Heroine's Quest

Last updated
Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok
Heroine's Quest cover.jpg
Developer(s) Crystal Shard
Director(s) Pieter Simoons
Composer(s) Matthew Chastney, Dmitrii Zavorotny
Engine Adventure Game Studio
Platform(s) Windows, Linux, macOS
Release
December 25, 2013
  • Windows & Linux
    • WW: December 25, 2013
  • macOS
    • WW: December 19, 2024
Genre(s) Adventure, role-playing
Mode(s) Single-player

Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok is an adventure game/RPG hybrid developed by Dutch studio Crystal Shard, set in the world of the Poetic Edda and Norse Mythology.

Contents

History

The game continued to publish new releases for a decade, [1] although only 2 of the releases were detailed: [2]

Plot

The city of Fornsigtuna is wrapped in an endless winter. Egther, the last of the frost giants on Midgard, is causing this in an effort to start Ragnarok, the end of the world in Norse myth. The jarl of Fornsigtuna has called for a hero to save the city, to which the player character responds. Barely surviving an initial attack by Thrivaldi, Egther's right-hand troll, the heroine travels between Fornsigtuna, the village of Munarvagr, and the otherworldy Svartalfheim. The troll is using strong-arm tactics to try to obtain the eyes of Thiassi, which would allow him to unleash Egther on the world. The heroine first foils these attempts, then has to gain the trust of the villagers to obtain the eyes for herself. Using these, she confronts Thrivaldi and Egther in a showdown at the frost giant's frozen castle of Gastropnir.

Reception

Rock, Paper, Shotgun described it as a "beautiful game about selfless, old-fashioned heroism that brilliantly captures the spirit of Quest for Glory", [6] PC Gamer claimed it "goes above and beyond most free adventure games/RPGs by offering "over 100 hand-painted backgrounds", voice acting, a neat auto-mapping function, along with optional sidequests and multiple ways to approach many quests", [7] while Kotaku labelled it "about as perfect a tribute to Sierra's classic Quest for Glory series [...] as you could hope for". [8]

RPG Codex ranks it in the Top 70 RPGs of all times. [9]

References

  1. 1 2 "Latest News". Official website. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  2. "Development log". Itch.io . Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  3. "Heroine's Quest v1.2.7 update". Itch.io . 2021-10-16. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  4. "Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok v1.2.9". Itch.io . 2023-10-13. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  5. "Heroine's Quest now available on MacOS". Steam (service) . 2024-12-20. Retrieved 2024-01-04. HQ 1.2.9 has been ported to the Mac, and also translated into German
  6. Dimopoulos, Konstantinos (15 October 2014). "Freeware Garden: Heroine's Quest". Rock, Paper, Shotgun . Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  7. Sykes, Tom (23 December 2019). "Heroine's Quest: a free, Quest for Glory-inspired adventure/RPG". PC Gamer . Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  8. Plunkett, Luke (20 March 2014). "Classic PC Series Reinvented With Female Lead". Kotaku . Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  9. "Top 70 PC RPGs (Now with User Reviews!) :: rpg codex > doesn't scale to your level". Rpgcodex.net. Retrieved 2017-01-19.