You are an immobile, bullet-shooting, heart-shaped [i]something[/i] with a force field trying to survive from being killed by waves of enemies that look like turtles(!), blimps(!) and other objects in [b]PROTECTHEART[/b] (purposely spelt as one word) by [b]kgsensei[/b].
As the saying goes, "What's old is new again for a new generation." If you know your gaming history, PROTECT HEART looks suspiciously like a classic arcade game called [b]ASTEROIDS[/b] but with just enough gameplay tweaks to keep Atari's lawyers at bay.
In PROTECTHEART, your goal is simple: Kill the enemy before they collide with you. If they hit you directly, you die and the game ends. Before your enemies collide with you, though, you can shoot and destroy them first and you also have a force field that can absorb a few impacts before it finally fails. Your mouse dictates where the bullets go and the shooting is automatic.
After each successive wave of enemies, you get a randomized selection of three choices in order to upgrade your player. The upgrades range from how rapidly you fire to how quickly the game responds to your mouse movements to the spread of bullets and how much damage they can inflict. Sometimes, you only get two choices as one upgrade may take up two of three available spaces.
Aesthetically, I'm not quite certain what the developer was going for, using abstract objects for both the player and the enemies. Turtles attacking a heart (and a bullet-shooting heart protected by a force field at that)? Blimps? I have no problem with pixel-art graphics but the choice of icons doesn't make much sense. It also doesn't exactly compel players to keep playing, either.
The gameplay mechanic of three random choices for upgrading your player, by itself, is not much of an issue but sometimes having only two choices is just as baffling as the icons. At the very least, there ought to be at least three different choices. While I did not play for a significant length of time, I never saw an option to replenish the force field that your player has or to make it stronger. That might have been a nice option.
Unlike the classic game, ASTEROIDS, your player can't move. Being stationary on a rectangular screen causes the player to be especially vulnerable to enemies that appears directly from the top or bottom from the screen where there is less space. Perhaps the developer could cause these enemies to be slower in compensation.
There's really no goal or story to the game although arcade-style games, such as this one, doesn't really need it. You play until you die.
The game is initially fun and it's somewhat competent in what it sets out to do. Therefore, I'd recommend it although I'm not exactly sure for how long people are going to be playing it. Most people will figure out quick if this is the type of game that they want to play for more than a few playthroughs.
The developer is actively adjusting the gameplay to the game as of this writing (2024-03-13). Those adjustments ought to include, perhaps, more appropriate graphics for the game, a true selection of three random upgrades and some compensation for enemies that appear from the edges of the screen that are closer to your character in order to give you a fair chance of destroying them.
In the end, there's nothing terribly wrong with this game but, on the other hand, there's also not much here, either.
