Heroes of Might and Magic fans should perk up and take a look at Heroes of Gaia, which is beginning its closed beta on August 17 next Monday. Here's an overview of the game.

Summary

Heroes of Gaia is a free browser game set in a world of swords, elves and magic. Players choose from four races: Humans, Elf, Orc or Undead as they race to build their Castles, amass armies, forge alliances and lead their Heroes on epic adventures to slay fearful creatures of the land. 

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Overview

Heroes of Gaia may seem a lot like Heroes of Might and Magic at first glance but the differences are easily felt when you see how the formula is taken further as gameplay is fused with the dynamics of an online community. What comes out of this is a solid game with beautiful visuals, a full online community feature set along with the flexibility and ease of a browser game.

The ease of playing Heroes of Gaia is made apparently clear when you try to start playing the game. Typically, players can go from visiting the official website for the first time to playing it in less than one minute, making it a seamless and painless process. You do not have to pay for anything to play the game, so the game being free and also quick to start is a tremendous plus.

The first thing that strikes you when you see your Castle is that this is a very good looking game. The art is fantastic and very few browser games, if any, have such pleasing visuals. PC gaming veterans will instantly recognize this as the Castle menu where the player acquires resources, summons Heroes, build units for war and perform other more boring domestic affairs. 

In your Castle, there are five critical resources: Wood, Lumber, Ore, Sulphur and Crystal. All of these are needed to construct buildings or train units, and they increase at an hourly rate inside the game. By gaining experience and leveling up, your resource output will increase gradually so you can eventually build a formidable fortress and assemble a massive army.

For now though, you will end up with one Hero and a handful of units after completing the beginner tutorial. You can now go out and beat up some beasties.

The world map will instantly strike a nostalgic chord with longtime PC gamers, and still delight new players with its pleasant graphics. You can arrange for your Hero to head out of the Castle to attack monsters, get resources, trigger special events and engage in PK. Due to it being an online game, the Hero’s journey outwards is measured in time, and the Hero must necessarily return to the Castle after every task. Rumors are that Snail Game are planning to allow the Hero to be able to stay outside the Castle, which makes it even more like Heroes of Might and Magic.

You can choose to automate or manually control the battles in Heroes of Gaia. The option to automate battles is a big plus because of its nature as a browser game. Players need not constantly pay attention to the game and can leave it to run on another window while they chat or work. All battles must complete in less than 3 minutes, which is another plus in terms of how quick and accessible this game is. The graphics and animation in the battle are also outstanding, and very quickly you forget that this is really just a browser game. 

Heroes of Gaia is leading the way for browser games of the future. In a time where most browser games are mostly text-based, offer rudimentary graphics or are just casual games, Heroes of Gaia is a full-fledged MMORPG that has been technically reengineered for the browser. Because of this technological innovation and the choice of the free-to-play revenue model, it would have taken you less time to try it out than the time you spent reading this article.