Hero or Villain: Genesis

Hosted Games

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this game

Become the greatest hero or villain that the world has ever known! Balance the challenges of leading a normal life, while attempting to defeat evil…or wreak havoc on the world.

Hero or Villain: Genesis is a 350,000 word interactive novel by Adrao, where your choices control the story. The game is text-based, with artwork to help set the scene. Will you hunt down villains to the last corner of the planet, join a group of fellow heroes (or villains!), defeat New York's criminal mastermind, or even replace him?

• Choose from dozens of powers. You can pounce on your enemies with the power of your fists, strike them down with hellfire, take control of their minds, dodge their attacks with your super-speed, or rewind time to learn from your mistakes.
• Build your own gadgets, improving the quality of your armor or the weapons mounted on it.
• Make alliances with other heroes, and attempt to find a sidekick that works with you.
• Play as male, female, or non-binary, and romance many of the other characters!
• Several illustrations to enhance your experience.
• Many different game paths, with over two dozen different endings.
• Several difficulty settings. Play as a mighty invincible hero, or just somebody only slightly more powerful than an average human.

Ratings and reviews

Bad writing. VERY unnatural dialogue. It felt like English was not the author's first language. Dialogue is very stunted and the writing has a serious case of "telling, not showing." There were a lot of choices and cool superpower selection in the beginning, but it felt like the author was just trying to cram in as many choices as possible without working hard on the execution, meaning that choices were there but they were shallow, meaningless, and written awkwardly. Good ideas, bad execution.

The writing is pretty bad. Awkward, wordy, overly lengthy, and unnatural dialogue is the first thing that stuck out to me, making it hard to get any emotional attachment to the characters, positive or negative, right off the bat. The general story and descriptions lack a flow and feel all over the place. I feel that the writing lacks it's own distinct voice. The power mechanics in the game are honestly very cool but don't make up for the writing.

I really enjoy checking out all the different options and seeing where they end up. However, I must agree, I think that it should be rewritten with the aid of someone who has a lot more experience with worldly dialects. Certain dialogue and scenes could be rewritten to either flow better or make a lot more sense. Finally, I believe it could be expanded upon greatly. I was playing through the whole story about an hour ago, and found that some choices lack any continuity later on, or are one-offs.

What’s new

You can now choose a font in the Settings menu. Switch to Helvetica for crisp sans-serif text, or try the OpenDyslexic font, designed against some common symptoms of dyslexia. If you enjoy "Hero or Villain: Genesis", please leave us a written review. It really helps!