Episodic Structure
Heroes of Arcadia's episodic design enables the player to play a party of customizable characters though a series of story "chapters". Each chapter is a separately downloadable product containing 2-3 hours of gameplay.
Achievements and items gained in earlier episodes are transferred into later episodes along with the player's hero characters.
While every episode is self-contained and can be played standalone, when combined together an over-arching storyline is revealed.
Episodes are further broken into adjacent regions of the game world called Zones - an episode typically consists of 3-6 zones. Unlike the levels of most story-oriented games, the player can move freely forwards or backwards across zones boundaries whenever they choose. Furthermore, where the zones of two episodes are adjacent, the player can move between episodes when they cross a zone boundary.