Heartbound

Startup Screen

***Heartbound*** is a story-based early access RPG, being developed by Pirate Software, where every action counts. The game was released on Christmas Day, 2018 into Early Access on Steam and Humble Bundle.

Heartbound explores the story of a boy named Lore who deals with mental and emotional conflict as he embarks on a journey through different worlds in search of his dog Baron. The game is unique in its heavily customised user experience as even actions that aren't visibly recorded are taken into account and impact how a player's story progresses.

## Gameplay

The game is divided into 5 Chapters:

1. Chapter 1 - Home World/The Spine/Dark World
2. Chapter 2 - The Tower
3. Chapter 3 - Animus (INCOMPLETE BUT PLAYABLE)
4. Chapter 4 - Jotunheim. It has two versions: Muspelheim or Niflheim (INCOMPLETE UNPLAYABLE)
5. Chapter 5 - NO INFO

Chapter 1 chronologically always takes place first; after this, the player is provided with 3  choices: play The Tower, Animus or Jotunheim. You may play these in any order. The location and setting of the player's Jotunheim chapter (Muspelheim or Niflheim) depends entirely on the curiosity value they procure up until this point. Curiosity Value is a mechanic hinted to the player by Binder in Chapter 1 in The Spine. The player is rewarded in various ways for exploring and interacting with in-game items. As a result, the player receives unique dialogues, achievements, alternate routes and timelines to choose from, creating a more unique player experience. The game is currently in early access and still being developed on in both the main game and ARG aspects.

Most of the choices you can make to alter your run aren't as simple as choosing between a couple of options on screen. The game keeps track of what you have and have not interacted with, the order in which you do things, how long you spend in different places, your performance on minigames broken down in various percentages rather than win/lose, the paths you took to get somewhere. Those things also affect the story. Dialogue from Misery and Mania in Chapter 3 is also altered if it is not your first run so your game history from previous plays is taken into account even when you Forget.

As stated before, the player experience is easily modified based on the actions one chooses, mainly being split between moral and immoral choices. If one engages with moral choices and dialogue prompts, they are provided with the Glowbringer path. If they engage in immoral choices and dialogue prompts, they are provided with the Darksider path. The main fork in the road appears in Chapter 1 where a player can choose between feeding Baron his Viking Feast or feeding him garbage. It becomes evident what path a player is on when Lore is in Darkworld (Chapter 1) and completes a battle with Barghest for the second time. Before Baron's body can be taken by The Artifact, Lore will speak in either Guardian Glyphs or Darksider Glyphs. However, a clear indicator can also be seen in the upper window of Lore's house, a purple glow will appear from the outside looking in during the dialogue between Baron and Lore as they are about to re-enter the house to sleep. Additionally the hallway walk back to Lore's room will reveal a purple glow from his Father's room, a deafening of the music in place of a heartbeat and slowed walking until the door slams shut.

## Development Status

Currently, the game can be played on Windows and Linux computers. The Mac version of Heartbound was discontinued in January 2020, because that OS dropped the support for a required library [1]. Mac players were offered refunds, regardless of play time. A version for the Nintendo Switch console will be made once the game is finished.

Also in the year of 2020, Thor (the designer, programmer, and writer) got sick because of Covid-19 (initially thought to be bronchitis [2]) and was unable to work on the game through the most of 2020. He has recovered and is working again on Heartbound.

On April 2021 Thor has decided to upgrade the game engine from GameMaker Studio 1.4 to the version 2.3[3], because of a bug that made the game to run at a slower frame rate on some Windows machines. The issue was caused by an Windows update from the previous year, however the problem was only detected now. On some computers the game runs at 45 frames per second, which is 3/4 of of the intended speed of 60 fps.

Thor released a temporary fix that makes the game to run at full speed, but at the cost of a higher CPU usage. The permanent solution is to upgrade the engine (GameMaker Studio), since the fps problem was fixed on its newest versions. Thor estimates that the upgrade process from GMS 1.4 to 2.3 should take around 2 months, in order to fix the bugs that come from the automatic conversion process. The version 1.4 of GameMaker Studio had already been on "end of life" from some time now, so it isn't going to get any fixes. The development of Heartbound began on version 1.4 because it was the latest version at that point, the version 2.0 did not exist back then.

The development of the game is live streamed on these two channels:

* https://www.twitch.tv/gopiratesoftware - Thor (programming, design, writing)
* https://www.twitch.tv/rivermakes - Shaye (art)

## See also

* Pirate Software: the company that makes Heartbound.
* Heartbound ARG: the official alternate reality game (ARG) of Heartbound.
* Heartbound (First Build): the earliest build of Heartbound.
* Latest Heartbound news.
* Version History: the Heartbound update log.