A Collection Aside
As is often the case, MEGHANN O’NEILL has been compelled towards adventures and stories, like a tiny ship on the great rivers of some unknowable Nebula (that will make sense as you read on, we promise.) Even the purely mechanical game, this issue, sent her imagination on a journey. Much of this content is also ‘choose your own price’, so you can enjoy it for free, if you’d like. And three of these games are from Australian/New Zealand, two were finalists in the Freeplay awards and one even won. We hope you enjoy them.
HEAVEN’S VAULT
■ I love stories involving a person (and their robot) wandering the desert. Blame independent American film, Everything Beautiful is Far Away, perhaps. There’s just something so dissonant about machines on sand, as if there should be an explanation for why this unlikely context has arisen, yet you can’t quite grasp it. Heaven’s Vault is not set in an ordinary desert, either. Aliya Elasra and her unlikely companion, Six, visit a Nebula’s arid “moons”, via a network of “rivers” made of hydrogen, oxygen and other gases. Incredible, right?
Moreover, you’re an archaeologist, but for a university of cultists who believe that time is a loop, so you’re also (if they’re correct) unearthing the future. Six has been chipped from a “wall on the lower levels”, its memory erased. A researcher from the university has gone missing. A girl, on a far-flung moon believes that traversing rivers makes you wicked and impure. Many doors aren’t designed to open, they’re symbolic places to teleport from. There are goddesses, communities, wellsprings, gardens, mines and much more, to explore.
The setting is clearly amazing, so how do the mechanics fare? Dialogue works well, for starters. You can regularly choose to remark on a current situation, question Six, or engage with other characters. Conversation unfolds organically, based on what you’ve recently discovered or where you’re travelling to. It’s like having a whim for what kind of thing to say, then that being expressed by the words that Aliya says next. Other characters may also ask you a question which you may answer with a question, general reply or scripted reply.
Given there’s a vast amount of walking or sailing between places in Heaven’s Vault, dialogue serves up a glut of clues, context and backstory. In fact, perhaps travel is meant to give you something to do while you chat. Certainly, minor obstacles, like a locked door, can usually be overcome by taking another route to your goal or finding a useful object nearby. You’re sometimes presented with Telltalestyle choices, the consequences for which are pleasantly obscured. I was often unsure of what may have happened if I’d chosen differently.
There’s also a strong focus on deciphering inscriptions. As you explore, you’ll find written language, dating from different eras, and piece together guesses about what things might say. Some solutions seem obvious, based on context, which then help you to decipher related inscriptions elsewhere. The game will often tell you when a guess is correct, while also allowing you to make, and link together, gigantic mistakes. It’s truly joyful to find yourself almost understanding words and phrases, before Aliya makes her guesses. Somewhere near to what I thought was the end of Heaven’s Vault, I started watching Let’s Plays and reading Steam’s forum. I was surprised, not only by the different, minor routes people had taken, but also by how interpretations of this dry, but nonetheless rich, setting vary. I’m no archaeologist (in real life), but I imagine history is a complex thing to accurately pin down. I strongly suspect I’m not done with this game yet, nor are many other players. Can the inscriptions be conclusively solved? I imagine so, but not without an historic effort.
The game will often tell you when a guess is correct, while also allowing you to make, and link together, gigantic mistakes.