Shivering Hearts

[h1]🎤Introduction[/h1] [b]Shivering Hearts[/b] is a story-based role-playing game that’s based around the choices you make and what you say to people. The story is short and sweet, with humorous dialogue, a simple story concept to keep you hooked till the end along with some interesting characters all with their own situations and backstories. The problems occur when you try to get the different endings, despite some dialogue being different when you say something different, it almost always felt like I'd get the same ending. [h1]✔️Pros[/h1] • The writing is both detailed and humorous (occasionally breaks the 4th wall) • Beautifully hand-drawn graphics • Specific choices you make may have consequences • Short 2 hour story-driven adventure [h1]❌Cons[/h1] • Even though the art style is hand-drawn there is no animation in the backgrounds making everything feel static and lifeless, despite the environmental sounds playing in the background • Some end dialogue assumes that you talked to a specific character even if you haven’t • Not as many endings or different situations I found myself in when doing things differently [h1]🕹Gameplay[/h1] [h3][b]Story[/b][/h3] The story of [b]Shivering Hearts[/b] follows two adventurers (yourself and your childhood friend Rin) who find themselves in a small town known as [b]Shivering Hearts[/b]. There seem to be a lot of people dying in this small town in a short amount of time and it’s your job to find out what’s going on. You’ll meet a handful of different characters dealing with their own personal problems which you can help them with. Each character has a unique personality and acts differently depending on what you say to them, which keeps the story interesting all the way through. Despite the story only going on for about 2ish hours you’ll definitely find it interesting and want to talk to all of the characters you come across on your small journey. The writing throughout is a combination of being serious and humorous, though the game clearly knows when to make something funny. Some of the dialogue choices are fourth wall breaking which got a small laugh from me every now and then, as well as how some of the characters act. There are times where there are more serious situations that you have to take care of and the game recognise that and doesn’t try to make it funny. It’s enjoyable from start to finish and is interesting enough to hold your attention for your first playthrough of [b]Shivering Hearts[/b] [h3][b]Choices[/b][/h3] [b]Shivering Hearts[/b] does have branching paths depending on what you say to people, that is if the branching path was just a twig on the log of the tree. There are a handful of noticeably different cut scenes that I found every now and then but it didn’t seem to branch off to a completely different ending. Unless you make a drastic decision to leave the village before resolving the situation, then you’ll more than likely find yourself on the same path every time. That isn’t to say however that the new dialogue didn’t interest me, I just wanted more from a game like this, it seemed ambitious and confident about how complex and different things would be if you made different decisions and in some aspect that’s true. However, for the most part, I found myself back on the same old path most of the time. [h3][b]Replayibilty[/b][/h3] The game itself doesn’t have much replay value because of how direct the story really is, you’ll always find yourself in set situations no matter what you choose to say to people. The illusion of your choices matter wears off pretty quickly and you’ll soon find yourself in the same situation as before. I felt like there could’ve been more done with this, I played through the game a handful of times and beside some dialogue changes there wasn’t much difference, besides getting the ‘bad’ ending. There needed to be more branching paths, different conversations leading to different scenarios and consequences to make the player come back to try again. It’s possible that I might’ve missed some (or maybe a lot) of different endings, but I didn’t feel compelled to come back again just to try and say something different to see if the ending would change. [h1]🎧Music & Sound[/h1] There’s only a small amount of variety to the music throughout the game, but when there isn’t any music playing there are suitable environmental sounds that add to the game. These only slightly make up for how static all the backgrounds look, despite being hand-drawn it would’ve been nice to have some small animations playing to make the world feel more alive and real. [h1]🎨Graphics[/h1] Everything is hand-drawn which makes this game stand out a lot more than most other RPG Maker games and shows how unique it is with its visuals. Each character has their own portrait when they speak, with a lot of detail going into each of them showing how much effort went into the game’s visuals. It’s a shame that there isn’t much animation going on in the background, making everything look very still and lifeless. [h1]💭Closing Thoughts[/h1] [b]Shivering Hearts[/b] was enjoyable from start to finish, the writing was interesting and unique enough to keep me hooked and had a good blend of taking itself seriously and making a more light hearted joke. However, there didn’t seem to be that many obvious branching paths besides some different dialogue and one other different ending. After playing through the game three or four times I didn’t feel compelled to try to find a different ending because of how repetitive things got. I felt like there needed to be more consequences for your actions along with different endings. However, I still enjoyed the story during my first playthrough and can’t fault the game for how interesting the story was. [i]This product was reviewed using a free key provided by the Developers[/i] [quote]For more critically honest reviews of mine, check out [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/MetrosReviewCorner]Metro’s Review Corner[/url][/quote]