Heartbound

Heartbound logo

Heartbound is Pirate Software's current video game. Its development started in 2018, and still continues as of 2023. It is available through Steam in Early Access, at a price of $9.99 (in the United States). The price will not change after the final release is ready.

The game is an RPG, its main distinguishing feature being the incredible amount of possible environment interactions and the various alterations in the storyline that result in those interactions. The game is planned to have 7 endings.

The game is paired with a full web-based ARG, which is also in development and is updated in parallel with the main game.

Story

Despite the incredibly diverse dialogue tree and vast amount of endings, Heartbound somehow manages to have no story whatsoever.

Gameplay

The player controls Lore, a young boy in search of his lost dog. Most of the control is exhibited through moving around the 2D game world, repeatedly running into walls and interacting with objects/characters that Lore encounters. These interactions and character dialogue are then presented in a textbox at the bottom of the screen, which every now and again will prompt the player to make one or more detailed choices for Lore's actions. Both the choices, and the interactions themselves, may result in alterations to what objects/characters/events Lore may encounter in the future of the current run of the game. Every now and again, combat encounters may occur. Each combat encounter is represented by a unique series of minigames, inspired by WarioWare. The difficulty of the combat depends on Lore's actions throughout the story, however, it is not required to "beat" any of the encounters: the story will continue regardless, making the game more accessible to players who lack the fast reaction times necessary to play these minigames.

Sequels and DLC

Thor has stated multiple times that there will not be a sequel to Heartbound, nor will the game receive DLC or any other form of monetized content beyond the game's initial purchase. Any new Heartbound content will be made part of either the game itself, or the ARG. In other words, the initial purchase will guarantee full and complete access to all future content for the game.

Save system

The game will save every meaningful action a player takes into its save file. The game stores this save data in a simple array, a contigious memory region where one value directly follows the one before. This array is written out, one value per line, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Heartbound\heartbound_saveX.thor, where X is an internal number representing the version of the save file (it changes when updates that break save compatibility are released). The file may be tweaked using the Heartbound save editor, or edited manually by hand, assuming you are aware of which line number corresponds to which value.

Anti-piracy system

The game implements a custom DRM mechanism, performing several piracy checks whenever it starts up. If any of these checks fires, the game will then set up a "trap" for the player, wherein any interaction with an in-game object or character may trigger an anti-piracy message, telling the player to contact Thor and replacing all in-game music and sound effects with horrible noises. The chance of the message triggering is random, but it grows with every interaction. Once triggered, the chance is fixed to 100%. In other words, every interaction will trigger the message if it has been triggered even once. It will generally be impossible to progress past the first chapter of the game without triggering the message on a pirated copy.

While the full extent of the anti-piracy checks is not known, Thor has revealed some of the more simple ones publicly. These include:

• A check for whether the Steam client is initialized.
• A check for whether the Steam profile name matches the name of any known piracy groups.
• A check for whether the Steam user ID looks correct (some groups set it to values that Steam cannot possibly generate).
• A check for whether the App ID of the running copy of Heartbound is correct.

This DRM method is generally non-intrusive, does not consume additional system resources or install any additional applications. It should continue working correctly as long as Steam exists and the copy of the game is legally purchased from there.

Unlike the usual case where DRM is implemented out of greed, Thor has implemented these checks out of security concerns: the game is popular with younger people who may not be fully aware of the dangers of software piracy and often end up with malware on their systems when they pirate games. It is therefore advisable to message Thor over e-mail or Discord if you encounter this message, as he is willing to assist people with removing potential malware from their system.

Under some circumstances, Thor may be able to grant users with a free legal copy of Heartbound, if the user describes their life situation and explains why they cannot afford to purchase the game. Note that, however, this offer does not extend to people residing in countries that are sanctioned by the United States, as it would be illegal for Thor to assist them.

Links

• Official wobsite
• Steam page
• Heartbound wiki