Superhero City

Superhero City is an online role-playing game developed by the Klicknation Corporation and released on June 16, 2009; it is available for playing through Facebook, and is noted as the company's flagship game.

You take on the role of a superhero, initially tutored by the retired-but-still-powerful Shadow Knight, but eventually you make your mark on the world through completion of missions, battling super-villains, and forming teams with (or creating rivalries with) fellow superheroes. By completing missions in various cities across the world, you gain Experience Points to become stronger, Skill Points to improve your character's stats, and Merit Points to purchase costume equipment or more powerful abilities to defeat the tougher heroes or villains you come across in game-play.

Completing missions and gaining victory in fights allows you to earn money, which you can then use to buy equipment and/or skills as necessary. Also, you can choose particular fields of employment for your character to earn money each hour, though it costs in-game cash to go to the higher-paying jobs--but the more expensive the employment training for the particular field, the higher the hourly payout from the job.

As with other online games such as Mafia Wars and FarmVille, Superhero City encourages player networking in order to boost your hero's stats, most especially attack and defense strength and agility; essentially, the more playing allies you have, the stronger you become. You can also exchange gifts with your fellow team players, ranging from replenishing items to special mission-specific items.

You start out playing missions in Manhattan, but as you gain experience you can move on to other cities, including Athens, Tokyo, New Delhi, Toronto, the lost city of Atlantis, and eventually the mysterious Wretched Hive known as Supervillain City. Along the way, you meet various allies, develop a wide cross-section of foes, and uncover a hidden plot in an underlying Story Arc. Most recently, a new city has been added to the mission roster, named "Sins' City" in which you must fight against an invasion of the city orchestrated by a group of villains known as the Lords of Sin.

Superhero City is free to play, though all players have the option of using real-world money to purchase Merit Points for new abilities or special avatar costume items. Otherwise, you gain one Merit Point for each level-up (though more can be gained in-game by fulfilling special requirements).

Bears no relation to this Superhero City.

Tropes used in Superhero City include:

• All Bikers Are Hells Angels: Heavy Metal fits the mold, having Badass Long Hair and a Badass Longcoat to go with his Cool Bike.
• Ambiguously Evil: Dr. Reginald Fulkerth. He claims that his experiments are for the betterment of the city, but some of his aside comments are, at best, suspect. Then he turns out to be the Big Bad of the Supervillain City missions.
• Arch Enemy: Dr. Fulkerth to Shadow Knight. Hardwire is (arguably) this for your character, since he's the very first super-villain you fight during your initial training with Shadow Knight.
• Atlantis: This is one of the stages where you have to come and do battle with the Hyperboreans.
• Badass Biker: Heavy Metal.
• Badass Boast: Several examples abound. In the Nexus stage, for example, Karradine (one of the opponents in the Nexus Fight Night tournament) introduces himself thus:

So, young hero, you wish to challenge Karradine, the ultimate martial artist. My knowledge spans several galaxies and tonight, you will feel the pain from 12 worlds.

• Badass in a Nice Suit: The Suit wears a white tuxedo which gives him superpowers. Meanwhile, the Kingpin wears a normal brown suit with a hat.
• Badass in Distress: Heroic ally Sunstone, during the Cairo missions.
• Badass Santa: During the annual Christmas missions, jolly old Father Christmas himself teams up with you to stop the machinations of the villain Krampus, who's delivering mystical lumps of coal in random places throughout Manhattan.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The Lords of Sin.
• Boss Battle: Every city has one.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The more real-world money you are willing to spend, the more Merit Points you can acquire for limited-edition costume pieces or abilities.
• Brought to You by The Letter "S": Shadow Knight wears a stylized "S" on his belt buckle.
• The Cape (trope): This is the role that you, and all superheroes in-game, portray. Both the Kingpin and Trixie expressedly label you this way (the former in a derogatory manner when you defeat him, the latter while flirting with you in Dr. Fulkerth's item store).
• Captain Ersatz: Many Merit Abilities feature parodies, homages, and general shout-outs to other famous superheroes, villains, video game characters, their iconic equipment, and abilities. If there's a character from Marvel, DC, Darkhorse Comics, or any popular movie or video game series, there's going to be an Ersatz of them on an ability card sooner or later.
  • Even the game's story itself features a few of them. Notably, the "Traveler", who helps save the universe with the ability to manipulate time and space at his command, and an anthropologist named Henry Jones.
• Chest Insignia: Combined with Costume Porn and Virtual Paper Doll, this is an option for your character avatar. Among the insignias your avatar can wear are a triangular skull-themed item which serves as a nod to The Phantom, differently-colored spider-outlines in a nod to Spider-Man, and science-themed insignias. Also see Wearing a Flag on Your Head below.
• City of Adventure: To date, there are twelve: Manhattan, Athens, Las Vegas, Tokyo, New Delhi, Cairo, Midgard, Atlantis, Nexus (a mission tier set in space), Washington D.C., Toronto, and Supervillain City. There are four additional mission tiers, namely "Inferno," a set of prequel missions prior to Supervillain City, "Sins' City," where monsters led by the Lords of Sin have overrun Superhero City, and two Boss Rush tiers named Elite Bosses and Elite Bosses 2.
• Clothes Make the Superman: The Suit's tuxedo is designed with state-of-the-art technology that allow for various superhuman feats.
  • Also played straight and subverted at the same time with the player character. Equipment which you buy in the game's store will significantly increase or decrease your stats, hence affecting the outcome of your fights, but the costume equipment you see on your hero's avatar (which you purchase in a separate store from the stats-equipment) have no effect on game-play.
• Costume Porn: Hand-in-hand with Virtual Paper Doll. The game's avatar-designing system provides you a wide variety of items (including gender-specific accessories) to choose from, for an original or Captain Ersatz look; so if you want to make your character look like, say, Superman, Zorro, The Phantom, Dr. Doom, Lion-O, Dracula, Xena or Vash the Stampede, or if you just want to be dressed up in regular jeans and T-shirts, you can get accessories to cater to that. The only downside is, many of the accessories (including skin tones and energy fields in some cases) cost Merit Points, often as much as 45 for a single skin tone, and some items are only available for a limited time at certain times of year.
• The Cracker: Haxxor, who only appears on April Fool's Day to "take over" the Superhero City window-browser and challenge the hero to fulfill various tasks.
• Crapsack World: Supervillain City is a place where, as the name indicates, super-powered villains are banished upon being arrested. As a result, the entire zone is lawless, and in fact the missions you have to do there range from spraying graffiti to spreading false rumors amongst rival gangs--all of which is considered normal.
• Crossover: With Starship Command: Battle for Earth, also developed by Klicknation.
• Cyborg: The Xergond race, of which Amazon Queen Shieka is ruler.
• Dark Action Girl: Dr. Fulkerth's assistant Trixie. Also Shieka, the Amazon queen, and minor villain Umbria. Of course, these three are far from the only examples.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Shadow Knight and Hell on Wheels both qualify.
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: You don't die if you lose a battle in Superhero City, but you do run the risk of losing in-game cash that you haven't placed in the bank if you lose a fight.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: The Lords of Sin and the Seven Deadly Sins. Also Krampus, the Big Bad of the Christmas-exclusive missions, and his wife.
• Difficulty Spike: For each tier that you complete to 100% on the Elite Bosses stages, the bosses will get a significant increase in their battle-life points on the next tier, which means you have to keep improving your own stats to keep up with them.
• Does Not Like Spam: Supervillain City tier ally Kasey dislikes eating vegetables. Getting her to eat her veggies is one of the missions on that tier.
• The Dragon: Trixie, Dr. Fulkerth's assistant, and Vercona, the second-in-command of Amazon Queen Shieka's Xergond forces. The Suit, who runs the Las Vegas division of the Kingpin's syndicate, could also be considered as this for Kingpin.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Hollow King, who only shows up during Halloween.
• The End of the World as We Know It: This is the ultimate aim of the Lords of Sin.
• Enemy Mine: You and Baron Axon briefly team up during the Washington D.C. missions to fight the invading alien forces. Unfortunately, being a villain, Axon suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
• Evil All Along: The White Samurai in the revamped Tokyo missions is the White Oni in disguise.
• Evil Counterpart: Trixie to Starry Knight.
• Evil Genius: Dr. Fulkerth, Dr. Argon, Dr. Kemet, and Baron Axon all qualify.
• Experience Points: Earned though mission completion, or battling other players.
• Fantastic Racism: The Hyperborean and Zigonian races, as well as several Atlanteans, look down on humans with considerable hatred.
• Fauxreigner: Isha is an Atlantean masquerading as an Indian when you first meet her.
• Fish People: The Atlanteans.
• Foe Yay: Between Starry Knight and Trixie.
• Friendly Enemy: Dr. Fulkerth and Trixie are this toward your character, as they're quite willing to sell you stat-boosting items whose effects last for limited periods (if only because so doing will further Dr. Fulkerth's own purposes); toward Shadow Knight and Starry Knight, not quite so much.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Both Dr. Fulkerth and Hardwire apply. The Watchmaker from the old Tokyo tier missions was this as well.
• Galactic Conqueror: Kemma Azonix, the queen of the Zigonian alien race from the crossover game Starship Command: Battle for Earth. In Superhero City, you fight her during a Raid specifically designed to summon her forces.
  • Astronickus is one also, and can likewise only be battled by summoning his forces in a special Raid.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Astronickus' eyes glow purple.
• A God Am I: Set, the boss of the Cairo mission tier. To be fair, he is a deity from ancient Egyptian mythology.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: On the heroic side, recently-added ally Hell on Wheels smokes a cigar. On the villains' side, the Kingpin smokes a cigar in his avatar picture, while the Suit smokes a cigarette in his.
• Gotta Catch Them All: You can gain various achievements by completing the different stages on all the available difficulty tiers, participating in special-event player competitions, or defeating certain villains.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Kemma Azonix has skin as red as a boiled lobster.
• Handicapped Badass: Shadow Knight walks with a cane, but this apparently doesn't hamper his heroics one bit.
• Happily Married: Krampus, the villain of the Christmas missions.
• Heel Face Turn: Kasey, a young girl you meet in Supervillain City, becomes your sidekick in exchange for an opportunity to escape the Wretched Hive.
• Hello, Nurse!: Trixie pulls this whenever you go to Dr. Fulkerth's store for stat-boosting items. She's dressed in a red-and-white nurse's cap and a green-and-purple lingerie-type outfit.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Fuma Hanzo wears bright red in his outfit. Also see Technicolor Ninjas below.
• Holiday Mode: Certain Ability cards, avatar items, and equipment are only available for limited times during different holidays in the year (Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, for example). The game's browser pages will be appropriately decorated for each holiday during those periods, as well.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: They show up as villains for you to fight in the Sins' City missions. Conquest has the power to compel people to rule over everything; War makes people go into a battle-furious rage; Famine causes people to become ravenously hungry to the point of becoming ExtremeOmnivores and cannibals; Death (the only female of the bunch) drains the life-force from those around her.
• Hot Amazon: Amazon Queen Shieka and her forces qualify.
• Humanoid Aliens: Shieka, Astronickus, and minor character Boxer Zyson all qualify.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: You can carry around any number of items and skills you like.
• I Love Nuclear Power: Red Fission, a villain you fight in Supervillain City.
• In-Universe Game Clock: You get special bonuses for having played the game over a certain period of time (playing for six months nets you 50 Merit Points, 100 Merit Points for one year's gameplay, etc.).
• Katanas Are Just Better: Fuma Hanzo wears two on his back and two on his belt.
• Kill It with Fire: Heatwave and his Circle of Flames gang run on this.
• Kill It with Ice: Cold-themed villain Harsh Winter, who only appears during the Thanksgiving missions, and minor villain Icecap from the Manhattan missions.
• Killed Off for Real: This is the fate of Vercona, The Dragon for Amazon Queen Shieka, each time you fight her.
• Level Grinding: Mandatory if you want to get stronger or gain more Merit Points. To this end, you can participate in Raids (where Raid-exclusive villains are summoned using the correct items) to level up as much as possible, provided you have enough replenishing items to keep you going.
• Level Up Fill Up: Your Energy points and Fight points get refilled to the max on each level-up.
• Living Shadow: The Shadow Lord.
• Looks Like Orlok: Lucius Bloodvayne's vampire army in the Raid you summon specifically to fight them. However, none of them wear trench-coats as per the trope description.
• Lost Forever: Certain Ability cards and avatar-costume items are only ever offered once, and if you fail to get them before the deadline date, you can't get them again (one prominent example would be the Final Fantasy costume pieces that were available for a limited time in 2010). This also applies to certain Merit Point equipment bought in the game's store, except those have a limited amount in stock and you have to get yours before other players swipe them up.
• Mad Doctor: Dr. Kemet, who appears only in special missions in between Cairo and New Delhi when you're seeking 100% completion of both cities' tiers. Specifically, he lures in potential victims with a fake spa treatment, then performs experiments on them that cause them to turn into horrifying creatures, while bilking them out of their money as a bonus.
• Meaningful Name: Several examples abound among the villains.
• More Dakka: Hardwire utilizes multiple rocket launchers as seen in one of his in-game artworks.
• Most Common Superpower: Trixie and Shieka are just two examples.
• Mundane Utility: The Flame Tongue ability that you gain from the Super Villain City boss is described as being used as this when not in combat.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Astronickus' full title: Astronickus, Bringer of Judgment.
• Noble Demon: Hell on Wheels, an Expy of Hellboy.
• The Obi-Wan: Both Shadow Knight and Isha serve as this for your character.
• Papa Wolf: Shadow Knight for his daughter, Starry Knight.
• Point Build System: You get Skill Points each time you level up (five per level-up) or complete missions (the amount varies with these), and you can use these to improve your battle-life points, Energy points, attack, defense, or agility.
• Randomly Drops: Special powers are randomly given to you as rewards each time you complete missions.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Fuma Hanzo.
• Red Right Hand: Loki, the boss of the Midgard stage, provides a literal clawed example.
• Remember the New Guy?: With regard to the villains; when you (as the player) first meet some of them, the dialogue indicates that you (i.e. your character) have met them at least once before. (One subversion is during the Las Vegas stage, where the Suit introduces himself to you as a member of The Syndicate.)
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: General Naron of the Hyperborean race looks like a humanoid dinosaur.
• Rogues Gallery: You get to fight a wide variety of villains in the game, both major and minor. These include: Baron Axon, Hardwire, the Kingpin, the Suit, Silvermane, Fuma Hanzo, Voodoo King Lou, Loki, Amazon Queen Shieka, Astronickus, Shadow Lord, Heavy Metal, Dr. Kemet, Lucius Bloodvayne, Umbria, Kemma Azonix, Switchblade, Red Fission, Heatwave, Harsh Winter, Hollow King, the Cardmaster, the White Oni, Sandstorm, General Naron, Haxxor, the Bookworm, Voltaru, Dr. Argon, the Greek Titans, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the Seven Deadly Sins.
• Sai Guy: Fuma Hanzo wields two.
• Save This Person Save the World: Starry Knight, during the Sins' City missions.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Their embodiments show up as villains for you to fight.
• Shock and Awe: Voltaru is an electrically-charged extra-terrestrial.
• Shout-Out: Many of the equipment pieces, costume pieces, and ability cards you can collect serve as this to various fictional and real-life characters or phenomenon.
  • In the case of the ability cards, many that are offered have in their illustrations characters who are Captain Ersatzes of established comic book characters. For example, one Ability card that was offered during Halloween is named "Geist Ryder" and it has in its illustration a character with a flaming skull head riding a Cool Bike with fiery wheels. More recently, as of this writing (November 2011), there have been Ability cards named "Time Shift," "Master of Death," and "Healer of Everything," among other offerings, that are an homage to Doctor Who.
  • In the case of the equipment and avatar-costume pieces, many that are on sale are tributes to various series, usually from comic books but also from notable TV shows. It also ties together with Costume Porn and Virtual Paper Doll.
  • There are quite a few examples among the game's characters as well. For example, minor not-quite-villain Boxer Zyson in the Nexus stage is a Humanoid Alien Expy of Mike Tyson.
• Sidekick: Starry Knight is this for her father Shadow Knight, and Kasey eventually becomes this to you during the events of Supervillain City. On the villainous side, Dr. Fulkerth has The Dragon, Trixie.
• Slasher Smile: Dr. Kemet sports a disturbing, face-distorting one at one point.
• Summoning Artifact: Needed to summon the seven available raids, and (with the exception of the Chrome Onyx Cube, which can be won by defeating Vercona in a Las Vegas mission), the items are randomly dropped when you defeat the city bosses. Specifically, to summon each of the following villains and their armies, you need:
  • Voodoo King Lou: Necronomicon and Bone Ash.
  • Pack Leader Silvermane: Lycaon's Blood and Wolf Venom.
  • Lord Lucius Bloodvayne: Fresh Blood and Vampire's Coffin.
  • Astronickus, Bringer of Judgment: Hyperspace Coordinates and Extraterrestrial Power Source.
  • Ninja Lord Fuma Hanzo: Mysterious Ninja Gong and Mystical Mountain Incense.
  • Amazon Queen Shieka: Sword of Penance and Chrome Onyx Cube.
  • Zigonian Queen, Kemma Azonix: Pheromone Boost and Pheromone Jack.
• The Syndicate: Run by the Kingpin in Manhattan, and his enforcer The Suit in Las Vegas.
• Technicolor Ninjas: Several of these, answering to Fuma Hanzo, emerge from a rainbow (don't ask) to fight you during a specific set of missions that come at random.
• Timed Mission: The raids must be completed within a specific time period, counted in hours. The faster you can complete a raid, the more rewards (and more effective equipment, as well) you will get.
• To Hell and Back: The Sins' City mission tier has you doing this.
• Took a Level in Badass: Hardwire, originally just a tutorial villain for you to defeat when you're just starting out in the game, was previously characterized simply for his More Dakka artwork. As of the revamped Tokyo missions, his Gadgeteer Genius skills are more emphasized, with him building an army of cybernetic ninjas and showing up in more missions in that city.
  • The villains in the Elite Bosses stages could qualify as well.
  • Of course, you as the player can achieve this though Level Grinding.
• Vampire Monarch: Lucius Bloodvayne.
• Virtual Paper Doll: One of the features available in the game is your ability to customize your hero avatar's appearance. You can make your avatar male or female, with two additional body-type choices for each gender (buff and muscular or lean and trim); you can change the avatar's skin tone, hair style and color, and whether they have tattoos or other special marks; and you can customize avatar-costume pieces (many of which you have to purchase with Merit Points) to either give your avatar a unique appearance or make him/her a Captain Ersatz of an already-established superhero (or villain).
• Viva Las Vegas: The Las Vegas mission tier, natch.
• We Are Everywhere: The Suit says this about The Syndicate when you defeat him in Las Vegas.
• Weapon of Choice: Accompanying Virtual Paper Doll and Costume Porn, you can choose to equip your character avatar with certain types of weapons acquired in the avatar-costume store. In some cases the weapons count as your character's cape, meaning they get worn on your back; for the most part, however, costume pieces specifically identified as "weapons" get held in one hand or both, but if the weapon is held in only one hand, you can't choose which hand to hold said weapon in. Among the weapons you can equip on your avatar are swords, machetes, hammers, staves, guns, scythes, whips, hooks, knives, chainsaws, shields...or you can simply let your character go with just their fists.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Fourth of July specials provide you with avatar-costume equipment, including Uncle Sam's trademark hat, appropriate for the day's celebration. Also, included in said avatar costuming are several flag tattoos which your hero can wear on his/her chest.
• Wolf Man: Silvermane, himself a werewolf, controls an army of them which you must fight during the Raid that specifically summons them.
• Wolverine Claws: Switchblade, a Supervillain City native, has laser-blades that protrude from his arms, one blade for each arm.
  • Also, you can get twin claws on each hand for your character avatar as visible weapons.
• Worthy Opponent: Boxer Zyson, Karradine the martial artist, and Rourk the wrestler, all contestants in the Nexus Fight Night tournament, come to see you as this after you defeat them.
• Xanatos Gambit: The game presents a very odd one during the Christmas missions. Krampus kidnaps Santa and distributes cursed lumps of coal throughout Manhattan, forcing you to rescue Father Christmas and recover the coal lumps in order to defeat the villain...but then the whole thing turns out to have been a ploy by Krampus and his wife to add some spice to their marriage, which you've helped them to accomplish even by beating them.
• Yakuza: In the former Tokyo mission set, which has since been replaced with new missions and villains.
• Zerg Rush: Played both ways when it comes to the raids you summon. In-story, the boss of each raid has a number of minions in his/her army to challenge you...but for you to win, you need the help of a certain number of other players (how many depends on which raid you're in) joining in on the melee.
• Zombie Apocalypse: What you have to fight against when you summon a raid to battle Voodoo King Lou.