Heads Will Roll: Downfall Windows game

Heads Will Roll: Downfall

1917 Studios | Valkyrie Initiative | Released Oct 2022

Heads Will Roll: Downfall is a combination of a tactical role-playing game and visual novel, in which you will assume the role of a medieval soldier. One of the thousands of faceless foot soldiers the English king sent to put down a rebellion in Scotland.

As an accidental participant in this war, the protagonist and the player will have to confront a variety of dangerous situations, meet good friends and deadly opponents, as well as make many difficult decisions along the way.

The combat system in Downfall is a reworked and improved version of Heads Will Roll. Turn-based tactical battles will challenge the player to carefully consider each action he takes. Physical attributes, weapon skills, fatigue, wounds, injuries, armor coverage, weapon type and length - each of these factors contributes to the outcome of any battle to one degree or another, giving any battle a greater tactical depth.

The story revolves around a young soldier who gets into war in an attempt to hide from justice for a crime that he did not commit. He has a deadly adventure in store for him and a chance to wash away the dirt off his reputation with blood so as to return home no longer a fugitive but a hero... Or remain missing on endless battlefields.

Who said there is no romance in war? You will have to choose between feelings and duty more than once while fighting not only for gold and but also for a beautiful girl who is determined to win your heart.

The loot found on the battlefield can be used to craft new items, such as poisons, medicines, pieces of equipment, and different kinds of crossbow bolts.

Dozens of authentic medieval weapons including swords, spears, axes, throwing daggers, and crossbows. All of them have distinct characteristics, attacks, and principles of work, based on certain characteristics of each character. There are strengths and weaknesses to each weapon that needs to be considered in order to win the battle.

Every action the player takes will affect his reputation with his brothers-in-arms and key characters. Get the respect of your comrades and they will help you more than once. Make a mess of your relationship with them and you'll be alone in the middle of an army.

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Happily Ever After DLC is out now + Patch 1.09

Jan 18 2024 News

The first DLC and the biggest patch for HWR: Reforged are out!

Hello, everyone!
We are very happy to announce that the first DLC for Heads Will Roll: Reforged — Happily Ever After — is out and is available for purchase!

The DLC brings a lot of new content including marriages with all the girls, new endings, expanded epilogues, new story events, boss fights, Steam achievements and much, much more! Be sure to check it out!

Complete feature list of the DLC can be viewed on its Steam page

Together with the DLC we are also releasing the much anticipated 1.09 patch that brings a ton of bugfixes, reworks and improvements to the game. It is by far the biggest patch the we have done.

1.09 FIxes

1. Equipped armor items can now be repaired without being taken off.
2. Fixed yet another instance of 'olivia_time_left not defined' bug that caused Olivia's dagger to spawn among unrelated loot and subsequently broke the game, forcing the player back to Olivia's room.
3. Fixed a rare bug that made the player base armor go below zero after unequipping a damaged armor item.
4. Fixed a bug with incorrect equipment loss interaction during the quicksands event.
5. Fixed an issue with incorrect visual hit chances for the spears' 'powerful thrust' attack.
6. Fixed another issue that allowed an enemy to remove the helmet in combat more than once and gain additional stats.
7. Fixed a series of bugs that made combat interface seometimes show incorrect images for player's equipped items.
8. Fixed a bug with incorrect stats reset during manual character creation.
9. Fixed a bunch of issues with system text being shown instead of player's squad members' proper names.
10. Fixed a bug that made repairing squad members' armor and equipment cost zero money.
11. Fixed an issue that made visiting a brothel give zero actual debuffs to the player despite the text saying that it did.
12. Fixed a series of bugs that happened when player attempted to craft poisons through unorthodox recipes.
13. Fixed an issue that prevented some types of poison from being handed over to the sergeant to complete his Hoggard quest.
14. Fixed an issue that prevented certain random events from occuring.
15. Fixed an incorrect interaction with the ornate cloak during the Man of God quest where it wouldn't disappear from inventory after being thrown.16. Fixed several minor bugs and localization issues.

1.09 Reworks and additions

1. Added a new ally class — crusaders. They are availalbe for hire in the Outremer chapter (after completing the St. Lazarus quest), have their own visual model and receive no heat debuffs.
2. Added more emotions to the girls' dialogue models (anger, happiness, eyerolls etc.).
3. Improved the accessability of the 'Chest' button.
4. Being in possession of the Justice Sword during the siege of Windsor would result in additional militia bands joining the player's cause.
5. Added a visual indicator to damaged items that are curerntly equipped (in inventory).
6. Axes' description now correctly mentions their improved armor damage chance.
7. Increased the number of enemies at Onar's and Olvier's farms.
8. Added knights and crossbowmen to the pool of Windsor's defenders. Manually completing the siege should be more challenging now.
9. Added a limit to the number of bolts available for purchase to prevent various money-making abuse mechanics.
10. Now after every retreat from Windsor the player will be allowed to loot the killed enemies' weapons and gear.
11. The end game results screen after dying in the French storyline now correctly shows the player's rank (mercenary instead of knight).
12. Increased the speed of durability loss of the mechanical crossbow.
13. Added a new tooltip that describes how the combat stances work and lists all the benefits of each.
14. Updated armor, weapons, trinkets and stats of the Scottish king's bodyguards making them more challenging.
15. Expanded the list of trinkets that can be used by the allies.
16. Increased the starting stats limit in the manual character creating up to 25.
17. Added a new scavenge event.
18. Brough back a softlock prevention mechanic in case the player lost all the weapons and ran out of time before the next story event.
19. Reworked the torture mask yet again — now it only provides bonus vitality for the enemies that had injuries at the moment of death.
20. The cultist leader in York now correcly gains fatigue with every action that he takes.
21. Added a few additional spawns for the Unknown toxin item.
22. The sergeant no longer requires the player to specifically craft him a bag. Now you can both return him the original loot bag that you took from him (or buy a new one of the same size) or craft one yourself.
23. Survival mode now has a limit for the enemies that can spawn with poisoned main weapon — only one per wave (bolts and daggers don't count).
24. Added a 'All to max' button to the manual character creation mode. It will automatically allocate all available points to level various stats.
25. Expanded the list of trinkets availalbe in the manual character generation mode.
26. If the player decides to rest instead of looting — all the members of his squad will too have a portion of their fatigue recovered.
27. Updated a decription of the Wanted poster item — it now mentions that the item only works around Cambrai area.
28. Increased the player's stat bonuses in the Story mode. Made some bosses easier on lower difficulties.
29. Added a switch for enabling\disabling community-made characters.
30. Brought back Northampton's celebratory dialogue after the player's successful capture of Windsor.

Like I said — this patch is the biggest one we've done yet and, together with the first DLC, it would hopefully provide enough new experiences to maybe convice you guys to spend some more time with Heads Will Roll.

The next big update to the game will include a rework of the squad mechanics as well as new visual models for the allies (that will properly depict their class and experience level). Together with that we are also hoping to include in the update an entirely new storyline that will span across several new chapters and take the player on a bunch of new adventures. An official announcement should be coming rather soon so stay tuned!

HWR's Discord: Discord.gg
1917 Studios