Rebecca Heineman has died
16 comments
·November 18, 2025thesuperbigfrog
Many years ago I played one of her works, Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate and enjoyed it very much.
It was a masterful blend of RPG, dungeon crawl, and puzzles and had a memorable soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5kg35dNso
Having a bard in your party let you choose a soundtrack and their songs brought magical effects. For example, the Rhyme of Duotime let your party attack more frequently in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oR4j7w4FIY
BT3 is available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Bards_Tale_3_-_Thief_O...
sosborn
The original Bard's Tale was my first RPG and I've been hooked ever since.
mitb6
BT3 was wonderful, lots of nostalgia for me. Sad to hear of her passing.
Dedime
Admittedly I didn't dive much into this to get the full context, but it's saddening to me that a legendary game designer had a GoFundMe. I was hoping achieving that level of status in a traditionally well-paid industry would leave one well off, financially.
nemomarx
I'm wondering if she actually got the fundraiser money, considering how quickly this moved - the last update implied it would have to go to her funeral, and I hope it pays for the bills or helps her family.
reactordev
Cancer and US Medical Care has a tendency to drain any savings you have. Also, it was sudden so it’s not like she was ready to retire at all.
amatecha
Very sad news. This one hit pretty hard for me as not only was she so awesome and contributed so much to so many great games, but the short timeline between "oh dang I have cancer and we're fighting it" to, well, today... was just way too short :(
JohnBooty
"Legend" barely begins to describe. She is up there with the Carmacks et al.
She was probably the first programmer I knew by name as a kid, following the games industry as a kid.
VikingCoder
RIP, Burger.
I played BT1, BT2, and BT3 for hours and hours.
CursedSilicon
I was lucky to catch some of Becky's livestreams on YouTube over the years.
More than a brilliant programmer she was truly a kind soul. She never approached topics with any kind of ego. Just a joy and love for the things she'd worked on and the people she'd worked with
Tiktaalik
I'd heard the 3DO doom port story linked here before and it is absolutely wild stuff. Legend.
SequoiaHope
Aww I’m very sad to hear this. She was close friends to a partner of mine and I met her about ten years ago through that connection. She seemed to be a lovely person.
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empressplay
@dang could we have a black banner please?
Struggi
[flagged]
Rebecca was well known in emulation circles for her high quality work on various games of the era, often pushing the hardware in unusual ways. This article is one of my favorites, detailing the wacky tricks she used to get Another World's 3D rendering system running acceptably on a Super Nintendo
https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/
Rest in piece, you absolute legend.