Designing a Heroes Game
Hello, fellow heroes!
First things first — for the last couple of days since the announcement, we’ve been drowned in the amount of love and credit you gave us. We appreciate it greatly and will work to enhance that.
When we set out to make a Heroes of Might and Magic game, we knew we had big boots to fill. Today we’ll give you a brief overview of our approach to Olden Era’s design. We’ve already mentioned some of these ideas during interviews and Q&As, but it’s nice to have things organized. (If only there was a sorting button for thoughts — like there is for artifacts in Olden Era!)
Why us?
Unfrozen was founded in 2016. Our previous game, Iratus: Lord of the Dead, sold over 500,000 copies. This made us confident in our ability to create a solid tactical turn-based game with elements of strategy/management/RPG and try something bigger.
Why HoMM?
Because we’re fans!
We’ve been playing Heroes for half our lives. We wanted to see a new installment just as much as you. And as the saying goes, when you want something done right, do it yourself. At the time it didn’t seem like a new HoMM game was coming, so in 2020, we made a demo and approached Ubisoft, who in 2021 accepted our vision and gave the project a go. You can imagine how thrilled we were.
Design Pillar #1: Evolution, not Revolution
New ideas are great. No game should simply repeat what came before.
But we feel that when working with a legend like HoMM — a franchise that’s been on a hiatus for a while — the first and foremost goal is to ensure a core that is faithful to the series’ DNA. So we started with analyzing the systems of our own favourites from the franchise (namely H3, 5, and to some extent 2) and thinking about how we could make them deeper while preserving the core.
Artifacts? Let’s keep the classic system but add flexible sets to experiment with. Battles? Welcome back, traditional hexagonal grid — but let’s also add a lot of active unit abilities to make choices in battle deeper and more engaging. Hero level-ups? Same old, except skills now have subskills to tune your build.
We feel that we ended up with a game that is familiar, but fresh. Which has been our goal all along!
Design Pillar #2: Mix of Old and New
We take this same approach on all levels. The factions are a mix of old classics (Temple, Necropolis, Dungeon to an extent) and new ideas (Hive and more). The visuals are rendered in full 3D, but the perspective is familiar. The story takes place in the original world of Enroth, but the continent we’ll visit, Jadame, has only ever been explored by Might and Magic games (a separate franchise) and not Heroes, giving us some creative freedom.
Hell, you’ll even see this approach on the adventure map! Some structures, like Learning Stones and Dragon Utopias, pay clear homage to older installments in the series. Others are completely new, both in design and function.
Again: faithful, familiar, and fresh are the three Fs we’re going after. (The “for crying out loud, who pushed this to prod?!” was an unintentional F and only happened once, we swear.)
Design Pillar #3: Communication with the Community
It’s not hard to communicate with the community when you’re fans yourselves — but we also strongly believe in checking our opinions with people outside the studio. Before the announcement, we conducted some in-depth interviews with various types of HoMM players: streamers, competitive players, and showpeople. We gauged what features they needed, what they loved most about the existing HoMM games and what they were maybe frustrated with.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, we intend to stay in touch with you all for the same reason. Your feedback is heard! (Wait, is that another F?)
But Do You Have Anything, Like, New New?
Well, maybe not “new new”, but here are the features that we feel make Olden Era distinct from previous HoMM games:
…Okay, look. When you dive into the minutiae — as we intend to in these devlogs while we all wait for the EA launch in Q2 2025 — there are a lot of new features and mechanics (and don’t get us started on QoL!). But we feel that they stand firmly on the triple-F foundation.
A Heroes of Might and Magic game should feel like a Heroes of Might and Magic game first and foremost — and build on top of that.
It’s impossible to recreate the past, those long nights playing a HoMM game with your father, sibling, or friend for the first time. Nor should we do it, really. But we can remember and respect this warm feeling of nostalgia and make sure the Olden Era remains faithful to the core elements of the series that made it possible.
In the nearest future, we’re going to tell you much more about our specific choices, from the visual style to separate features, systems, and lore and ask for your feedback, so stay tuned. And thank you for the very warm reception of the announcement! We're so thrilled to finally be able to share it with the community!
Follow news and updates:
First things first — for the last couple of days since the announcement, we’ve been drowned in the amount of love and credit you gave us. We appreciate it greatly and will work to enhance that.
When we set out to make a Heroes of Might and Magic game, we knew we had big boots to fill. Today we’ll give you a brief overview of our approach to Olden Era’s design. We’ve already mentioned some of these ideas during interviews and Q&As, but it’s nice to have things organized. (If only there was a sorting button for thoughts — like there is for artifacts in Olden Era!)
Why us?
Unfrozen was founded in 2016. Our previous game, Iratus: Lord of the Dead, sold over 500,000 copies. This made us confident in our ability to create a solid tactical turn-based game with elements of strategy/management/RPG and try something bigger.
Why HoMM?
Because we’re fans!
We’ve been playing Heroes for half our lives. We wanted to see a new installment just as much as you. And as the saying goes, when you want something done right, do it yourself. At the time it didn’t seem like a new HoMM game was coming, so in 2020, we made a demo and approached Ubisoft, who in 2021 accepted our vision and gave the project a go. You can imagine how thrilled we were.
Design Pillar #1: Evolution, not Revolution
New ideas are great. No game should simply repeat what came before.
But we feel that when working with a legend like HoMM — a franchise that’s been on a hiatus for a while — the first and foremost goal is to ensure a core that is faithful to the series’ DNA. So we started with analyzing the systems of our own favourites from the franchise (namely H3, 5, and to some extent 2) and thinking about how we could make them deeper while preserving the core.
Artifacts? Let’s keep the classic system but add flexible sets to experiment with. Battles? Welcome back, traditional hexagonal grid — but let’s also add a lot of active unit abilities to make choices in battle deeper and more engaging. Hero level-ups? Same old, except skills now have subskills to tune your build.
We feel that we ended up with a game that is familiar, but fresh. Which has been our goal all along!
Design Pillar #2: Mix of Old and New
We take this same approach on all levels. The factions are a mix of old classics (Temple, Necropolis, Dungeon to an extent) and new ideas (Hive and more). The visuals are rendered in full 3D, but the perspective is familiar. The story takes place in the original world of Enroth, but the continent we’ll visit, Jadame, has only ever been explored by Might and Magic games (a separate franchise) and not Heroes, giving us some creative freedom.
Hell, you’ll even see this approach on the adventure map! Some structures, like Learning Stones and Dragon Utopias, pay clear homage to older installments in the series. Others are completely new, both in design and function.
Again: faithful, familiar, and fresh are the three Fs we’re going after. (The “for crying out loud, who pushed this to prod?!” was an unintentional F and only happened once, we swear.)
Design Pillar #3: Communication with the Community
It’s not hard to communicate with the community when you’re fans yourselves — but we also strongly believe in checking our opinions with people outside the studio. Before the announcement, we conducted some in-depth interviews with various types of HoMM players: streamers, competitive players, and showpeople. We gauged what features they needed, what they loved most about the existing HoMM games and what they were maybe frustrated with.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, we intend to stay in touch with you all for the same reason. Your feedback is heard! (Wait, is that another F?)
But Do You Have Anything, Like, New New?
Well, maybe not “new new”, but here are the features that we feel make Olden Era distinct from previous HoMM games:
- A stronger focus on making factions feel distinct. New “Faction Laws” are perk trees tied to your starting faction. So even if you conquer more castles, change the main hero and hire neutral troops, your beginner choice of faction will matter until the end.
- Stronger gameplay themes within factions as well. Doesn’t mean you’ll have to go “pure” with one faction, but their troops will synergize.
- A non-linear campaign! It’s structured somewhat differently from previous games as well, stay tuned for more.
- Online ladder with matchmaking and player profiles. Just press a button and dive in.
- A new fast-paced Arena mode, basically a draft for Heroes. A match in Arena takes like 10-15 minutes.
- Features requested by the competitive community: replays and observer mode for casting.
- New win conditions.
- New Grail system that makes it actually buildable.
- Balancing based on statistics and actual numerical data.
- A new system of learning spells that alleviates its random core for a price.
- …And more…
…Okay, look. When you dive into the minutiae — as we intend to in these devlogs while we all wait for the EA launch in Q2 2025 — there are a lot of new features and mechanics (and don’t get us started on QoL!). But we feel that they stand firmly on the triple-F foundation.
A Heroes of Might and Magic game should feel like a Heroes of Might and Magic game first and foremost — and build on top of that.
It’s impossible to recreate the past, those long nights playing a HoMM game with your father, sibling, or friend for the first time. Nor should we do it, really. But we can remember and respect this warm feeling of nostalgia and make sure the Olden Era remains faithful to the core elements of the series that made it possible.
In the nearest future, we’re going to tell you much more about our specific choices, from the visual style to separate features, systems, and lore and ask for your feedback, so stay tuned. And thank you for the very warm reception of the announcement! We're so thrilled to finally be able to share it with the community!
Follow news and updates: