The game: Heavenly Vault
Genre : Adventure, puzzle
System : Nintendo Switch (also for PC, PlayStation 4)
Developer | Publisher : Ink age classification
: USA T | EU 7+
Price : US $17.99 | UK £14.99 | EU €15.99 Release date
: 28. January 2021
Check the code used – thanks to the ink dots!
Vault of Heaven is a strange game to write about, as there are many things about the game that I cannot legitimately discuss in a review. It’s the kind of game where it’s better to know as little as possible to have the most fun…. but I can’t just write well and leave it at that. Like this: Heaven’s Vault is an adventure game with a strong emphasis on history and a unique game concept that focuses on the translation of an ancient and extinct language.
Players take the role of Aaliyah, an archaeological historian who has been tasked by her mentor to find a missing robot engineer, and have given her a robot companion named Sixx to help her complete her mission. The setting is the Nebula, a series of inhabited moons connected by spatial rivers beautifully rendered with a combination of 3D models and manual renderings.
image from Nintendo’s eShop page to minimize spoilers.
Secrets About Secrets
In other words, the information you get in the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the game is obviously much more than that. Much, but not all, of the fun of the game consists of a better understanding of the setting and story.
At first, Aliya (and therefore the player) has a very sparse vocabulary for the ancient script, which means that translation puzzles must be solved primarily with contextual clues or by guessing. In fact, it often happens that between the middle and end of the game, a player isn’t sure if he or she has solved the puzzle correctly before the end of the game, which I think is a great way to encourage continued play. The feeling of accomplishment when you realize that you’ve brought the translation to a successful conclusion is incredible, and the fact that this feeling lasts is just as effective at keeping the player involved as the plot of the real story. Moreover, because of this unique game structure, you never run into a wall like in other adventure games. It never happens that you’re just unlucky because you don’t know what that moldy cheese wheel or folded fork, which has been in your inventory for half the game, is for.
image from the Nintendo Eshop Store page to minimize spoilers.
Power and extension
Speaking of promotions: The way the story unfolds is a masterpiece. I can’t go into details (yes, I can), but I can say that Heaven’s Keep is one of the best marriages of play and narrative I’ve ever seen. As the size and complexity of the translation pool increases, so does your understanding of the historical and current conditions of the nebula. This growing understanding in turn leads to a growing sense of unease about what might be at the end of the road Aaliyah is exploring, but not that it will ever be too difficult to deal with. This is partly explained by the fact that, despite the various tensions of the game, there is a strange sense of serenity, especially when sailing on the aforementioned cosmic rivers. At the risk of saying too much, I found that it helped me put myself in Aaliyah’s head a little better; she doesn’t really like spending time with other people, and as I floated between places for a while, away from all the problems of the nebula, I really understood why. Try another route, a shorter one: All the different aspects of the characterization and atmosphere of the firmament work together in a phenomenal way to enhance and intensify each other.
image from the Nintendo Eshop Store page to minimize spoilers.
not quite perfect
I have a few criticisms of the vault of heaven, however small. First, there’s a lot to take in when you start the game. When I first started playing, I immediately felt lost and overwhelmed and had to stop playing only to pick up the entire game again when I came back later. I’ll admit that I was already feeling tense and irritable that day, which definitely contributed to that feeling, but again, I like to play games to relax (like many others), so do with it what you will. Secondly, and this is actually more frustrating in the long run, I found the menu a bit tedious to navigate through. The player has access to the fog map and a timeline to track historical and current events related to Aaliyah’s journey. I don’t know if it’s a factor of the Switch interface or a deeper design issue, but since this is a review of the Switch version of the game, it doesn’t really matter.
Completion
All doubts aside, I really enjoyed the vault of heaven. All of his fundamental design decisions are artistically brilliant without sacrificing the more visceral gameplay that many other games unfortunately have as art.
It takes a little longer – especially if you play twice, which the developers encourage – but it’s worth it, especially if you spend the rest of the winter huddled on the couch playing.
Final Verdict: I like it.
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