Heartbound
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), with a free demo that covers the full first chapter of the game. 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 Heartbound universe.
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.