RISC OS Heretic remaster out now

We are pleased to announce that following on from the release of Hexen a few months ago, we are now offering its companion game Heretic in a newly revised and polished 2024 edition for modern (and older) RISC OS computers.

Highlights of the new port include a new lighting model that aims to faithfully reproduce the look of the original game, at modern high resolutions, and the ability to use high quality soundtrack recordings to make the game look and sound better than ever before.

Heretic tells the story of an elf who sees his religion twisted by nefarious powers into a war-mongering force for evil. Turning his back, he is branded an outcast, a Heretic. Armed only with his magical staff, he sets out for the cursed city where D’Sparil, his nemesis, lies in wait.

The game plays as an action-packed, fantasy adventure through the city and beyond, as the elf fights his enemies in first person (akin to Doom) using a variety of weapons and magic. Unlike Doom, Heretic features an inventory of items and spells, which can be used to do many things – from torches to light your way, to potions, and magic to allow you to fly or transform your enemies.

Heretic is accompanied by its open source Blasphemer re-imagining. Blasphemer includes a full set of 30+ levels, all newly designed with completely fresh weapons, items, graphics, sound and music. Essentially it is a second complete game, simply built on the fundamental gameplay of Heretic.

The 2024 edition supports computers from (Virtual) RiscPC upwards to modern systems like Pi and Pinebook Pro, by way of iMX6 and Titanium.
Graphical resolutions up to 8K are supported (really!) including widescreen. Controls via keyboard, mouse and joystick/joypad are supported.

The games offer many, many hours of entertainment, and look and sound great.

You can obtain Heretic on !Store now, and you’ll get a discount against Hexen included.

We’d like to thank original author Charles Ferguson (Gerph) for his efforts in revitalising and revamping the game for a modern audience. The game plays beautifully, and we hope everyone has loads of fun with it.

Heretic’s a lot of fun, and mostly I think the update has been worth it – like Hexen it’s got the high resolution (higher, if you need it) and the same supported systems.

If anyone is interested in the games, and some stuff about my updating them, I’m giving a presentation to the WROCC on May 1st over Zoom. I’ll be talking about the origins of my work on them, back in the late 90s, and then about the current games.