Others - Heavy Hearts [v0.52 Hotfix 1] [Dammitbird]

This game is borderline. There is good content here but it's held back by it's foundation.
I don't know what game engine this is but it's not helping this games cause. My first impressions is I am dealing with a game that is clearly optimized for a controller so only using a keyboard is punishment enough.

The lack of UI means I find myself randomly pressing buttons trying to relearn the tutorial (Apparently Q is a cheat button btw) and hopefully find things like the gallery or changing your weapons elemental damage.

The combat isn't bad per say but its busy and becomes a chore. The lack of game over content is disappointing given the illusions given in the dialogue of what will happen to you if you fail to defeat your enemies.

I found the story at least up to just past the Orc camp solid enough for an adult game. I didn't get past that because of critical gameplay failures.

First off you are told that you unlock scenes that can be viewed at your cabin just off of the starting area. Outside cabin there is an unrelated memory stone. Inside there is another unrelated memory stone and a save point. That is it.

In a game that is limited in its adult content at least being able to replay what I have done and even potentially see what scenes I might have missed so I can get an idea of how much content there is to begin with is essential. So telling me that there is a gallery and not providing it in the game world and not even accessible from the main menu is a critical failure on the devs part.

Since this game is not done yet it will be replayed a great many times so again you need the gallery to drive interest. This game thread dates from late 2021 so we over 2 years into development and a basic feature appears to be missing, this is unacceptable.

The art is good in most respects though there is a rather severe disconnect between the size of the orcs in game verses the animations where they are basically human sized, maybe a bit on the larger end of the spectrum but not by much and not matching their stature seen elsewhere.

I want to like this game but a bad engine choice that you are left to fight and missing critical features is just too much. The limited auto skip of dialog is worth mentioning but there are bigger issues at hand and I would wrap it in with the poor game engine choice.

Good game design.
Unbalanced and unnecessarily complex combat battles.
In stealth missions, the actual area of visibility of enemies does not always correspond to the drawn one.
The control buttons sometimes work in an incomprehensible way, as a result of which the character begins to use a taunt instead of charging a strong attack, or the charging animation begins, but immediately switches to another action.
Sometimes, in order for the magic attack button to work, you have to press the button to simply attack an enemy who is impervious to sword attacks.
But the worst thing is the unwindable dialogues. Imagine starting a mission, watching the dialogue, then losing the battle and having to watch all the dialogue again.

I think the game had potential but it needs a serious rework of the gameplay as it is simply not fun. It is actually tiring to play.

Good

- Art - The artstyle is enjoyable. It's nice, works for the game and works well for the scenes.

- Scenes - Not many but what is there is good. In particular the scene where the orc dicks the MC down was really hot. But my overriding thought is well why is there not more of it. The game is actually better at the lewd part than the gameplay part yet the focus is clearly the latter.

- The MC - Don't expect anything too deep but I was expecting your typical oh a penis oh my god why is it hard I am been corrupted!! Kinda character. She isn't that, she likes sex but isn't jumping on everything she sees either.

- Effort - While I may not like the game I feel it needs pointing out a lot of effort was definitely put into this by the dev. The dev was not remotely lazy I just feel the execution is not here.

Bad

- Gameplay - It's obnoxious in virtually every respect. There is no where near enough guidance on where to get things. Get these feathers, get this thing to get Orcasaurus ok great fucking where and how game? The combat isn't exciting and sits in that uncomfortable place of either been too easy or too annoying. It doesn't help the combat is built around mashing and blocking but it rarely feels worthwhile blocking. The game is not great at telling you what you need to know. Honestly it just flat out isn't fun to play.

- Stealth - Could roll into gameplay but feel this is a separate negative all of it's own. The game controls awkwardly as it is. Instant fail stealth sections where the enemy vision can go weird are just fucking no.

- Dialogue - Look I don't mind dialogue even in a non VN. But going through dialogue here feels slow and it feels stilted. That's usually a dev that's not a native speaker in fairness but still the dialogue isn't great.

- Sprite Scenes - Never been a fan of this. There's scenes with some such as slimes and a friend that are done with the on map sprites. Just make proper scenes from them especially since there's so few anyway. It's the lewd game equivalent of rubbing barbie dolls together.

- Skip - It really needs one. If any game potentially has you going back to something you've completed a skip should be there.

- Story - It's not coherent and I'm not really sure what it's going for.

Overall

The game puts the focus on the very thing it's weakest at: gameplay. If I had to describe the game it's exhausting and the scenes while enjoyable were not worth it. Either the gameplay drastically needs to improve or the gameplay part needs to be scaled back and focus on the lewd. The gameplay isn't good and there's not enough lewd content so at the moment it's failing as a game, failing as porn and failing as a porn game.

TLDR- Poor and frustrating gameplay for little reward in scenes or story.

I didn't like it. I saw the art thumbnails and thought the art looked good so I'd give it a go. It didn't work out.

What's wrong with it? Gameplay.

• Loading times and unskippable intro videos. Geez, you'd think my computer was processing the genometric sequence of a new species with how long this takes, with no ability to enter/esc/x your way past it.
• The controls are a mess, even basic stuff like making the overworld "interact" button different from the in-battle "attack" button.
• I don't even know how to describe this...hit boxing I guess? There is a "mini-game" if you can call it that, where you need to avoid the field of vision of the enemy as you move around. Except the field of vision is messed up, a few times I'd be well outside the colored vision box of the enemy and they'd still shout "human!" and you'd get a game over. I mean well outside, not like I'm next to the cone and a pixel may be touching, I mean a good inch of space between me and the field cone and somehow it triggers.
• Battles. You're given commands for attack, magic, block, and taught that if you block at the right time you can avoid damage...but you never get a lead indication from the enemy when they might attack next. SO ultimately the battle is just mash attack until it dies.
• Battle bugs. The play ender for me was fighting a bird boss (after an annoying 20 minutes of mini-game play because of the aforementioned hit box bullshit), I kick his ass, have half my character's health, and my final hit to him results in some insta-counterattack which kills my character off and I get a game over.

Sorry, you lost me by the 2nd stage.

It feels like someone's school project that had some hentai content added to it later. I tried hard to give it a fair shot for 1 hour and it was actively unenjoyable. There's extremely little h-content and the gameplay is not fun.

Unless you don't mind a handful of scenes that are exhausting to get, don't bother until v1.0 (assuming that 10x's the amount of h content and game design improvements)

Updates come out quite often for a game with such art. The visual is great. A lot is taken from old school, which is a big plus for me personally. For those people who often play and love old school, it will not be difficult to get used to the gameplay. The efforts of the developer are visible immediately from the splash screen. The character is great too. Of course, there are points that would be worth working on, but I will not list them because many of them have already been mentioned here and I am sure that the developer paid attention. Personally, I always follow every update of this game and wish the developer success with this project. At first I wanted to give it a 4, but remembering the emotions caused by the game I give it a 5. Thank you for your work.

That's a couple of hours i'll never get back.

Art's allright, but damn that game is a bore fest.

Barely any sex content, alleged pregnancy (?) that don't occur at least in this build, no character development

combat is basically "spam block button for counters"

No dialogue skip ( which SUCK when youre forced to go through the same dialogues multiple times )

Rips off Super metroid ...

"Quests" and map designs seems bad

not sure how much better it can get considering that it,s already been going for 2 years ...

DammitBird: "Heavy Hearts is an action RPG, with lewd elements"

Heavy Hearts (0.4.2) is an action RPG not focused around the lewd elements, but incorporating them as integral to the plot. However, for a game so focused around combat, exploration, and RPG, there is very little to write home about.

The combat: Too simple, yet not easy. You can infuse your attacks with various elements, but most actions require energy that only passively regenerates during combat, rather than through abilities you can activate. As a result, you too often find yourself mashing the basic attack combo simply because you have no other options. And more disappointingly so, it is effective in a lot of cases - until it isn't, at which point it only turns frustrating.

The combat TLDR: Not rewarding at all, too simple, and oftentimes just frustrating.

The exploration: Classic RPGM movement and map design, but for now (0.4.2) it only feels like yet another RPGMaker game like so many others on this site - the potential is there, but clearly rushed and unfinished.

The story: I'm going to be honest here - I haven't gotten very far into whatever the current content offering is (0.4.2). I haven't even managed to reach the first real sex scene. And all of that is because of the combination of the frustratingly simple combat, the unrewarding exploration and most of all, the inexplicably terrible UI design (I literally have to strain my eyes to read in-game tooltips due to the choice of text font, as well as the inventory management being downright horrible). What is there is decent, but not ground-breaking.

Verdict: Can't recommend it unless you like overcoming bad combat mechanics to get to the sweet center of the hard candy that is Heavy Hearts. There is something here, but buried under a lot of bad decisions. Hopefuly it improves in areas that matter.

Playing v0.42 Hotfix 1

I've played up to the orc village and have decided to stop.

Gameplay - I actually died to the orc boss before the village since I wasn't blocking properly - decently balanced gameplay challenge awaits
That said the collectable items are so far useless, and the magic elemental system is trivial thus far - your bird friend tells you what to use so you use it.

Story - I sped through what there was, and it was fine.

H scenes - from what I've seen, fine and looking forward to more.

The main issues I see are mostly UI/QoL stuff.
If you mash through the story, after the first level you'll end up re-entering it and being unable to leave - you're forced to redo everything with no skip functionality.
The only options for sound are on and off - the music is way too loud.
You can't save anywhere except for the designated in-level spots which would be fine if you didn't have to watch all the cutscenes/skip through all the dialogue. Being able to at least save in the world map should be there too and I'm not sure why it's not.

TL;DR - could be a good game but suffers from poor ui/qol/gameplay design imo
Also there's not much pixel art in the game but what it has is good

I've played many nsfw games and I've never come across one as bad as this one, everything from controls to interface is horrible, pixel art is decent, but it seems that the creator did not want to try too hard and many enemies are just a png that move, seriously, I think I have played more fun NFT games than this thing.

Very poorly designed combat system. Overall story is all over the place and not very coherent. The arty is good but the overall mechanics such as traveling and interacting with things are just terrible.

Wow this sucks and I should preface this by saying that I liked Insexity in all its completely broken and horrible glory. I like janky games, especially porn ones, it might be a weird fetish now that I think about it... anyway.

The way the intro takes nearly a full minute to give you a controllable menu.
The way the "Stealth" section in the orc village has completely borked "Vision" on the Orcs that returns you to the main menu instantly. The way the game completely makes that "Stealth" section worthless by forcing you to fight right after it. The fact that the boss has with no visible eyes despite the tutorial telling you to watch those when fighting orcs, especially since it makes no difference anyway. The way pressing shift anywhere in the vicinity of the jail cells prompts the other characters to talk to you, and in the case of the half orc and wizard it locks you in place until you're done with the dialogue.

If this area is anything reflective of the rest of what's available in this game then oh boy do I have negative opinions about it and it's ~2 years old now. Besides completely redundant gameplay gimmicks and having the audacity to make you explore the stupid orc camp again if you want a recollection piece I have nothing good to say about this game besides that some of the art is nice but you might as well go through the game's files and look at them for all the difference it's going to make.

Edit: Oh sick. Platforming. Of all the ill-conceived additions to an already horribly painful experience when it's not the most dull of walking simulators. If you can't figure out dialogue boxes or basic vision cones for enemies what made you think platforming would be good, my brother in Christ? This rating used to be a 3. *Delete*

I wanted to like this game. But, the platforming section is extremely tedious. When you fall, you dont reset back to where u fell from but u actually have to restart the entire zone. That means collecting every coin and curio is so time consuming that you will spend atleast 30mins in an area since the wolf model makes it hard to determine if u can stand on the ledge for a better jump or not.

Also, the game does not make it easy to understand where the next objectives are located. I literally had to comb several maps just to find the secret places mentioned in notes or to clear certain obstacles.

I am also not a fan of the constant screenshaking and red hues that happen every time theres glithe on the map. Can we have an option to turn it off? It hurts my eyes and also makes me dizzy.

The combat is good and engaging enough not to get bored with it but please for the love of god, make the platforming easier and better hints for next objective would improve this game alot.

[version reviewed: v0.4 Hotfix 1 - going to the end of the current Chapter 1]

In short - I think this game sits in a weird valley where it's not certain if it wants to be more of a hentai game, or a game with some hentai in it. I do think it's high-effort; The fight system is a bit unusual and does take some thought to get through at higher levels, there's a few different forms of gameplay on display throughout the game, and some of the porn scenes are fairly well done, with one scene in particular being extremely high quality. However, that experimentation with different gameplay elements does come with a little bit of jank, some of the mechanics seem entirely extraneous so far, and there's not a huge amount of porn yet, especially if you only count what's canonically in the story. I do think this is worth a try, as it has some big positives, but go in mindful of what I've said.

In long - Essentially, the game is about one of the last remaining humans on earth, in a world filled with other anthro creatures. Extradimensional beholder-like rape creatures invade your reality to kill or take away any humans there. You manage to escape and hide away for a few years, until the situation becomes untenable, and you set out to try and somehow fight back against this invasion. Gameplay mostly consists of some exploration segments and static, stage-based fights against enemies, with the game breaking out into some 2D platforming and flappy bird-style segments later on.

The fight sections are fairly easy at first - you'd have to intentionally lose in the first few missions - but new enemy types and patterns eventually leads to you having to read enemy signals, learn to parry and use magic, and so on. Some of the concepts could probably be explained a bit better, but they're fairly easy to grasp as you play. I had a few instances of weird behaviour in these sections, but nothing game-breaking (if anything, the bugs tended to be in the player's favour). The platforming and flappy bird sections are fairly OK, but I'm not an expert on either and don't have much of an opinion on them - I wouldn't say they were easy, but they weren't particularly hard either, neither took too long to complete.

The sex scenes are... a mix. The ones that are not bonus scenes do tend to come with some good text descriptions alongside them, but I only count 5 of them so far; Two not really being "full" scenes (in my opinion), and another two being a little short/basic. However, the one scene that doesn't fall into any of those caveats is easily one of the better scenes I've seen portrayed in any game, going through a few stages and with plenty of work put into it, and I think it's keeping my attention on the game by itself. The bonus scenes so far are also decent, and mainly seem to be alternate takes or a preview of a future scene, but animation-only so far. There are also a couple of pixel-only scenes which don't appear to be viewable via gallery, but are still kinda nice when they show up, if a little shorter than the proper animations. Also, the MC is just flat-out great. I'm not usually a fan of this style of character (i.e. (fairly) big boobs and skimpy clothes), but she comes off as so cute that it doesn't matter to me.

Story-wise, I don't feel like I have a ton to add because it does feel very early-on so far. I do like the banter between the MC and her companion(s), and there's a few story threads being plucked at, but not a lot has developed yet. The writing is generally good and doesn't waffle on for too long or overstay its welcome. The memey stuff may annoy some people, but does seem to have some story significance. I'd also add that the writing during scenes is something I quite like - usually when animations are involved, writing is totally absent, but adding in some chatter and describing what the MC's feeling and going through is great; Again, it doesn't get too waffle-y but it does add an extra dimension to the scenes, especially for someone like me who's a fan of the subby and dangerous stuff.

There is music. And other sounds. It... is OK. The music generally fits the mood and the sound effects generally aren't offensive, but I don't feel like there's a ton to talk about.

Regarding themes and kinks, I find it... a little odd - not bad, but odd. The story does imply a lot of dark topics, but the game mostly keeps a cheery feel, and so far there's not really anything in the way of an expected game-over scene or anything like that. Also, I'm not sure how much of this is directly story related and how much is just the character, but she does appear to have a bit of a subby streak and like a good hard fuck, especially with some of the non-humans. It's done in a fairly refreshing and reasonable-feeling way; No "fair maiden being raped suddently going ahegao after taking one cock," or being an inexplicable giga-slut, but she definitely has weaknesses that get the better of her sometimes, and I love this approach. I'm going to be very interested to see what happens in future scenes if they take a similar tack.

Regarding the jank - most of it wasn't game-ending, but there were a few odd bits, and just seems to need a bit of a polish or pass over. Refusing some options does sometimes soft-lock the game, either until chosen or just requiring a restart. Sometimes you'll do massive damage during fights, seemingly tied to times when the game slows things down to give you a tutorial message. Levels may still occasionally "pass" if you and the boss kill each other at the same time. Sometimes text will skip completely, if you do the usual "Press [button] to make text appear instantly rather than waiting for it to slowly roll out" thing. Text during some scenes can be hard to read too, usually a combination of the font choice, colour, and some effects that happen in some scenes. Text also occasionally appears outside the main window or have minor spelling errors. There's also some invisible walls/blocks in the world map, and the final exploration section at the moment can be a bit tricky, as some of the world objects blend in maybe a bit too well. I might like a little more control of the bird's height in the flappy bird section (there has to be a better name for that gameplay type) as both the fall rate and rise rate feel a little restrictive, but it's not essential. There also seems to be a bug in that section where the timer keeps counting down while paused, if you're struggling to pass it. Pressing a button on the menu screen to choose an option can also pick out a level on the world map, which is sometimes annoying, especially if you're over a level which doesn't allow you to back out of it once started.

Also, some of the mechanics just don't seem to do anything yet. There is item/coin collection, and some ability to trade for things, but I don't think anything to actually spend money on yet. Some levels have a rating system that awards you stars for better completion, but there doesn't seem to be anything tied to that yet, beyond just a "yay, you did that level well" thing. This isn't really bad in itself, but I do worry that lack of a purpose for these things yet may point to a waste of work if they don't integrate at some point.

Overall, I'm rather keen to see where this goes, especially if the gameplay gets a bit more polish and if we get a few more good-quality H scenes. The only thing holding it back for me is just that there's not a ton of properly-in-the-game H content so far, and a little too much jank at times, but fixing either of those would push the game up to 5 stars for me (though ideally, changing both would be great)

(edit for some spelling errors)

For being advertised as something players can actually "play", the game-play is not even remotely challenging. Even when I'm trying to lose to see if there's any CG (there's not), it takes ages of sitting still for the enemies to even pose a threat. It's uninteresting. The music is overbearing, and the story is clearly just a sexual fantasy.

This is the first time I'm leaving a review. The style and art of this game is amazing and full of potential. Scene Spoiler The scene where MC sucks an orc dick for the first time and thoughts racing through her head is incredibly hot. Only to get absolutely railed after ^,,^. I hope a completed version will appear someday and dev's get their money worth for making but right now im gonna wait.

Heavy Hearts is a really, really good hentai game overall. The animations are obviously of very high quality, but what enhances them even more is the dialogue during the scenes which brings the eroticism to the next level. The creator has obviously taken to heart the saying that the brain is the most erogenous organ in the human body, hehe. Even the dialogue and lore outside of the actual sex scenes helps to improve future, yet-unseen scenes as it fleshes out the characters and gives them some actual "character".

The combat system is relatively simple, but very dynamic and thankfully doesn't boil down to just mindless button mashing. The combination of regular/charged/elemental melee attacks, magic attacks and blocking works surprisingly well and brings the combat to a level rarely seen in hentai games.

The top-down exploration of new areas is very RPG Maker-like but that is perfectly fine. Most hentai game players would know exactly what to expect thanks to the countless RPG Maker adult games out there.

And now, we come to my least favourite part - the platforming. Some of the jumps you are expected to make with a certain wolf are straight out of the NES era - unforgiving and almost pixel-perfect, especially when the jump needs you to go to the edge of a staircase and you can't tell where the edge is due to the wolf's sprite being so wide. The other 2D side-scrolling segments are actually pretty fun though. There is a flappy bird segment that gave me a good chuckle even.

Overall, I can tell Heavy Hearts is going to be a really successful game when it releases in full! I wish the creator the best of luck with this project!

love the art and character dont see why i would give any less than 5
the gameplay is easy to learn and gradually becomes challenging and im really hopefully for its future! also big tiddies are a win

Unique gameplay, solid story telling and great animated art. Looking forward to seeing how all aspects develop from here. Best of luck to you Bird. I'm sure many other people share this sentiment, even if they do not type it out.

This game is an enjoyable change from the standard adult game out there and actually has some gameplay to it.

The main character is seriously hot and well drawn and the world has a nice theme to it that is credible and well built, combat isn't really too grind or difficult from what I've experienced so far, it is definitely designed as more of a game than just a VN, so don't go in expecting a VN.

I got the Spicy Edition through Itch, and I immediately noticed it has sexual content, so the game definitely contains it.

Keep up the good work DammitBird!