I found this little game unexpectedly compelling. It’s an rpgmaker attempt at a social-battle detective game. The title comes from the battle metaphor — by outwitting the suspects you can ‘unlock hearts’ and get them to tell you the truth.
I thought the plot was solid, if a bit obvious. I was mostly hooked by the two main characters, Aya and Beatris, who were unusually engaging. Both felt more complex than these types of characters usually do, especially when they’re women, and I just… liked them. The plot was extremely linear — it didn’t feel like a whodunnit or anything — and there’s not really any deduction or puzzle-solving, but I was totally into it through to the end, largely because of the characters. I was also very exhausted when I played since so I admittedly can’t rule out that I was just extra-receptive to a little indie, lol. And honestly, it’s free, so the risk is low.
I also really liked the aesthetic — I think with a lot of the ‘minimalist pixel art’ games you look at and go, “Okay, this person is blindly aping Undertale,” (or, less often nowadays, Earthbound/Dragon Quest/FF). However, the art direction here felt much more thoughtful and deliberate. The bulk of the game is in greyscale, except for pops of color, which are used thoughtfully to evoke certain characters, moods, or themes. It’s used with a gentle hand and the result, to me, was really effective.
The battles themselves varied in quality — I think it would have been better suited by having there be multiple ways to get at the person’s hangups instead of having to find the exact ones the game had in mind — I imagine it was limited by rpgmaker here. Especially toward the endgame where you had a bunch of techniques, it started to feel more random which ones worked than like I was thinking carefully about the person. As a lot of these small games do, it had a tendency to feel more like a proof-of-concept for a social battle system than a fully functioning system. I still like that kind of thing, but if you’re looking for a fully-polished and robust social battler you may be disappointed.
All in all, it doesn’t ask any big questions about the meaning of life, but it tells a solid story about solid people, and has that great feel of an early project by a promising dev. It looks like the dev has since released two more games on itch.io, one of which is a full game, Myosotis, which looks really interesting and I’ll probs check out at some point. Hope to see more from them!
