I bought this game a day after Early Access launched in 2018. I'm totally fine with a wait, but it's been 6 years at this point, and the game has gone from 30 minutes of gameplay to 3 hours of it on a single playthrough. The writing is ok, not amazing, and the art style is good, but I cannot say this was a good purchase. If you're interested, wait until the game fully releases, however long that takes.
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The game's development doesn't seem to progress anymore. Even on Thor's so called "game dev streams", seeing actual development is a rare sight...
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Game appears abandoned now that Thor has gotten big as a personality, no (real) updates in the entirety of 2024 so far. Avoid this game, even if it does ever get finished, and I doubt that at this point, there is nothing here you cannot experience in a more well-crafted experience.
The story thus far isn't unique and feels either lazy or heavy handed, depending on what point, as the writing quality varies throughout, but ultimately felt really generic. What stands out the most is that it feels like a story about depression told by a person who has never been depressed, and it feels insulting with how poorly handled it is.
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I bought this game out of excitement for the future of its development when I was in middle school, I am now in my 20s and this game is still not done... the creator has gone on to be a streamer that just says what the crowd wants to hear, and doesn't actually work on the game that he asked us to pay for. I'm sure Thor is a great guy and all, but it does tick me off that he makes all these hot takes and critiques on other game devs in the industry while essentially abandoning his own game that has been in development hell for far too long now. Don't buy this game unless the creator decides to finish it, vote with your wallet people.
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I love what this game promises. It could have (or at the very least deserves) the cultural impact of Undertale if it ever makes it to release. The soundtrack is excellent and the characters are endearing.
Unfortunately, the developer is a now a full-time streamer. He calls his streaming sessions "game dev" but very little actual game dev happens in these streams. It's mostly just the same hanging out and playing games as any other streamer. The second chapter of the game has been "90% complete" for many months now...possibly even years? I'm starting to lose track. The development update videos that were, at one point, dropping monthly, have not been seen in about seven months. The developer has also recently taken on a full-time job at another company, and runs a ferret rescue on top of that.
Thor's a great guy, but Heartbound is pretty clearly a distant...fourth? Fifth? To the other obligations in his life. Don't buy this game unless you're comfortable with the very real possibility that it won't see a full release in your lifetime.
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This game has nothing to do. i mildly care the dog dies. i have been sitting in the managemnt area of the tower for 10 min. theres no new interaction now in any of the rooms. there is no puzzles of note. i dont understand how basically nothing has been in like 4 years
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A lot of the reviews seem to be unaware they're reviewing the game and not the dev. I get you love your favorite streamer but this isn't his streams.
The game itself leaves a lot to be desired, majority of the gameplay is walking around (slowly) back and forth, interacting with an object/character for some story or one liners. I don't care for the humour and the story is basic yet serviceable.
There's a single combat encounter unless I missed another, it's a collection of minigames that flow well, would've liked one per chapter with a different set of minigames to keep it novel. There's also some simple puzzles that seem there more for flavour than challenge.
It's very short in its current form, I know it's early access but I honestly expected more for 6 years of EA. I'm hoping more time in the oven would help flesh out the story and give me a reason to care about the characters.
Tldr; Can't recommend it in it's current EA state, but there's hope for change with the full release.
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Sorry but I just don't think this is it. I like dev, he is kind of a personality, nothing wrong with him. The game itself thought has some issues. First of all, the content is a little bit lacking considering the price and time of developement. Second: the dialogue and story didn't really click with me (yet). It's hard to judge the story without being able to see the full picture and to be honest the story doesn't feel like it is written out yet. It's just a bunch of silly moments, minigames and interesting story ideas mashed together. The game has potential but as of yet I cannot recommend it.
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I was excited for Heartbound but playing through so far it doesn't really seem to have a consistant narrative thruline, Lore seems to be reacting to things that aren't really stated sometimes. I feel like the writer has a clear idea of what's going on in their head but is just leaving out stuff moment to moment so it's not really clear to me why Lore is emotionally reacting to a lot of things in the moment.
Also the movement speed is excruciatingly slow. There really needs to be a run button, it takes forever to get anywhere. And these dark mazes are just boring and annoying. I can't imagine doing multiple runs of the game when it takes so long just to get through these basic areas because Lore trudges along like an old man.
I've also only been in like two combats that were both the same and I've been playing for like an hour and a half.
The game looks nice and all but right now I can't see myself even pushing through the rest of this office part, let alone playing through again for some alternate route or something.
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Firstly, let me just say I am leaving this review not to be mean but to hopefully provide constructive criticism the dev will see. It is much easier to criticize and tear something down than it is to make something others can enjoy. So, I appreciate all the work the dev has put into the game and I hope he continues improving it over time. Additionally, I will begin by saying some things I enjoyed about the game. The game looks very visually appealing and is pretty. I really enjoyed alot of the visual character designs and environments. The lead artist, Bradie, did a great job. The combat encounter at the start was also fun and I hope a lot more are implemented in the future. I also thought the composer, Stijn, did a good job and so too did JP Baas.
Now these compliments actually segway nicely to my first criticism of the game. I wish there were more combat encounters and gameplay within the game. Maybe I missed some because I played the game as a mostly moral person, but I felt like there were way too few encounters. Ultimately this game is going to draw comparisons to other games like Undertale, Omori, and Oneshot. Undertale and Omori had strong gameplay loops you got to enjoy consistently throughout the game but with Heartbound I only fought one enemy the entire time. I think part of this may be due to the fact the dev wants every combat encounter to be unique and skill-based which results in a lot of dev time being needed to implement a combat encounter but I think the game would benefit from a more broadly implemented combat or gameplay loop and saving these unique purely skill-based encounters for boss encounters and special enemies. Even though Omori’s and Undertale’s combat sequences were all very similar from one fight to the next they still varied enough, and were challenging enough, to keep them interesting. I would rather have more combat or gameplay sequences that are similar to one another than no combat or gameplay at all. Also, 2d RPGs with small dev teams can have interesting and unique combat/gameplay, just look at Fear and Hunger, Underrail, and Undertale. So, don’t let the genre be an excuse for why the game lacks gameplay. As a result of the lack of enemies to fight or things to do, the gameplay mostly turns into a bunch of boring fetch quests, which become even more annoying due to the player’s slow walk speed, a few ok minigames, and puzzles that are often too simple and not novel enough to be interesting. Of course, some puzzles were fun like the one to get out of the locked room by entering a pin number you figure out from a bunch of notes scattered across the room, but these more interesting puzzles were in the minority. Additionally, the game also struggles with the fact that since there is no gear to acquire and use, levels to be gained, or little to no side quests to uncover, there is very little reason to explore. Which is a shame, because the environments and npcs are very pretty to look at.
Now, some RPGs have good enough writing that they can get by fine without having much gameplay, like Oneshot or Disco Elysium. However, the issue is this RPG doesn’t have anywhere near the quality writing that Disco Elysium does or many meaningful choices. Of the few choices you are presented, most are simply binary good/evil choices that are not all that interesting. Sometimes you can go down a different branching path which adds some replayability but these branching paths aren’t that different and don’t seem to effect the story. There’s very little nuance or moral ambiguity to the choices, which would make them interesting. The main character suffers from the fact he says too much without your input for you to project yourself or a character you made up onto him, like with Undertale or with many RPGs that actually let you roleplay. Simultaneously, he has too weak of a character arc/personality to be interesting and likable like Niko is in Oneshot. Maybe this is mostly subjective, but I don’t really like the main character of this game. I think he is too whiny/angry while not showing off enough of a personality or likable traits to make me sympathize with him and enjoy hearing from him. The lack of world-building makes the setting a lot less interesting. Also, it makes me stressed out about the fate of any characters I grow to like. For example, I grew to like Joe but then I never see him again later in the game and am left wondering what became of him. Is he dead? Did he even really exist? Will he be ok? If everything isn’t real in this game then that would massively suck and make everything feel pointless and stupid. It would rob the player of any sense of accomplishment and destroy any attachments they may have formed. The lack of closure and understanding is disturbing and frustrating. Most RPGs give you a sense of closure about the characters and continue to have them included in some fashion throughout the game. Think of how in Omori you see Basil, Kel, Aubry, Hero, etc all throughout the game and get to see some of them go through dynamic character arcs because of it. In Undertale, Sans continues to appear throughout the game and you can learn more about him and can understand his character more as the game progresses. By contrast in this game, the characters are all static and appear with limited screen time only to be immediately discarded, never to be seen again. It ruins a lot of the investment you may have had in the characters and story when characters just effectively die off for no reason as soon as they are introduced into the story. Also, the characters often lack any depth and their relationship with the player often develops unnaturally due to their limited screen time. Plus, a few of them feel way too similar to each other at times. I think this game would benefit from having fewer characters with more screen time so they can be better developed, fleshed out, and dynamic. The game also lacks any strong or interesting antagonists. The book is not at all as interesting as say Flowey is and antagonists like your mom needed a lot more build-up, reasons to dislike her, and reasons to sympathize with her, along with character development for the main character and his father, to make the moment you forgive her and your father comes to stand up for you meaningful and interesting. The hook to save your dog is interesting and somewhat compelling but he too also needed more screentime and development to better establish the player’s attachment to him to make us more invested in getting him back. Plus I found what we were doing at times kind of confusing when our overarching goal is to get him back. I forgot why we were trying to fix that watch, for instance, and why that was needed to get our dog back. I don’t even understand what is going on and how we are supposed to get him back. Is his soul split in shards in these different worlds and we have to reunite them to get him back? A lot of it was unclear to me but this may have been the result of me spreading my play sessions out with several hours between them and not reading carefully enough.
I think the best move for the game moving forward would be if the developer mainly focused on implementing more gameplay and handling all the required programming and hired a writer to help with the story, characters, and world-building since the game depends so much on the writing currently. Or, at the very least, get a writing consultant or get some volunteers with writing experience to help out and give feedback. This would make the writing better and the game less dependent on it to be good if there was more gameplay. It is in very early access though so hopefully the game improves a lot with time and some of these concerns are addressed so
I really don't know what this game is trying to be.
The story is just all over the place. You get Undertale-like characters but then random moments where it shows your abusive parents and (wow spoilers it happens in the first fifteen minutes of the game) you kill your dog. The choices you get in a "choices matter" game are: Act like a sane human being, or kill a random character like a complete sociopath. It feels like it was written by Edgy Teen Me.
The gameplay is, there is basically no gameplay. It's more like a walking simulator visual novel. There's only one combat encounter in a so-called rpg, and it takes place in the first ten minutes. And the battle itself is structured weird. It has you switching from the arrow keys to the mouse every other attack, like it was made for left handed people, no offense to lefties, but making me take off my right hand off the keyboard every few seconds was mildly infuriating. Everything else are just ambiguous fetch quests in one chapter, then following and talking to random npcs in the other.
Oh yeah, there's only two chapters, only adding up to less than two hours of gameplay... for a $10 game. By buying this, you're more of a kickstarter backer than purchasing a game. In fact, I've played demos that last longer. It's been four years since this game "released" on steam and this is what's "Overwhelmingly Positive?"
The only thing I really like are the character portraits, maybe the best animated pixel art portraits out there.
It really seems to me that this game was created by artists with no prior programming background and that's why there's no real game to this game.
I can later remove this negative review. I think the dev is a good programmer who is dedicated to this project. I just hope he listens to the feedback of those willing to be more honest with him so this game can become something great.
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I really don't know what this game is trying to be.
The story is just all over the place. You get Undertale-like characters but then random moments where it shows your abusive parents and (wow spoilers it happens in the first fifteen minutes of the game) you kill your dog. The choices you get in a "choices matter" game are: Act like a sane human being, or kill a random character like a complete sociopath. It feels like it was written by Edgy Teen Me.
The gameplay is, there is basically no gameplay. It's more like a walking simulator visual novel. There's only one combat encounter in a so-called rpg, and it takes place in the first ten minutes. And the battle itself is structured weird. It has you switching from the arrow keys to the mouse every other attack, like it was made for left handed people, no offense to lefties, but making me take off my right hand off the keyboard every few seconds was mildly infuriating. Everything else are just ambiguous fetch quests in one chapter, then following and talking to random npcs in the other.
Oh yeah, there's only two chapters, only adding up to less than two hours of gameplay... for a $10 game. By buying this, you're more of a kickstarter backer than purchasing a game. In fact, I've played demos that last longer. It's been four years since this game "released" on steam and this is what's "Overwhelmingly Positive?"
The only thing I really like are the character portraits, maybe the best animated pixel art portraits out there.
It really seems to me that this game was created by artists with no prior programming background and that's why there's no real game to this game.
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TLDR: Wait until release and the full story might make sense.
PROS:
Fun writing
CONS:
Disjointed and confusing narrative
Could really use a run button
Unfinished (as of 4/23/2024)
Disclaimer: This is a review about Heartbound when it was in Early Access as of 4/22/2024. It's likely I will revisit the game upon full release.
Content (Game world/Narrative/Length) – [EA/10]
Game World: Heartbound is all over the place. First, the world itself is a top-down view of your character walking across various environments. As for the actual locales - it starts out normal with a run-down home. After that there are 3 other locations, only 1 of which seems to be complete as of this review. There is an office building, a forest of sentient animals, and a type of ice world. The office building is the one that is completed, while the others you can make some sort of progression but eventually hit a wall that stops you from continuing and returns you to the start.
Narrative: Clearly the strongest point of the game. The writing is great, BUT, there are a ton of similar characters, perhaps intentional I’m not sure. But the game has some very specific almost memey humor and every single character has nearly the same personality and thus humor.
As for the story itself, after the first 30 minutes, it's just complete chaos. I have no idea why I’m suddenly in an office building or a forest, or an ice world. While your character does have a goal, nothing seems to actually be relevant to that goal. I have no idea how stamping letters or constructing a watch will save my dog.
Length: Short. I was able to complete all content in under 4 hours.
Gameplay (Controls/Mechanics/Difficulty) – [EA/10]
Controls: Walk and talk mostly. The combat is pretty different and consists of simon says or DDR-style button presses. I do wish the walking was faster or at least had a run button. This is very noticeable in the forest zone. Still, the combat was fun and different, but unfortunately, I have yet to even get in a 2nd encounter past the 30 minute mark.
Mechanics: Not much. The purpose of this game seems to be the choices you make and how they affect the story. There are no real mechanics other than dialog decisions.
Difficulty: Since this is very personal decision based, it's an easy game. There are some tricky puzzles in the office.
Graphics (Quality/UI/Performance) – [EA/10]
Quality: Pixelated, but stylized. The talking heads especially are well done and convey emotion to a great and humorous extent.
UI: The overworld has very little UI. The combat is also basic and you must quickly determine what you need to do without direction, kind of like Wario Ware.
Performance: No issues. Only played on desktop PC:
i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD
Audio (Sound Effects/Music) – [EA/10]
Sound Effects: insignificant.
Music: Well done. Each zone I’ve been in has unique and funky music that fits with the vibe.
Replay Factor (Longevity) – [EA/10]
Choices and achievements.
Final Verdict – [EA/10]
I dove into Heartbound blind, which is apparently the wrong thing to do. Only after I played through the disjointed and cumbersome story did I learn the whole big appeal of this game its a cult following from a streamer. I guess I did it wrong by not playing a demo first or something, but I shouldn’t need an instruction manual on how to play a game correctly. I saw a choices matter RPG that was highly rated at a good price and thought I’d give it a try.
Unfortunately, the first 30 minutes seem like a completely different game than everything that comes after it. The first part sets up an interesting choice backed by trauma and a mystery of “Why?”. What follows after is an acid trip of nonsense. Maybe the ending will tie it all together, but as of this writing, there is no ending.
Recommend? [Y/N]
No
I would strongly recommend waiting until this is finished before buying. Right now it's basically a book that has pages 1-30, then 90-200 in a 500 page novel. It's confusing and needs some serious thought on how all of these random zones are supposed to tie together in a meaningful way.
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Honestly, as it stands right now, i can't recommend the game. Not because it's not good, but because it's taking so long for another chapter to release.
If it takes 6+ months to release one chapter every time, that could mean it will take multiple years for the full game to release.
Again, nothing against the game, i would love more. But i can't recommend it until they start releasing faster, when they do i'll change my review.
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Heartbound is a cozy-feeling, story-rich, character-heavy game with beautiful art direction, an enticing concept, and what could be an innovative and enjoyable combat system. It promises to be an adventure in the same vein and caliber as Undertale. However, in its current early-access state, there exist maybe 30 minutes of exciting, driven gameplay; and nearly an hour of slow walks through annoying-yet-good-looking mazes padded by repetitive and useless dialogue boxes. As it stands, the story to be explored is mostly knick-knackish secrets and plot hooks that lead into a self-referential spiral of near-nonsense; and the characters, while well designed, are written in a way that is unimaginative and ultimately boring. The soundtrack is atmospheric and fitting with a handful of absolute bangers, though the score can be derivative and painfully samey at times (Looking at you, Space Lasers), although never so much as to actually detract from the experience. The controls are sluggish but bearable, bearing the same scheme as their muse. All in all, as an early access title Heartbound is brimming with potential and good ideas, but in its present state as a ten-dollar market product, the game is empty and gut-wrenchingly short in the face of what it promises to be.
As much as I want to love this game and hold out hope that Heartbound will live up to its ambition, every fiber of my cynical being screams to me that this is another knockoff kickstarted cash-in that will die in development hell; and so far there are many more signs pointing to the latter's reality than the former's. Whether you have been watching this game religiously and can't wait to experience the world that Pirate Software is sculpting, or Heartbound appeared to you as a thumbnail in the new releases tab; I cannot more wholeheartedly advise waiting until the game is complete or at least showing more definitive signs of steadfast progression before buying an early-access copy. As of this writing, there are daily hours-long development streams and an active discord channel that have and will ostensibly continue to catalogue the game's creation, though it seems that in its current state, it will be a long, long time until Heartbound consists of more than one 5-pattern battle and a series of hallways littered with quirky, animated signposts.
tl;dr art's pretty good game's pretty bad hold off 'til there's more stuff
Mald Response (first I have seen)
Sorry you didn't like what we have out so far, we're still working on the game and have a lot of updates planned for the future.
In terms of the level design for The Tower. It's intentionally directionless here and meant to promote the idea that The Tower is a place of restriction, annoyance, and full of pointless work. I attempted to portray this in a quirky silly way while being true to the real world experience. If I missed the mark for you, I'm sorry.
As for the statements about this being a cash grab it couldn't be farther from the truth honestly. We intentionally set the price of Heartbound at 10$ USD to make it affordable for everyone. All of the future chapters are free updates meaning no additional charges for any new content. Aside from that we've localized the prices to match the local economies of every region we're translating the game into. As an example the game is only 20BRL for our Brazilian fans which is the equivalent of 5$ USD.
As for the "semi-frequent" development streams. We stream development of Heartbound live on Twitch for 10 hours every day from 12pm-10pm PST. The first five hours are art and the second five hours are programming. We've been doing this for over a year.
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This game only has two real battles and you can only win one of them. Those are both in the demo. There's a third battle that isn't actually a battle, and it seems like it's trying to be shocking by subverting the mechanics, but since those mechanics don't get the time to establish themselves, it comes off as a disappointment, an excuse to implement less gameplay. The non-battle only has one outcome that counts as a success condition, unlike the real battle which had two. So, if you liked the demo, don't expect to like the early access game. It was enjoyable, with a bunch of fetch quests and one minigame, but it wasn't AS good.
Maybe you'll get more enjoyment out of this if you like cryptography? I don't and I'm not really interested enough to read what other people have discovered.
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Every review mentions Thor because his charisma carries the project hard. The game is super short (average playtime is 2.5 hrs so average $/hour is 4) and has no ending. The game should have more content and less polish for it to cost money. One of the levels is literally just an opening sequence, the puzzles would bore a 5 year old, and the "combat" minigames lack originality. The story isn't even that great because the world lacks substance, which is unforgivable in an rpg. Go watch his streams and dono rather than infecting your library with this
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