Genius Beauty Knight, the main protagonist Bea, and Magical Science Angel
Being a magical girl is a thankless job due to the lack of pay and breaks, and Bea's had enough. So the Union of Magical Girls is formed, in hopes the team can deal with the costs of living with fighting the forces of evil!Hero Hours Contract is a turn-based strategy game released on August 27, 2020, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It is primarily created by Steve O'Gorman, who also made The Rainsdowne Players.
A free sequel was released on September 7, 2022, titled Hero Hours Contract 2: A Factory for Magical Girls. In it, the magical girl trio from the original game have to face their greatest challenge yet: a gig economy. A third game, a Beat 'em Up titled Magical Girl Fist Fight is currently in the works.
Rights for trope workers! We demand better treatment!:
- Advancing Wall of Doom: Floors 10 to 40 have scalding hot pools of coffee flood the room, defeating anyone in it's path, although it can be stopped with sponges. To complete these Floors, one magical girl has to attack the remote control.
- Aliens Are Bastards: The Section Chief, the antagonist responsible for the brainwashed zombie invasion originates from the Dark Dimension, which is said to have no sun. It's subverted once he realises the Familiars are using everyone for their greed.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: In the sequel, you can have up to four party members. The Section Chief justifies it so that the battlefield doesn't get too crowded.
- Beach Episode: Due to a stretch goal being reached, one of these can be negotiated into your contract.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Your primary foes in the tactical segments are brainwashed zombie minions.
- Brought Down to Normal: As a result of expending too much magic at once to destroy the Shareholders' blockchains while already suffering magical burnout, Bea ultimately loses her powers completely at the end of the second game, having to fight barehanded in the third.
- The Cavalry: While Bea and her friends are trapped in crystal by their familiars after discovering their scheme, she tries to reach out with her power, and ends up contacting her parents and the friends she's made, and they (at least any that she's maxed out her relationship with) rush the Tower to her rescue.
- Child Prodigy: Magical Science Angel is described as such, as she's only twelve years old but has an intimate understanding of chemical compounds.
- Crystal Prison: After the real Big Bad's plot is discovered, they trap our heroes (and the Section Chief minutes prior) this way. And The Cavalry has to reach them within 10 turns or it becomes permanent.
- Dark Magical Girl: Or rather, Dark Magical Boy. The Section Chief, who opposed the Union turns out to be a disposable pawn for the Familiars. After the latter is driven off, he teleports everyone else to safety and becomes playable in the sequel.
- Didn't Think This Through: The Dark Dimension Conglomerate Section Chief has a tendency to do this, giving the heroes a way to win, or screwing himself over.
- Extra Turn: Genius Beauty Knight has a 50% chance to take a turn Again! each time after attacking, making her invaluable in wiping out zombies from the rooftops and repositioning them for her teammates. And playing a certain arcade mini game increases her luck even further past 100%, but diminishes by 1% down to as low as 12% each time she attacks, requiring regular repeat visits to keep up her bonus topped up. If you befriended her enough to appear as a Spirit for Bea and maxed out her friendship, the Gacha Machine Kid has the same Extra Turn ability, though not the shoving part.
- Flight: Magical Science Angel has a pair of wings that let her pull this off, though they can evaporate if she's ever over steaming coffee.
- Gamer Chick: Another stretch goal reached is a side-story for Genius Beauty Knight, who wants to know the identity of the person beating all of her high scores at the local arcade. And said arcade machine, which is named after her, can actually power up her chances to attack again. And despite her haughty attitude and being do prideful and driven to reclaim her high score, she's not actually a Sore Loser if she fails to (and you can always try again).
- Giant Scrap Robot: At the end of the Toaster Dungeon, our heroes have to engage Familiar Blue in human form piloting one of these out of toasters and generators. All you have to do is send all of your characters around the missiles and into its blind spot at its feet to beat it and blow it up.
- Greed: The main motivation of the real villains in the first game. And they actually have no further motive than that other than to be the richest beings in every dimension.
- Heel–Face Turn: The Section Chief joins forces with the Union after exposing the Familiars' schemes as thanks for liberating him and his Dark Dimension from their oppressive yoke.
- Herd-Hitting Attack: Magical Science Angel's bazooka primarily does this, getting stronger the farther the chain goes, and finishing the Beach Episode gives thus even more strength. Trees and littered cups count in this chain, so those items can actually benefit her greatly. If befriended enough by Bea to appear as a Spirit and with maxed out friendship, Maisy the traveling woman with the black cat Freddie, can achieve the same effect with her pet, though of course not as strong as Science Angel.
- In Medias Res: The main protagonist has already been a Magical Girl for four years when the game begins.
- Invincible Hero: The Magical Girl protagonists are so powerful that regular minions cannot hurt them in any way, making the tactical segments a challenge of efficiency and speed rather than strength. However, while they can't take damage, they can still be pushed away, teleported around, suffer hypnosis, be engulfed by froth, or be encased in crystal. Presumably, when Bea's family and friends come to her rescue after she reaches out to them from her crystal prison, her power protects them against the zombies too (though Sir Cabbage doesn't need it as he already received his powers from her). That said, in the sequel, certain attacks CAN knock down the playable cast, but it only takes three moves to get them up again.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The events of the first game are summed up right at the start of the second, and the Section Chief is with the Union.
- Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction: Rather than being the embodiments of purity and justice, Magical Girls are treated as mere employees of a larger system, and having to regularly protect the world from the forces of evil has interfered with Bea's education and left her with no possible career other than working in a (struggling) family-owned store.
- Magical Girl Warrior: All of the playable characters fall under this sub-type, having to fight villains on a near-nightly basis.
- Magically Binding Contract: One of the game's main elements is renegotiating yours.
- Magic Knight: Genius Beauty Knight, whose weapon of choice is a rapier that can push back foes, repositioning them for Science Angel, or even knocking them off rooftops for easy wins.
- The Man Behind the Man: As it's eventually made clear, despite his bluster, the Section Chief isn't the Big Bad of the first game: that honor goes to The Union's familiars, who have been working him AND the entire Dark Dimension to the bone collecting Happiness Gems, which propagate when inside zombies, and are then harvested by their Magical Girls. They take center stage as villains in the sequel.
- Mentor Mascot: The creatures that empower the Magical Girls look like tiny phones with charms. Well, only Bea's does. GBK's looks like a sword, and MSA's resembles an Erlenmeyer flask. And that's not actually their true forms.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Genius Beauty Knight comes from a family that is so rich that she doesn't even NEED to DO anything. Her reason for becoming a Magical Girl is because she felt unable to lead a life of her own and that her parents' money is just a cheat code to skip to the end, wanted a way to find her own power, and found it in her current life choice.
- No Name Given: The main character of the story is listed as "Nameless Protagonist" on the Kickstarter page. In the game proper, she is actually called Magical Girl [Provisional] 927 B (retconned to 917 B in the sequel). She says to just call her "Bea".
- People Jars: At the end of the Cold Open segment of the second game, several people are trapped in this fashion by the Union's former Familiars to harvest magical energy from. At the end of the Toaster Dungeon, the Union confronts Familiar Blue over this, who exposits that it's For Science! and because it's more efficient than their previous Engineered Heroics scheme in the first game.
- Playing Both Sides: The Familiars are behind the Dark Dimension's works, while monitoring the Union, all for the sake of becoming over-the-top filthy rich.
- Pushy Mooks: The merfolk-like enemy with the trident will push one of the heroes three steps back, compared to just one from Genius Beauty Knight.
- Relationship Values: You can power up Bea's abilities by making new social connections and developing her bonds with them.
- Rich Bitch: Genius Beauty Knight's profile on Kickstarter implies this, as she's from a wealthy family, she proclaims that she's modest but came up with her own title, and she mainly fights for fame and adoration. She also has Magical Science Angel do her homework. In fact, her parents are so rich she could've been completely idle or taken any job she wanted without worry.
- Riches to Rags: Well, not Rags per se, but in the sequel, Genius Beauty Knight has fallen into hard times after the defeat of the Conglomerate because it turns out her family was invested with them. Her relations with them are strained and she now works at the store with Bea's parents.
- Science Hero: Magical Science Angel leans into this, having her own laboratory and fighting with high-tech weaponry such as a bazooka. And she serves as a weapon upgrader in the second game.
- Shirtless Scene: In case you end up getting
Viewer Gender Confusion upon first seeing the Section Chief in the Tower, his appearance at the Beach Episode with nothing but swim trunks confirms his biological sex. And if your cast is in swimwear, so will he, even in the Tower. - Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Despite it being a bazooka, Magical Science Angel still has to be adjacent to a target to attack it. The Section Chief lampshades this, and she excuses that it's experimental.
- Signed Up for the Dental: Averted; one of the major demands of the protagonists is for proper healthcare, which includes dental. However, it's at such an obscene price (1 million gems), and
the creator even stated that the player is not meant to actually reach that goalnote (since each battle only accrues between a few hundred to just over a thousand per battle, and the maximum amount of Gems you can have is 999999). - Summon Magic: Bea's special ability is to summon the spirits of her closest friends and family to fight on her behalf (though in the sequel, they take the appearance of Bea herself). The stronger the bond, the more damage they can do, especially when she properly chains her attacks.
- Super-Empowering: Besides the familiars who gave our heroes their powers in the first place, running into Bea's spirits apparently has the same effect for humans. That said, it always seems to grant some vegetable-based powers, as Magical Boy Sir Cabbage can attest to, having been the first affected. He also ended up telling others about it, leading to people trying to run into these spirits on purpose, which has led to the rest of the members of Sir Cabbage's Vegetable Senshi Union (and a lettuce-themed archnemesis who eventually joins them in the sequel).
- Super Drowning Skills: Magical Science Angel is unable to swim, and hopes to resolve that during the Beach Episode.
- Suspicious Video Game Generosity: Upon completing the penultimate floor of the Tower, the familiars give a large amount of cash and time.
- Timed Mission: Practically every battle is this, where you have to clear out all zombies within ten turns before they become stale. The only exceptions are the special Tower missions (which removes the turn limit), the Beach puzzle missions (where you get ONE turn to clear out a specific type). The final mission is a marginally tight one since the 10 turn limit carries over throughout three maps, which can be impossible if you haven't maxed out Bea's Relationship Values.
- The sequel makes this even tighter with five turns, though the battle system has been overhauled to make this manageable.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Tower in general. It puts different rules on each set of floors, such as racing against an Advancing Wall of Doom or racing to reach a point total before the enemy. The Beach episode also has its unique one-turn puzzles.
- Villain Teleportation: The Section Chief naturally has these powers, using them regularly during his confrontations with the Union of Magical Girls, although he apparently cannot teleport (certain) electronic devices with him. He also uses this in the end to escape the crumbling Tower along with the Union and all of Bea's companions who came to their rescue.
- Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: Deconstructed; having to fight evildoers every night instead of focusing on homework eventually led to the main protagonist flunking out of high school with no marketable skills. It's implied her mother did the same thing.
- Weird Trade Union: The game's primary focus is managing a "Union of Magical Girls" who—when they're not fighting brainwashed monsters in turn-based strategic combat—are negotiating with the coalition of magical creatures that gave them their powers for better pay and benefits.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Magical Boy Sir Cabbage feels this to be the case with his powers, which is to summon cabbages. It's at least able to push back zombies, though he lacks the Again! feature GBK has.