It’s rare these days to come across a game like Hero Academy. Forget the fantastic artwork and animations, the deep-rooted strategy, and the disgusting amount of polish and detail put in by the developers. Hero Academy stands out because it avoids the typical freemium artificial game progression roadblocks, formulaic addictive hooks, and excessive social spam, and retains gamers simply by giving them a fantastic way to spend their precious time. Sure, I’ve come across some amazing iOS games in the past, games that have been on my phone for over a year now, but nothing quite like this. Nothing that legitimately competes for my time when it comes to PC/Console gaming, nothing that makes me want to play every day simply because I flat out enjoy it, and nothing that makes me eager to spend money in the app for the sheer hope that my minimal cash contributions will fuel more updates, races, and features.

Watch out! He's got bath salts!

Naturally, when Hero Academy was first put in front of my face, I was a tad skeptical. Freemium plus hard-core multiplayer-only strategy game seemed iffy to say the least. My initial thought being that those willing to shell out cash will have an obvious advantage over those who don’t. Paying for power has been a hot topic in the gaming world since the takeover of the freemium model.  Nothing can get the super-vocal gaming minority going more than knowing that the hard working freeloader is being taken advantage of by their lazy paying for power opponent. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no issues paying for applications, but I typically have issues with games artificially forcing me to make purchases to either compete or advance in my game.

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