Heroki blends touch controls with a vibrant world

Picomy Games' action adventure title Heroki combines quick, easy to use touch controls with eye-catching visuals and charming characters, as demonstrated by our hands-on time with the game at PAX Prime 2013.

Heroki features a visual style inspired by Japanese art, manga and games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. During the demo, we were able to control the game's titular, flying character by dragging one finger across the iPad. Heroki switches directions quickly, but has a slight recovery time, which made navigating him through the game's colorful environments a challenge. The areas we explored were largely based on our flying ability, and required moving around obstacles mid-air.

Enemies were easy for us to dispatch by charging up his swipe attack or dropping items such as crates. Heroki can also use different weapons. After finding a boomerang, we were able to reach far off enemies by sending it flying with a single swipe.

The game features eight different worlds for players to explore, and each contains a new ability that helps players progress. We spent most of our time exploring a jungle-like world and collecting items called emeralds to unlock new levels. Each new area also contains several secrets or items to find. While scouting out new levels, we collected letters that spell out "Heroki," similar to those found in old Donkey Kong games.

Picomy is aiming to release Heroki on iOS by the holidays.