Herculean Effort Productions

Herculean Effort Productions (often abbreviated to HEP) is an adventure game development duo in the USA, founded by brothers Ian and Greg Schlaepfer. Of the two, Ian Schlaepfer is primarily responsible for the graphics and storyline and Greg for music and AGS scripting. Their games are considered to be of very high quality for amateur efforts,^[1] and their releases Apprentice and Apprentice II: The Knight's Move have won numerous amateur adventure game awards.^[2] Herculean Effort draws their inspiration from the classic LucasArts adventure games. Their name humorously refers to the difficulty of creating adventure games, their motto being "it's not easy being the best".^[3]

Their game Apprentice is mentioned as a good example of a game created with Adventure Game Studio in the book Gaming Hacks published by O'Reilly Media.^[4]

The Games

Apprentice

Main article of the game Apprentice.

Apprentice 3: Checkmate!

Not much is yet known of this episode at the moment.

The Find

Some information on this apparently discontinued game can be found at the old HEP website.

Super Jazz Man

Announced at Adventure Europe's 2005 Online Conference, Super Jazz Man was released on December 21, 2006. Stevie Jack Marcell is Super Jazz Man who must save his kitten.^[5] The trailer can be viewed on YouTube.com.

The Blackwell Legacy

Ian announced on the HEP news section ^[6] that he will be doing the sprite art for The Blackwell Legacy, the new name for Bestowers of Eternity.