Battles are tightly woven into the narrative of Heartbound, having you affect stories and relationships depending on how you play through its minigame fights.
You have to guide Lore and his dog Baron through some surreal, life-changing events that will lead the pair on a journey through time and space. As you explore, fight, and interact with people and places, you’ll steadily make alterations to how the story plays out as well. These can be minor of major changes, and aim to make the narrative your own.
Heartbound carries this choice-based storytelling into combat as well. Each battle against an enemy offers a unique minigame to be played, and these offer ways to further your relationship with that creature in positive or negative ways. Overcoming a creature will also give you a glimpse into their memories, showing other facets of the story. However, certain battles will only happen if you take specific actions, so you will have to try many things to see each memory (or avoid those fights altogether).
For those who want the story to get truly cryptic, Heartbound also features cryptographic puzzles that are built to bring the whole community in to solve them. It aims to offer a truly complex narrative through how you can shape it and through players working together.
Heartbound is available for $9.99 on Steam Early Access.
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