Back at the end of March, Zenimax Asia and Tango Gameworks released Hero Dice, an online board game and hero battler. However despite only releasing three months ago, the game will be closing down at the end of August.
Tango Gameworks is largely known for their popular horror games such as The Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo. Hero Dice was a break from form for the developer, and it appears their gamble didn’t pay off.
According to a translation of a Famitsu article by VGC, the team at Tango Gameworks wants to break free of their “Survival horror” image, despite how well they’ve performed in the past with that type of game.
Tango Gameworks founder Shinji Mikami had this to say about the closure of the game and what this means for the company’s future.
“I hope to eventually change the image that Tango Gameworks currently has… At the moment, we are still seen as a studio that specializes only in survival horror.”
“Of course, it’s nice to have fans think of us as a studio with a reputation for developing survival horror games. But we also want to be viewed as a studio that can create a wider variety of games. We will be releasing more and more new games in the future, starting with Ghostwire: Tokyo, so please give us your support.”
Shinji Mikami via Famitsu (Translation: VGC)
The closure of Hero Dice and other games like it highlights one of the biggest pitfalls of microtransactions. When the game service eventually ends, you’re usually left with nothing. It’s not like self-contained games (especially if you own a physical copy!) where no matter what happens no one can take away your copy of Banjo-Kazooie on the Nintendo 64. When a mobile game goes poof, so does all of your investment into it.
