Heart of Enya

First of all this has nothing to do with the band, "Enya". "Heart of Enya" is a student project from UC Santa Cruz in the USA. One of the first things students should be taught in game development is that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's with dedicated 3D cards like the Voodoo3 and the ATI Rage. But the students were deliberately mistaught that's it's okay to release obsolete 2D games in the 3D era of gaming... certainly any professional developer seeing a prospective new hire who doesn't even know about 3D gaming probably isn't going to give them a job. Needless to say if an educational institution taught me incorrectly on purpose, I'd ask for my money back. We also have to question what value there is for gamers on Steam when institutions flood the store with low quality 2D video game homework assignments... sure, it might make the students feel good about themselves, but this has no benefit for gamers who have to wade through this stuff to find professionally made 3D games. This is a poorly made turn based strategy that's been grafted onto an incredibly badly written e-book. It really makes me wonder what the hell the faculty at UC was smoking when they thought it would be okay to teach students that this is somehow acceptable game design in 2021. Certainly the poor students aren't going to get a job with a real game development company if this is all they have in the portfolio. Anyway, the game itself, beyond just the incredibly cringey writing, is just an incredibly weak 2D ripoff of Banner Saga, you do some turn based battles on a small grid, reminiscient of TBS games made for mobile phones only worse. The plot: The game's story follows you, playing as Willow Wisp, a campfire spirit, guiding a group of adventurers to fend off "the Frost" by using the magic of self love. I told you it was cringey, didn't I? During the day, crappy TBS gameplay, at night, you learn all about personally preferred pronoun self-identification at an inn. Yeah, that's what they used to talk about in medieval fantasy inns. Like all student projects this feels incomplete, lacks polish, and is full of game breaking bugs, because, you guessed it, the students got their grades and walked away, leaving this portfolio piece to linger on Steam where nobody wanted it. There's a subtext of political social commentary with the use of preferred personal pronouns injected hamfistedly into a fantasy game. This clashes jarringly with the rest of the narrative and fantasy worldbuilding. This isn't to say people shouldn't have a right to let people know if they have pronouns they prefer to use (I do believe we need to have a world where people feel safe to live their lives), but the injection of that into a backdrop where it's obviously out of place breaks the whole narrative reception of the game. It's pretty obvious this was done to push a social agenda much harder than it needs to be, and whether we may or may not agree with the cause, it's my firm belief that social agenda of any kind has no place in gaming. It does no service to gamers at all for political or social agenda to be shoved down our throats, no matter which side is doing the shoving. This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers? It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff. In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 6 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. This student project/tech demo/glorified homework assignment provides no Steam profile benefits, no +1 to your game count, and little value to gamers (because it's just a small, unpolished student project), so I can't recommend this over the thousands of full, professionally made games on Steam.

Political correctness :( Story is left movement propaganda.

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A barely playable TBS game which hoped to capitalize on the modern political trends Good: - graphics are good though they lack animations So-so: - the whole "gender pronouns" agenda - combat is simplistic. Although it kinda works, it's clumsy and slow because of poorly placed buttons, confirmations etc. Obviously, the tactical system wasn't front and center for the devs here - music is rather mediocre Bad: - the "beep-beep-beep" sounds when any character is talking. It actually sounds so comical together with the music (which attempts to build up atmosphere) that I almost quit the game at the first dialog - endless dialogs, with each message appearing not at once but with letters one-by-one. Cmon... [table][tr][th][i]I'm a Steam curator, you can [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43946907-Friendly-Nerd/]follow me[/url][/i][/th][/tr][/table]

Overall a very sweet and charming game. It's great having more overtly and explicitly queer games. The tactical combat isn't suuuuper deep, but it's chunky enough to have held my interest to completion. This isn't a criticism per-se because it's mechanically sound and there's still a bit of a learning curve to how to counter enemies. The art is absolutely delectable, and I'd die for any of the cast. UI could probably use some polish. Loved the soupmaking screen though - any game is made better with soup.

It's free, the art and music are lovely, the characters and story is unique, and the gameplay is fun. But it crashed twice in 2.5 hours. And if the whole point is to defeat as many enemies as possible in a single match, and the game only saves between matches, then crashing is especially unacceptable.

Heart of Enya has a *tremendous* amount of storytelling packed into its small package. The story its telling is pretty straighforward but effective, about three people who need to learn (for one reason or another) how to ask for help. The way those arcs play out though is so like...punches you in the gut with un-cynical wholesome that its really hard not to feel with them, and I definitely didn't cry multiple times no sir XD. What really makes it stand out tho is how well integrated these arcs are into the combat mechanics of the game and each of the characters. While trying not to spoil anything, each of the characters mechanical role parallels their understanding of themselves and how that grows in the story in a *really* satisfying way that's very clever and comendable. I don't think heart of enya quite makes use of all the potential it brings up, but it has a *lot* of clever ideas and its cohesive enough to tell a satisfying and emotionally resonant story with all of its parts at once. I enjoyed my time with it a lot, and I hope you do to!

Sound: 6 Graphics: 6 Story: 7 Gameplay: 6 Commands: 6 Fun: 5 Time to load / lag: 9 Bugs / Problems: 8 Final (my score, my rules - these is not math, punk) - 6