Hero Academy

The game is turn-based and focuses on strategy, which required players to carefully plan out each step of their turn. Each player had one or many crystals and the objective was to be the first player to either eliminate all of the other player's units or destroy the other player's crystal(s). Each turn granted players five moves in the game. Units were played from a hand which was replenished at the end of each round with random new units. In addition to units, a player's hand could also contain spells and healing potions as well as weapons and armor which could be equipped to units.

The game contained six factions known as Heroic Teams:

Robot Entertainment announced Hero Academy for the iOS platform in November 2011. The company was founded by Tony Goodman and its first employees were predominantly taken from the recently bankrupt Ensemble Studios, a studio that had previously worked on strategy games including the Age of Empires series and Halo Wars. The company's first mobile game, Hero Academy, was released on January 11, 2012, with an adware version offered for free or an ad-free version available for purchase. At the time of the release, additional downloadable content was made available for purchase including extra avatars, heroic teams, and visual and animation style changes.

The purchasable content was primarily visual cosmetic changes and it did not offer better units or items to give a player an advantage. In addition to the cosmetic offerings, the Dark Elves faction included a new set of skills which Ars Technica writer Andrew Webster called "different but not necessarily stronger" and likened to purchasing an expansion pack.

The game received predominantly positive reviews upon release, garnering a 77% rating on the review aggregation website Metacritic. Ars Technica reviewer Andrew Webster wrote that the gameplay was simple compared to other strategy games which made it easy to learn the rules, and that offered enough depth to make each quick round satisfying. Webster also noted that the game was best played with friends rather than anonymous players since this would ensure turns would finish without delay.

During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Hero Academy with "Mobile Game of the Year".