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, and their releases Apprentice and Apprentice II: The Knight's Move have won numerous amateur adventure game awards. 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".
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.
Famous quotes containing the words herculean, effort and/or productions:
“Every milestone of a firstborn is scrutinized, photographed, recorded, replayed, and retold by doting parents to admiring relatives and disinterested friends. . . . While subsequent children will strive to keep pace with siblings a few years their senior, the firstborn will always have a seemingly Herculean task of emulating his adult parents.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Most new things are not good, and die an early death; but those which push themselves forward and by slow degrees force themselves on the attention of mankind are the unconscious productions of human wisdom, and must have honest consideration, and must not be made the subject of unreasoning prejudice.”
—Thomas Brackett Reed (1839–1902)