Heaven’s Vault
Imaginative, innovative, and very immersive
Heaven’s Vault is a narrative game with meaningful choices that lets you explore a fascinating and beautiful original world and its history. One of its main mechanics involves deciphering words and sentences in a foreign script, which is implemented in the best way I’ve ever encountered in 35 years of gaming - find details below.
Let’s first talk about the setting though. The game takes place in a unique world where humans live on a couple of small “moons”, which are connected by “rivers” that defy our laws of physics, but can be sailed nonetheless. You play as Aliya, a young archaeologist who has found a working age-old ship and explores this strange universe, trying to uncover its forgotten history.
– Real player with 115.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Mystery Games.
Introduction
I love Heaven’s Vault. I love this game so much that I replayed the game in the New Game+ mode, which I rarely do. Playing the game brought back memories of my days studying the Classics – translating text, learning word etymology, reading Roman and Ancient Greek mythology and history, and so on. Given that, I was easily convinced to play Heaven’s Vault again, just so that I could learn more about the in-game history, further explore the game’s world, and solve its central mystery by approaching it from different angles.
– Real player with 59.3 hrs in game
Button City
This game is one of the few ones that I have bought either as pre-order or within release week, and I am clad that I did. I really enjoyed playing and streaming this game, with its cute polygon graphics. It was interesting to see how well game works without any voice acting, only text and some sound effects when needed. However as expected, just released games still have some bugs and glitches, but I managed to find only two that either stops you from advancing without resetting the game or mini-game, or stops you playing altogether, one before and one after playing the game.
– Real player with 16.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Exploration Games.
My childhood was not surrounded by tons of friends, and the few I had didn’t share the same passions as I did: my passion for all kinds of video games was kept mostly to myself while growing up, and while playing this game, I found myself surprisingly feeling like the young, lonely girl I was when I was growing up– but it also made me feel like the fun-loving, yet somewhat mischievous kid I was before adulthood.
I saw this game’s demo in a recent Steam sale based on animals, (one that was actually not on the front page of Steam, and was hidden!) and none of the games really appealed to me, aside from this little one hidden in the cracks. I decided to grab the demo while it was active, and I was kind of in love with it, keeping skepticism in mind. While the game shows need of polish, with a bit of a sluggish pace and the need of a few of some control improvements, what this game offered beyond that was genuinely another experience I wasn’t expecting at all.
– Real player with 15.1 hrs in game
7 Years From Now
Sound of the game was awfully loud. Anyways, the story catches you like around chapter 4, and there you can hear your room filled with heart beats. So many twists. A little bit of Dr.Who “Heaven Sent”.
– Real player with 18.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Voxel Games.
Art is good, plot is even better.
I’m having the same feelings I had when I first played this game on Android.
Thanks for bringing it to PC!
– Real player with 12.2 hrs in game
Space Boat
Forgotten Fields
Forgotten Fields
Forgotten Fields drags you into the story with its cinematic and interactive approach. I was captivated from start to finish.
Brought to you by the same developer who made Rainswept, Forgotten Fields is an atmospheric, narrative driven, cinematic experience, chronicling the events of one Summer in a quiet town. The inspiration gained from the developer’s own home town near Goa, India.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
I loved Rainswept so I had high hopes for Forgotten Fields. For me, it fell short in a few areas. You control Sid - a 20-something guy with a deadline and a case of writer’s block. His mother is selling the family home and he is at that cusp in life where each of us recognizes that we are going to have to be a grown up. Much of the story and dialog is between a set of friends who are about to step out into ‘real life,’ each in their own direction.
In parallel, Sid is writing a story about a princess in a fantasy world. About half the game is controlling the princess within her own adventures. There are definite tie-ins between the choices facing the princess and the choices facing Sid.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Time Bandit – Part 1: Appendages of the Machine
A Game That Takes Time
A dark life sim that unfolds slowly in real time, with an unusual combination of elements from idle, stealth, and puzzle genres.
Make your choices carefully, because everything you start will take time to finish–just like in real life. Place down one of these automated forklifts to push a box for you, for example, and it’ll take an actual half an hour to finish moving it:
You’ll just have to go and do other stuff and come back later.
You work as an independent contractor for a mining company, but soon you discover they’re trying to take control of time in order to make you work for them forever. Manage your money, fuel, and energy while slowly solving puzzles to collect the time crystals and then pull off high-stakes stealthy heists to steal back from your employer.
Featuring tons of real-time game mechanics:
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Move boxes, grow trees, build bridges, and compact trash–and wait for them to finish.
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Different guard rotations and different consequences for getting caught depending on the time of day when you play.
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A story that unfolds slowly through conversations that work like real-life phone calls. Characters will only call you periodically to advance the story over the course of days and weeks of playtime.
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Your energy meter goes down while you play, and it takes up to 8 real-time hours of good sleep to fill it up all the way.
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Meet characters at the actual meeting times that you set with them.
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Real-time dynamic music.
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And much more.
A Story of Political Intrigue
The first part of an epic, explicitly anticapitalist melodrama, told through lowpoly cutscenes and radio conversations inspired by early cinematic games. The company’s CEO and shareholders have come up with a scheme to live forever, but it will mean sacrificing the lives of their workers. Fight for a world where everyone has a right to their time.
Use the realistic radio to call characters anytime for dialogue about whatever situation you’re in. You’ll find hints on what to do next, details that expand the story, fourth wall–breaking humor, and more.
A challenge with real consequences: Don’t get caught by guards or let yourself fall asleep, or you might end up stuck waiting it out in jail or the hospital.
Fixed camera angles in gameplay, just like in the old days. With a real-time day-and-night cycle and real-time weather tied to your location, to make the game integrate more with your life.
Tons of playtime in part one alone. And you can use your save file to continue where you left off when the next part comes out. Truly commit to the long haul of the real-time experience.
Join Time Bandit’s Discord to receive development updates and offer your feedback on work in progress! https://discord.gg/vhue5NtN39
I Am Dead
I am on the fence about this game. One the one hand, it is a lovely story. You play a guy who is dead and returns to his home town. He reunites with his dead dog and the two go on a quest to locate six ghosts of former residents in order to save the town. Each ghost is summoned by retrieving memories about them from the living and then finding an associated memento. The community is presented in six parts, each richly detailed with a host of objects and characters to explore. It is quite a complex narrative that a diligent gamer can piece together by following the residents through the scenes and learning about their relationships.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
I Am Dead is a casual hidden object game, crammed full of sentiment and whimsy. Its core gameplay gimmick is that you can zoom in on objects, clipping right through their layers to see inside of them. Sometimes the contents are surprising (in funny and/or bizarre ways), but most of the time you are simply treated to a unique level of care that has been put into modelling parts of objects that would never need to be visible in any other game or circumstance.
I absolutely adore the art style. The world is jaunty but peaceful, vibrant but subdued, strongly characterised but cozy. This game is, in a word, gentle. It needs to be, in order to present its nuanced stories about a handful of deceased characters.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Lord Winklebottom Investigates
Lord Winklebottom Investigates is a 1920s murder mystery, point and click adventure featuring a dashing giraffe detective coming to Steam this year!
Inspired by Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes, the game is a classic British murder mystery!
It’s the 1920s and the world’s foremost detective is about to embark on his most challenging case yet. A mysterious invitation to an isolated island results in a grisly murder and a race against time to track down the killer. Thankfully, in this world that’s not quite like our own, there’s nobody better to crack the case than the great detective and gentleman giraffe, Lord Winklebottom.
Join Lord Winklebottom and his steadfast companion Dr Frumple as they investigate the murder of their old friend. Uncover clues, interview suspects and solve puzzles to crack the case, capture the killer and uncover the horrifying dark secret at the heart of the Isle of Barghest!
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Animals of all shapes and sizes!
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Unique 2D hand painted artwork.
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Streamlined point and click interface.
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Collection of bizarre characters to interrogate!
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Play as a gentleman giraffe!
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Dozens of puzzles to solve!
Redeliver
Redeliver is a short and linear Ren’Py visual novel with a few light puzzle elements and a medieval fantasy setting. The player will experience one day from the life of Red - a young girl hired by the Royal Post House to deliver unclaimed letters directly to people’s households. With the goal of reaching her grandma who lives in another district, she will need to traverse several regions, delivering letters to inhabitants, as she travels.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2483315421
– Real player with 11.0 hrs in game
Well written short visual novel about delivering letters. Story is net and there are small decisions in dialogs and some fairly easy puzzles.
Definitely worth the price!!!
Gameplay preview – https://youtu.be/RrIvN_OxDlA
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Vessels
Wow. Was going through my steam discovery queue and saw this odd title that didn’t have a lot of players but had 100% positive reviews. I had to try it and boy oh boy I do not regret it. I couldn’t put it down until I did everything I could thing of to get a different ending. This game is so unique with the way you get to play as the antagonist while the antagonist itself is a separate being from you. This entity gifts you with abilities that I don’t want to spoil but I think I can say that you will be able to influence what people on the ship are thinking and talking about in a way that selfishly benefits you. It’s a bit of a puzzle that involves starting with no memory of your past and trying to piece together information in a way that allows you to at least convincingly pretend to be the crew member who everybody remembers/suspects. Otherwise, you’ll get ejected out of the airlock!
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Quick:
5/5. What an amazing game. Vessels is one of those games that comes along every now-and-then, and just knocks it out of the park. I played the game through from beginning to end in one run. Admittedly, it is a short game. You can complete a play-through of this in roughly three to four hours. I was completely engaged from beginning to end, and I would have stuck with it for another four hours. The choices in the game gave me the impression that there are different endings and scenarios to experience, but I do not know this for sure.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game