Game Sneak Peek #4: Else Heart.Break()

Between job applications, interviewing and making sure I don't run out of money and inevitably starve to death in a darkened alleyway, I haven't had a whole lot of time to do everything I want to do. Adding onto the fact that the whole ordeal of being laid off has literally caused a temporary relapse in my mental well-being (main affliction being depression), this has been one crazy rollercoaster for me. Thankfully, I a plan moving forward now and am making great efforts to carve out exactly what I want out of life; much like what one has to do when approaching this latest game I'm covering, Else Heart.Break()!

I personally would not have gotten into this game if it wasn't for one of my favorite YouTubers, Alex Diener. It's true that he's not terribly famous, and quite possibly the mass populous may even find his stylization of commentary to be rather dull, but there's something I find refreshing from his commentary that I don't find in other YouTubers who frequently post Let's Plays. It's hard to nail down precisely why; perhaps one of the many reasons for this is his dedication towards avoiding mainstream games, but even I know that's not totally the reason why.

For whatever reason, he has exposed me to this game, and because of that, you are now getting a review on it. I have to say, when I first watched him play it, I wasn't particularly invested in the gameplay. I found the initial in-game days were rather bland without much to offer. However, when the heart of the game came into play, I immediately had to jump onto it for its exploration aspect, both in the physical and metaphysical sense. Hunting down objects for clues as to where to go and being able to break into literally anything (or just about) to change its properties was a very unique experience that no other game has provided me to date.

How, one might ask? Well, it's main feature, and by far its most interesting, is its programming aspect. You can take a cup of coffee and make yourself completely free of tiredness, but other people smelly, for example. You can take a door that should open up into one house and make it point to a completely different one. You can teleport yourself basically anywhere in the game, including the internet!

That being said, there are a few limiting factors. Each game object has an API, or application program interface, which shows you which functions you can call, and not all functions will be available for every object. And this makes sense. You can't take a door and make it read a floppy. Where would you insert it?

There is a lot to explore here, and unless you're really careful about not missing anything, you'll be able to continue enjoying new experiences in at least a second, if not third, play-through. I'm currently on day sixteen on my save file, and I still feel like I there's a ton of stuff still left for me to explore.

As you might already guessed from my description of it thus far, there's not a lot of direction with regards to its story. In fact, I believe this game's storytelling is a total mess. It's so easy to sequence break the game that you can pretty much skip half of it by complete accident. If you do, you will get odd dialogue choices with no context whatsoever. One example would be "I broke her laptop" When you might have needed to steal it first and you don't even know the character yet. It's that kind of level of sequence breaking. And the game doesn't really check, nor cares, to see whether or not you have.

Even if you manage to avoid sequence breaking, there isn't much substance there. The characters' personalities are well made, and they're living their own lives, but there just isn't much plot for them to drive. The characters may feel a little flat if you're skipping out on a bunch of the inner dynamics of their lives, but chances are that won't happen to the casual player. What would more commonly occur is the event of the characters simply running out of dialogue and then having nothing to say when you interact with them.

This might be a bit annoying, but I can understand why it was designed this way. In a game this expansive, having to account for every little possibility is a rather strenuous designing issue when coming to games. And for a concept such as this, it would be a monumentally tall order to expect a totally life-like experience with the characterization aspect of its world building. At any rate, I feel this approach is preferable to standardizing all of their dialogue, which would create a vastly different experience (not a good one, either).

That being said, this game is still quite enjoyable for what it is. As it turned out, it didn't need to focus too heavily on its story aspect, and they did well enough to pass on its characterization. The heavy focus on this game's design was definitely its programming, and I think they did quite well with incorporating real programming techniques while still making it easy for those who have no experience to enjoy it. There is its questionable formatting that any experienced programmer will immediately notice as being marginally clunky (as was noted in Alex's LP), but even then, it still feels natural enough to handle. (Note: One specific shortcut you will want to know about is shift + arrow key to cut/copy/paste the code.)

Because of its unique concept, its replay value (I plan on giving this game a second play-through at some point), and its general aesthetics and gameplay, I fully recommend giving this one a try for those of you who like exploration and coding.

Score:

Story: 2/10
Characterization: 6/10
Concept: 9/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Subjective: 9/10

Final Score: 7/10

Would you like to request a specific game for me to review? I have a new list of my games, on the How Long To Beat website, which I keep up to date, and it more accurately portrays my library of games than Steam does alone. You can just find me at this link My HowLongToBeat Profile, and you should be able to check out my library. And if you can't, let me know and I'll find some way for you all to view the list.

If you're viewing something in my list and you're still not finding what you're looking for? That's no problem! Just send me a game request, and I'll do my best to fulfill it. Depending on the prices, the review may or may not take longer to fulfill this way, but I will always at least consider games if I do not own them already.