A downloadable game for Windows


What is it?

A crossover between a city builder and a card game, set in a Steampunk universe where smart urban development is key to survival.

What's cool about it?

Helios is a relaxing, yet increasingly challenging game that offers you:

  • Innovative genre-mix merging a city builder with a card game.
  • Accessible gameplay that is easy to learn, but hard to master.
  • Motivating endless mode with a tight feedback loop where time flies by.
  • Steampunk visuals that allows building a living breathing piece of art.
  • Powerful music that perfectly underlines every single moment.

When can I get it?

The game is out now for free. We simply love putting out our work to you and maybe hear back what you liked and what you didn't. So feel free to get in touch! 

Who's behind it?


We are STUDIO403. A Berlin-based student team that has previously released a well-received visual novel called A Scholar's Tale.

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 4.1 out of 5 stars
(16 total ratings)
AuthorOliver Leins
GenreStrategy, Card Game, Puzzle
Tags3D, Atmospheric, Cute, Fantasy, Relaxing, Singleplayer, Top-Down

Download

Download
Helios.zip 503 MB

Development log

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Comments

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Seems almost identical to Islanders, which is okay. The main differences seem to be theming, art style, and not being allowed to save the game and come back later mid-run.  That last difference is pretty annoying and doesn't seem, to me, to add anything to the game, especially since actually playing out an entire run would take ages.

That's right, Islanders was the main source of inspiration for this project. Given that we only had 8 weeks, we decided against implementing a save system. We were well aware though, that this would be annoying. I hope you had a good time nonetheless :)

Hey i just found your game and really enjoyed it, im looking forward to play it some more^^ I hope youre having a great day:)

(+1)

Well thank you for the nice message! Have a great time playing :)

(1 edit)

game crash after few sconds when i start a new game...I don´t know why.

(+1)

This is a really fun game! There are some serious issues that need addressing, though.

1. Game speed is seriously laggy.

2. Navigating is difficult due to the above-mentioned problem as well as the fact that the mouse controls seem to be on a hair trigger.

3. It's way hard to figure out from looking where a building can and can't go, as well as calculating bonuses. 

Maybe using simpler graphics would help? Employing a shortcut to enable a top-down view would also be handy. Also adding some visual references to show the exact AOE cliffs and hills have.

(+1)

Hi srose399,

Thanks for taking the time to play Helios and for your feedback. As mentioned in the devlogs, this is a student project and most members of the team now work on other games by now. So unfortunately, we won't get to patch the game in the future. Nonetheless, we hope you enjoyed playing it even though the points you criticized are absolutely on point :)

Have a great day!

i really liked it. It looks beautyfull and i really like the mechanics 

We‘re happy to hear that :)

Game won't run. Returns error: "DX12 is not supported on your system. Try running without the -dx12 or -d3d12 commend line argument."


Issue: I don't have any DX12 specific command-line arguments active, and no way to direct the game to not look for it.


The preview graphics look pretty. I'd really like to be able to try this game out but as it stands it cannot be run.

Deleted 5 years ago
(1 edit)

Hi kaeroku,

We have adjusted some settings in the game and believe that this will fix your issue. The changes will be included in the next early access build next Monday.

We hope you'll soon be able to play Helios.

Have a great weekend!