st.

We actually played around with a much more robust, automated character behavior system early in development, where you could set their AI to different things like "attack, collect, defend, follow, hold ground", but found it to be TOO hands off. We didn't want players to just set an AI and forget about their 2nd hero (though even if they did, they would probably die pretty quick without any sort of tactical decisions, ability usage, dodging, etc).

 

Oh yeah, new hero as promised.

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Aphid returns from the original BH, but completely reinvented. He is a frail, but powerful close combat fighter with good offensive support abilities.

 

First Bug Heroes 2 in-game screenshots!


Incoming War Slugs!


Dual heroes.