Next Up Hero

Next Up Hero is a top-down action RPG from Digital Continue that leans hard into a specific loop: you fight through procedurally generated dungeons, die repeatedly, and leave behind 'Echoes', ghostly replays of fallen players that other players (or you, in solo) can revive and use as passive allies. It is a crowd-sourced difficulty buffer dressed up as a roguelite, and the core idea is genuinely interesting on paper. You pick from a small roster of heroes, each built around a distinct weapon type, like the Mixtape-slinging Mixtape or the boomerang-hurling Brave, and then you push into increasingly punishing gauntlets with no health pickups to bail you out. The Echoes system is where the game wants to live or die. In theory, grinding out a well-populated dungeon with hundreds of ghost allies supporting your run feels chaotic and fun. In practice, solo play strips that fantasy down to almost nothing, and the game's design does not compensate with tighter encounter balance or more forgiving hero kits. Enemies can absolutely swarm you before you have time to read what killed you, and the lack of any health recovery mid-run means a single bad engagement can end things with no recourse. That is a valid design choice in a proper roguelite, but Next Up Hero's build progression and unlockables do not feel deep enough to reward the punishment the way something like Dead Cells or Hades does. The RPG layer here is thin. You unlock Audition slots to bring passive Legends into runs, and you can unlock new heroes, but the stat customization and build expression that RPG fans actually care about are largely absent. There is no satisfying 'this run I go full crit-speed berserker' moment. Each hero plays pretty much the same run to run, and after a few hours the lack of mechanical depth becomes the loudest thing in the room. For players who want character progression with weight behind it, or choices that compound into something interesting, this is not where you will find it. Multiplayer was clearly the intended lifeline. Dragging a friend into the chaos smooths over the balance problems and makes the Echo-revival loop feel like the cooperative spectacle it was designed to be. But the game released in 2018 with a small community, and those Mixed Steam reviews (55% positive at time of writing) suggest the playerbase never grew large enough to populate dungeons organically. Finding active co-op sessions now is its own challenge. Next Up Hero has a charming Saturday-morning-cartoon visual style and a core idea that deserved more development time. If you are a genre completionist or want something short and arcade-punchy with a friend on call, there is a thin but real slice of fun here. But if you are coming in hoping for RPG depth, meaningful build variety, or a narrative that rewards attention, you will hit the ceiling fast and wonder what the game could have been with another year in the oven.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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