Heaven's Vault - open world adventure from 80 Days and Sorcery! dev

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/gog-rejected-heavens-vault-but-is-now-having-second-thoughts/

GOG rejected Heaven's Vault, but is now having second thoughts

Specific player numbers aren't available but the critical success of Heaven's Vault is obviously a big plus, and the volume of activity on the Heaven's Vault Discord server suggests that a committed community has built up around it. And it may yet find the adventure game audience on GOG that it's so far missed, too: A rep said that, "seeing the general reception of the game by the community," it's going to give the game another look and possibly (I would guess likely) change its mind.

"This is nothing extraordinary, as we sometimes go back to games that were previously rejected and decide to release them on GOG after another review," the rep said. "Our curation is a human process, and we may miss a release that is interesting for gamers. But we’re not afraid of going back and changing decision if it really makes sense—after all GOG is built with gamers in mind and we’re doing it for them."

Don't do it - make GOG pay the price for their lack of vision.

Now on GOG: https://af.gog.com/game/heavens_vault?as=1649904300

 

[fantadomat]

So did anyone manage to finish it? I played for a few hours and it was painfully slow and janky.

 

[Prime Junta]

Just finished it. Sleeper of the year so far. Expectations were low, I was thinking it was an artsy woke non-game with low production values and maybe a few interesting ideas, but it actually turned out to be rather good. There was a genuine sense of exploration, discovery, choice, and consequence; it looks and sounds good too. Not a huge fan of the hand-drawn 2D character art, it looks nice but is super tiring on the eyes; also the way it constantly grabs control of the camera (and the river navigation) made me queasy.

But overall, yeah, much better than I had hoped for. It does the "deep time sci-fantasy" thing head and shoulders better than T:ToN, and a lot better than some rather well-regarded novels I can think of.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Indeed. I have been wanting to replay this and the sorcery games tbh. Cant wait another inkle game

 

[HoboForEternity]

Some of the major choices are pretty hefty too

Spoiler

like sending the castaways to your home planet will ruin it, caused it to lockdown and you missing all the dialogues inside that location, which is important in dechipering the words because your librarian friend helps alot in that.

It was foreshadowed by the prophecy itself somewhat, that intruders will bring ruins to their faction, which in a hindsight i shouldn't have done that lol

Sorcery have some moments like this too, but it was lesser impact and spread troughout the games. Sorcery legit feels like a tabletop campaign with human GM while heaven's vault is more of an interactive fiction novel thing.

Both are excellent imo

 

[WallaceChambers]

Played this game recently and it's really good. I wouldn't be surprised to see people ripoff the translation puzzles in other games. Unfortunately I experienced some bugs that confused the story a bit, where it seemed as though my choices were reversed. It turns out they weren't, I just got dialogue options from other narrative branches randomly in the late game.

Despite that unfortunate problem the game is fantastic, super deep lore, genuinely elegant writing (without being pretentious) and some of the most unique puzzle mechanics I've seen from an adventure game in a while. I didn't even mind all the sailing, which I've heard is a point of frustration for some other people.

I'm surprised this is flying under the radar as much as it is, especially in the woke outlets. This should be like their dream game but I haven't seen much hype around it. Inkle announced that they're making some turn based strategy game on twitter but I hope Heaven's Vault is profitable so they can make another full fledged adventure game too.

Some of the major choices are pretty hefty too

Spoiler

like sending the castaways to your home planet will ruin it, caused it to lockdown and you missing all the dialogues inside that location, which is important in dechipering the words because your librarian friend helps alot in that.

It was foreshadowed by the prophecy itself somewhat, that intruders will bring ruins to their faction, which in a hindsight i shouldn't have done that lol

Spoiler

Damn, thats fucked up. I sent them to IOX and all they did was low key press the librarian dude one time. Never heard from them again afterward.

 

[Tigranes]

Huh. Alright, I'll check it out. Not hugely enamoured with artstyle despite laudable inspirations, but the translation puzzles in particular look intriguing.

 

[Starwars]

Like with their other games, I find that the writing and the CYOA/dialogue is what makes the game great. Inkle's games are just really pleasant to play through.

Now, it controls like ass, the ship game is pretty meaningless and the translation minigame is... well, it's pretty fun to be honest but awful to control.
But all in all it's a great experience with an interesting world and a very nice atmosphere. Investigating old ruins is just marvelous fun and the game even manages to be kinda creepy in some parts.

It's definitely a favorite of mine in recent years, even though it's still pretty "gameplay lite" in many ways.

 

[Prime Junta]

I started a new game+.

Impressed at how much more there is to get out of the translations now — they’re longer and more informative. Also impressed at the C&C — I’m making different choices and stuff is not playing out the same.

This is way more replayable than p much any adventure game I’ve played, and more so than some RPGs. The flaws are easy to forgive too. Really nice work and it is a shame this isn’t getting more attention.

 

[fantadomat]

I just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmjIBD2Fd4 and feel like playing something about archaeology and ancient fallen civilizations. So is there any actual archaeology in the game or something similar? Any other games that could scratch the itch?

 

[Prime Junta]

So is there any actual archaeology in the game or something similar?

It's the best archaeology game I've seen anywhere I think. Deciphering ancient inscriptions and piecing together what the hell happened was mountains of fun. What's more, you'll only get a badly incomplete picture on your first run; the new game+ lets you keep your dictionary and gives you longer inscriptions so you'll only flesh it out at that point. It's worth replaying, too -- it's likely you missed entire major locations on the first run, also there are major consequences for your choices.

Really my only beef with it is the hand-drawn papercut-animated stuff, it's pretty but unpleasant in the long run.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Nice game. The (hi)story you are going to discover however appears to be quite complex. I am still through the first playthrough and I don't have a clear vision, but I think you will need at least a second playthrough to connect all the dots...

 

[KazikluBey]

I haven't finished yet, but holy shit this game really loves to waste your time... You walk extremely slowly and you sail slowly for minutes on end following quest arrows between locations with bare minimum interaction, the game sometimes takes control of your character, the robot keeps asking if you want to leave, except for when you're actually finished on the moon and do want to leave so now you have to walk slllooowwwlllyy back to the ship. And you can't return anywhere unless there's a specific story reason, so you better explore while you can, if you care.

The language deciphering while fun in itself is (so far) completely disconnected from everything else, gameplay wise. It's just something to do while the story is drip-fed to the player in conversation with your robot, mostly.

There's only one save file, so now that I happened to walk a few steps more on a moon instead of immediately interacting with !!!EXTREMELY UNIQUE INTERESTING ARTIFACT!!! I was locked out of interacting with said artifact when some stairs fell down.

"But you can replay in new-game+ and you get to keep your dictionary!" Great point, except there's no way I'll replay something that disrespects my time with induced boredom like this. Maybe I'll check back in when I finish, I shouldn't be very far off now.

 

[fantadomat]

I haven't finished yet, but holy shit this game really loves to waste your time... You walk extremely slowly and you sail slowly for minutes on end following quest arrows between locations with bare minimum interaction, the game sometimes takes control of your character, the robot keeps asking if you want to leave, except for when you're actually finished on the moon and do want to leave so now you have to walk slllooowwwlllyy back to the ship. And you can't return anywhere unless there's a specific story reason, so you better explore while you can, if you care.

The language deciphering while fun in itself is (so far) completely disconnected from everything else, gameplay wise. It's just something to do while the story is drip-fed to the player in conversation with your robot, mostly.

There's only one save file, so now that I happened to walk a few steps more on a moon instead of immediately interacting with !!!EXTREMELY UNIQUE INTERESTING ARTIFACT!!! I was locked out of interacting with said artifact when some stairs fell down.

"But you can replay in new-game+ and you get to keep your dictionary!" Great point, except there's no way I'll replay something that disrespects my time with induced boredom like this. Maybe I'll check back in when I finish, I shouldn't be very far off now.

Yeah,it is a wasted potential all around. The translation part is pretty good,everything else is shit. Would have been better as adventure game with fast transitioning that what eva this is.

 

[KazikluBey]

Ok, so I finished it. The language minigame is fun, but ultimately could have been released as a simple standalone mobile game. You can't put your language skills to use outside of it, and most fragments the game throws at you (on your first playthrough at least) while clearly fitting the theme of the places they're found in/on are too short to provide additional information. The longer fragments I did see started to get annoying to solve though because of the crappy console controls and UI as neither the text nor the word choices you have fit on the screen, and you have to scroll about sideways for both. I don't relish the thought of a new game+ with more long sentences to scroll back and forth over.

The language itself had a handful of mistakes. Like the word "well" (the kind with water in it) was used in the "I am well"-sense, when they also have a word for "good".

The history you uncover is pretty interesting and I might be tempted to play it again to flesh out the timeline and straighten a few question marks if it weren't for how slow the game is.

Overall I don't actually feel as negatively about it as my posts probably sound. It's not bad seen as an atmospheric relaxing "interactive experience", but it took too long for what I got out of it.

 

[Prime Junta]

I liked the slowness. Very relaxing.

 

[fantadomat]

I liked the slowness. Very relaxing.

 

[ValeVelKal]

It starts slowish, but if you want a game that really sends you in a « what happened to the Dwener » kind of investigation, trying to collate clues, slowing increasing your mastery of their ancient language as you try to read the strange scripts on found artefacts and figuring out why other archaeologists and erudites are keeping their cards way closer than they should, all while trying to investigate the death of a previous archaelogist - it is for you.

It is not really an adventure game properly, in that you don’t combine items with items ; the core gameplay elements is :
- trying to decifer the language which is really nice,
- exploring areas like in a good old walking simulator,
- a pretty relaxing but not really great navigation à la Spelljammer between « moons »
- a lot of choices about which information to go public with and with information to withhold to other characters, and to whom, because in the world of high-stake archeology there is no friends, only allies

I am not sure to which extent the C&C is simulated, but it looks strong from playing I think 70% of the game. It is after all from the 80 days guy, and 80 days was basically C&C.

Finally, well written characters including MC who is not really a nice person but likeable nonetheless.

in short, the game is much more than the sum of its parts - try it.