“Tara looked at me with more pride than a rainbow flag.” This line made me laugh out loud. ^_^

You know how I always say that Visual Novels are not for me? This is not an arbitrary statement. I don’t have some elitist disdain for VNs (well, in theory, I don’t, but I’ll cop to often finding issues in individual VNs that strike me as…infantile.) But to be clear, the reason I generally don’t like VNs is because they are not good games and they are even worse as novels. Dialogue is often unrealistic and banal and while I actually like the idea of reading a picture book, I still expect the book part to be worth it. Above all other things, I have not yet read a VN where the game mechanics worked and also let me move forward with ease. And, again on my side, I do not wish to choose my own adventure, I want to be told a good story. The decisions are usually either pointless, or so convoluted that I can’t actually get anywhere in the narrative. 

All this said, I was genuinely surprised and pleased at Studio Élan’s Heart of the Woods, Chapter One demo. 

To begin with…the sprites do not look like paper cutouts, flipping awkwardly, blinking convulsively like they have something in their eyes. Yay! Seriously, VN fans, I cannot understand how that does not make you twitchy.

The characters  move a little more naturally and their expressions actually vary, with smooth transitions. That right there, made the whole thing much easier to tolerate. I am a harsh master, though, and will still insist that, if a movement is important enough for it to be described in the text, it should be important enough to visualize. Moving sprites back and forth is fine for proximity, but if you can animate a character touching their face, you illustrate that character touching another character’s arm. I swear, I’m gonna harp on this forever until the entire industry gives in. ^_^ Show and tell. That’s the whole point.

The rest of the illustration, backgrounds and ambience on the game were, IMHO, excellent. There’s a number of small, but significant touches which increase player engagement; motion within scenes, a video recorder toggle, very good sound effects that match well with the visuals.  And the music is top-notch. I was reading the demo while my wife was home and just let the music run, because both of us found it pleasant and not at all repetitive.  Top marks for the music! I’ve got the fully voiced Kindred Spirits next on the list and I cannot express to you how much I am not looking forward to hearing that same 2-minute musical riff over and over again.

Then we come to the story. It’s slow to get going, I’ll be honest, but the payoff was exceptional. There’s a fair amount of setup and atmosphere. And implied but not explicated, backstory. The tensions are clear, but the reasons for them are not, yet.

There’s a lot of Chapter One. So much, that I wish there has been a progress meter as I went along. In some of the slower bits, I would have liked to know how much further along I had in that scene, and in the chapter. This will become especially important to the larger game, since I don’t know how many Chapters there will be – or how long they will be. Chapter One was pretty long, in my opinion.

Above all other things, I really liked that there were no decisions to make. I appear to be a minority of one in this. On the Studio Élan forums, people were bemoaning that there were no choices. The Studio stated clearly that there would be choices in the full version but, they would not change the romance paths.  So, like Kindred Spirits, I think we can look for choices that don’t change the larger narrative. I’m kind of sad that there are any choices, I know I’m alone in this, but I find them utterly exhausting and tedious. Tell me a story. 

I’m not going to talk about the characters, I’ll wait for the full game to do that. I think there will be a lot to talk about, then.

In the meantime,  I recommend the Heart of the Woods Chapter One demo and ask you to look forward to the full version which will be released in the middle of February!

Ratings: 

TBD when the full version comes out, but let’s call it a tentative 8 for now.

I am genuinely looking forward to the full version. That’s should count as a victory for the folks at Studio Élan.