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dkirschner's Heaven's Vault (PC)

[May 18, 2025 10:48:06 AM]

Excellent narrative adventure/mystery game. You play as an archaeologist and basically-a-PhD-student named Aliya who gets sent by her professor / university head / potential Empress (my, don't we believe university administrators have a lot of power!) to find out what happened to a roboticist colleague who may have uncovered some troubling truths about the history of the Nebula. You have a robot companion named Six (so named because you've gotten all your previous numerically named robots destroyed, which is understandably alarming to Six) and a ship. The gist of the gameplay is that you "sail" between moons from site to site (some ancient, some modern), exploring them, finding artifacts, translating ancient inscribed text, as you piece together the long and complicated history of the rise and fall of the Nebula’s various ages and empires. Your choices have implications for the Nebula’s future and everyone's survival.

The obvious comparisons here are to 80 Days (a previous non-linear narrative game from these devs) and Chants of Sennaar (which also involves deciphering ancient languages). The difference between this and Chants of Sennaar (and Tunic, now that I think about it) is that you don't have to correctly figure out the language. Like, it's helpful to understand the story, but you can progress fine by making total guesses at what symbols mean. This makes Heaven’s Vault an easy game, whereas Chants of Sennaar and Tunic were quite challenging. That’s fine because of the constant feeling of discovery, which motivated me to keep going. I loved finding new artifacts in the dirt, trying to puzzle out inscriptions, the satisfaction of confirming correct translations, discovering new moons and ancient sites, and going deeper into the history of this game world.

The constant sense of discovery counterbalanced what may otherwise have felt like a slower game. There is no “run” button; you slowly walk everywhere. There is a lot of dialogue, especially optional context-specific dialogue (e.g., you can press “Q” or “R” when prompted to ask a question or reply outside of any formal scene, which supplies extra personality to Aliya and Six and supplies deeper insight into what’s going on). The “sailing” involves slowly watching your ship move along a path, with you occasionally having to check the map and guide it left or right and having to press the right mouse button for a burst of speed. The sailing is meant to be relaxing and contemplative. It’s pretty sailing through the Nebula, but that was absolutely my least favorite part of the game. The distances between moons can be large, and the sailing speed is slow. You can occasionally “rest” and have Six take over for you, but I found that sometimes Six would annoyingly divert me from my path, and Aliya would wake farther away from her destination than when she went to sleep. Minor gripes in the grand scheme of things.

The writing is top-notch. I really enjoyed Aliya and Six; their banter is great, often funny. The art and sound are nice too. This gets two thumbs up from me.