For writers and streamers

Press kit

Everything you need to write about a very small hero in a very thin strip, in one place, with no form to fill in.

Download the press kit (.zip)support@heroesofidleville.com

At a glance

The fact sheet

Heroes of Idleville is a tiny MMO that lives at the edge of your screen: a pixel hero adventures in a 40-pixel strip while you work.

The line to quote. Take it as it is.
Game
Heroes of Idleville
Developer and publisher
AnanasCharles
Status
Early Access, playable now (v0.25.6)
Platforms
Windows (zip), Linux (AppImage and tar.gz), Android (APK), browser preview
Price
Free to play. Not pay to win: power comes from playing, and anything sold later will be cosmetic.
Genre
Idle MMORPG, a desktop game that lives in a strip at the screen's edge
Technology
Godot 4 client, own game servers. Online only; the game updates itself.
Language
English
Website
https://heroesofidleville.com
itch.io
ananascharles.itch.io/heroes-of-idleville
Discord
discord.gg/Gb8jHEBefV
Press contact
support@heroesofidleville.com

In words

Describing it

In a few lines

A tiny MMO at the edge of your screen. Your pixel hero and their party fight, gather and loot in a 40-pixel strip while you work. Click them for the full RPG: 21 skills to 99, gems, dungeons, guilds, chat and world raids with everyone else online. Free.

The longer version

Heroes of Idleville is an idle MMORPG that lives in a see-through strip along the top or bottom of your screen. Your hero and up to two followers walk the road, take on goblins, geese and worse, chop, mine and fish, all on their own, while you write that report. Nothing blinks for attention. Turn on Reserve space and your other windows make room for it, like a taskbar for a very brave person.

Click your hero and the panel opens: new gear, gems to socket, 21 skills creeping towards 99, a Journal, a Map, a town. Battles run on an active-time clock, right there in the strip: your hero and two of ten followers against packs of up to five, with 137 gems that teach skills and spells. Gathering and crafting carry on for up to a day while the game is closed, so the hero has usually been busy by the time you're back.

And it's online. Everyone's heroes share one world, with chat, guilds of up to twenty, a player market, leaderboards and world raids that scale to whoever turns up, all the way to Vantablack Vesper: three parties, nine heroes, one colossal and extremely dark boss who does not care about your deadline. It is free to play and not pay to win, and it's in Early Access, so what players say really does change what gets built next.

What's in it

Features

  • A whole world, forty pixels tall

    The strip sits at the top or bottom edge, never pops up on its own, hides from the tray, and can reserve its space like a taskbar.

  • 21 skills to 99

    Gathering and crafting keep going for up to a day while the game is closed.

  • Active-time party battles

    Your hero and up to two of ten followers against packs of up to five, on a turn-gauge clock.

  • 137 gems

    Every skill and spell comes from a gem socketed in your gear: link them, support them, master them.

  • 19 zones, 227 enemies

    Dungeons with a Heroic mode, delves and an endless tower, with bosses who bring friends.

  • 1,400+ items

    Random affixes, 53 uniques and 36 sets, 25 pets and a house to furnish.

  • One shared world

    Chat, whispers, guilds of up to twenty, a player market, leaderboards and a town square full of other heroes.

  • Vantablack Vesper

    The Uber raid: three parties, nine heroes, one colossal and extremely dark boss. Hit Brace! in time.

See it

Trailer and screenshots

Real captures of the game, with its own windows and art, at 1920 × 1080. Click one to open it; each has a download link under it.

A new trailer is on its way

It's being shot again on the current version, with the new UI and the old goose. It will live here, on YouTube and as an MP4 to download. The screenshots below are the real thing in the meantime.

Take them

Logos and art

Transparent PNGs, drawn in the game's own pixels. Please don't smooth them: they look best at whole-number sizes.

  • Heroes of Idleville cover artCover art630 × 500: the title over a meadow, with a gooseDownload PNG
  • Heroes of Idleville share cardShare card1200 × 630: the logo and the taglineDownload PNG

Straight talk

About the maker, and AI

Heroes of Idleville is developed by one person, Ananas, with AI assistance, and he'd rather you heard it from him. Ananas built the core of the game and its mechanics, and he designs it, directs it, play-tests it and makes every decision. AI coding agents (Claude) help with the code (client, server, website and Discord bot), including performance work and quick prototyping, and with text such as items, quests, dialogue and patch notes. Ananas writes the travel text, the funny tooltips and some item names himself.

The sprites are rendered from scripts: Blender and Python code that Claude helps write builds and renders each pixel sprite. Reference art for them is made with an AI image generator (ChatGPT), then turned into the game's art by those scripts over several iterations; the generator's pictures are references, not game files. Some of the art, and all of the art direction, is Ananas's own.

Any sound or music is synthesised from code, with no samples and no AI audio models. The fonts, Cinzel and Alegreya, are by their designers under the SIL Open Font License. Nothing in the game calls an AI while it runs, and the goose is entirely its own fault.

Good news

Streaming and videos

You may stream, record and monetise Heroes of Idleville, with no need to ask. Footage, screenshots and the logo in this kit are yours to use when you write about the game.

Say hello

Contact

One monitored inbox, answered by a human: support@heroesofidleville.com. Or find us on Discord.

Download the press kit (.zip)