Heroes of the Forest

'''Note: This article is about earlier versions of the game, and this article is now oudated. This article is only staying up for preservation purposes.'''

Heroes of the Forest is a Roblox adventure game created by theo_owlman and bluecap. Players go on an adventure to stop a villain called SECRET from taking over Misty Forest.

Story
100 years ago, a hero named Lockelan faced off against a villain named SECRET in his core form (called The Dark Heart) and attempted to defeat SECRET, however, he made a deal with Lockelan, where he'd disappear for 100 years, but Lockelan would have to die for him to disappear, with Lockelan accepting the deal. 100 years later, SECRET returned, and the player ventures through multiple areas to stop SECRET from corrupting Misty Forest once and for all while meeting new friends along the way. The player then gets to the top of SECRET's tower and fights him and wins the fight, saving Misty Forest from any more danger by SECRET.

List of Areas

 * Hubworld: Misty Forest Outskirts
 * Checkpoint 0: The Beginning
 * Checkpoint 1: Campground
 * Checkpoint 2: Party
 * Checkpoint 3: Road
 * Checkpoint 4: Hallways
 * Checkpoint 5: Basement
 * Checkpoint 6: Exit
 * Checkpoint 7: Sewer
 * Checkpoint 8: Utopia
 * Checkpoint 9: Tower
 * Checkpoint 10: Finale

Why It's Not a Hero

 * 1) The idea of a villain wanting to take over a forest and the forest needing rescuing is a very strange take, as there's much better and stronger things that can be taken over, such as a powerful object to make them even stronger and/or even the world despite being an overused and generic idea as well, and the idea of needing to save a forest kind of makes the game sound more of like an educational game instead, which is ironic considering this game's take on a more darker toned platformer.
 * 2) The plot is just your generic "Oh no an evil guy has taken over your home, now you must stop him", and to make matters worse, the idea of a troubled forest needing saving is very strange as stated earlier, and to make matters even worse, the only thing that keeps the plot a little bit more unique is how SECRET returned after being defeated by Lockelan.
 * 3) There's two plot holes in the game, with them both being explained here:
 * 4) * If SECRET wanted to corrupt the forest, then why didn't he prevent the player from progressing by just adding more obstacles in some areas so that it'd become impossible to move on? In Hallways, he also could've pressed the alarm button by himself way before the player got to the escape sequence.
 * 5) * After the boss fight at the end of Road, SECRET burns down the arena and opens the entrance to Hallways. If he never opened the entrance, he could've easily stopped the player from defeating him by letting them get stuck and burnt to death.
 * 6) ** Even if it wasn't SECRET who opened the entrance, there's no explanation as to what/who opened the entrance.
 * 7) The game is a bit laggy at graphics 10, especially during the title screen, however, the lag does decrease a bit later on in the game. One of the main reasons as to why the game's laggy is because of how there's plenty of objects used in areas that players normally can't see.
 * 8) There are loading screens in the game which take a while to complete on lower-end devices, however, the loading screens are there to reduce lag, so this is a bit understandable, although the developers could just remove useless objects that players can't see.
 * 9) The gameplay is very boring, as almost the entire game is cluttered with identical jumps and walking, and while the game did get redesigned at some point so that there are more moving obstacles and buttons that open up certain pathways, the moving obstacles are not only spammed throughout the game as well and have identical designs with each other, and the buttons mostly just create more backtracking for the player, especially if they fail to get through one of the pathways in time that a button can temporarily open.
 * 10) Checkpoints aren't very common through each area, and they tend to appear a bit over the halfway point of each stage, which would be fine if each of the areas weren't so long and cluttered with walking and identical obstacles. The secret boss fight, Rylynnet, also lacks checkpoints as well, and the player has to restart the entire fight if they die once. This also leads to more artificial difficulty rather than balanced difficulty as well.
 * 11) The boss fights are extremely simple (aside from Rylynnet), as the player can dodge each of the bosses' attacks by just running around aimlessly, and after a few seconds, the player is allowed to hit the boss, and the cycle repeats until the boss is defeated, and the punishment for dying isn't very big either, since that the player will most likely respawn at where they left off in the boss fight (aside from Rylynnet).
 * 12) The game tries a bit hard to be edgy, with a few examples being some of the boss introductions, and some of the dialogue can get very cheesy as well, such as the text in the introduction of the Mechaturtle boss fight. The game's edginess has been toned down a lot overtime however.
 * 13) Missed Potential: Instead of after completing one or more areas and returning to Misty Outskirts to unlock a new area to progress further into the story, the player instead unlocks a new area after each area that they complete, which kind of makes the game feel more like an obby rather than an adventure game instead.
 * 14) SECRET is a very poor villain that suffers from multiple flaws that can be seen here:
 * 15) * SECRET as a name overall is an awful name for a villain and could have had a better name as well.
 * 16) * SECRET is represented as your common and generic "Complete Powerful Darkness Lord", and has nothing special about his personality, as all that he cares about is taking over Misty Forest.
 * 17) * SECRET's design is extremely generic, as his design is just a pitch black Robloxian with red eyes.
 * 18) Some of the characters are useless to have, with most of their purposes being to just accompany the location that they can be found in, with the main location for these useless characters being the Misty Forest Outskirts, as there is a load of characters in the town that can't be seen anywhere else in the game, such as Ghost Girl, Nuke and Buke, and the Outskirts Trio.
 * 19) Players are unable to fully complete the game without the use of Robux, as two of the Statues require the player to buy two specific items with Robux, with these two Statues being The Gatekeeper's Toilet and Bob and Nob.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The thumbnail is kind of nice, as it shows five of the characters, Hallie, Moven, Turtle Man, Theo_owlman, and bluecap67, standing together with everyone except Turtle Man having uneasy faces, while the title of the game itself being shown at the top of the thumbnail with a nice font, along with a cool detail showing The Dark Heart covering the O in the word, Forest.
 * 2) There are multiple badges for the player to collect, with some of them being obtained by progressing throughout the game, and others being obtained by finding a secret, such as The Gatekeepers Room and The Mysterious Portal.
 * 3) The graphics look pretty nice, as there's multiple materials used in the game such as grass and sand, and there's a few small details added in the game as well such as trees being in plenty of locations in the forest, and atomic waste cans being scattered across the Sewer.
 * 4) The soundtrack is neat for the most part, and while there are a few songs in the soundtrack that don't fit very well, most of the songs do fit well with the levels that they belong too, whether if it's supposed to be relaxing, mysterious, or intense.
 * 5) As stated earlier, the game's edginess has been toned down a lot throughout time, and while the game is still a bit edgy, it's not as bad as how it once was before.
 * 6) As stated earlier, some portions of the game still get updated to be more entertaining, although they don't improve that much.
 * 7) There are multiple Statues for the player to collect, and a few of the Statues are decently hidden as well, such as The Gatekeeper.
 * 8) There's also a few secrets as well, such as an expired can of Bloxy Cola that will kill the player upon using it, and some of these secrets are also Star Statues as well.

Reception
The game was met with mixed reception and was praised for trying to be a dark-toned adventure but was criticized for its boring gameplay. The game currently has around 1,260 favorites, around 18,000 visits, and around 385 likes to around 50 dislikes.

Comments
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