Heaven’s Vault

Welcome to the search for Heaven’s Vault. This is an archeological game about exploring ruins, finding artifacts, learning an ancient language and sailing the nebula. The world of the game is quite imaginative and a sight to behold. It is primarily story-based, so there isn’t really any losing, just many different ways of getting to the end.

Find it on Steam, here.

You play as Aliya, an archeologist looking into the past to learn history, though the people of the world don’t really care about that kind of stuff. The primary belief is the loop, that is everything is running in a huge loop. What has happened will happen again, what will happen as happened before. The world is also some kind of space nebula with rivers of water running between different moons where people live. It’s quite a strange and fantastical place.

The main game play of the game is going around to different dig sites and finding artifacts. The ancients meaningful phrases on almost everything, so you have to infer what the words mean and slowly learn the language. Yes, there is an entire fantasy language for this game, and it feels really fleshed out. You can make sense of things and see how words build on each other, and thankfully, it’s grammatically like English.

In the beginning, you have to guess at the meaning of words, but as you see the same word in multiple places, you will hammer down their meaning. At each site you see, you will learn more about the nebula and the history of the nebula. You’ll also find trinkets that you can trade for more information.

You do have a robot helper following you around. I hesitate to call him buddy, since he and Aliya don’t really like each other much, though you get to decide how rude you want to be with him. There are a lot of dialogue in the game with you getting to pick how you want to respond to most NPC’s and situations. There are lots of incidental dialogue too that just happens while you’re wandering around that really just fleshes everything out.

To get between places, you need to sail on the rivers of the nebula. It is a pretty amazing sight the first few times, but it does soon become repetitive and slow as it takes quite a while to travel from place to place without much challenge to anything. Though there is a fast travel system that really helps.

You get to visit each dig site only once, though, even if in-game, there’s no reason why you can’t go back to certain places. So make your one trip count and take your time exploring and learning.

Though I do think the game could use an inventory and a dictionary system. There’s no easy way to see the words you’ve learned and the trinkets you’ve picked up. It’s not important to the overall gameplay, but it would be nice to have.

You know, the game is a bit different than what I thought. It is much more story-driven, so there isn’t really a way to lose. Though based on the way things go, there are probably a huge amount of variations on how things can go based on the order you do things and if you do certain things or not. Being that there really isn’t a way to lose, learning the language is mostly for your own benefit rather than anything you’ll need to beat the game. The artifact hunting is also simple with the game dating and grouping everything for you, so you don’t need to really think about that. Picking things up just helps you find new exploration sites.

Okay, so I haven’t tried to intentionally lose the game, so I don’t know what happens if you do absolutely horrible at the dig sites. Would be interesting to see since there is a lot of different ways things can go.

Heaven’s Vault takes place in a strange nebula full of old wonders. You are the one that must figure out what’s going on and learn about the history of the nebula.

The game has solemn and fitting music. World design is pretty neat if you pay attention to things. It has some minor voice-acting, though I thought it would have worked with more. Only about half of the narration parts is voiced when they all could be. The graphical choice is strange, though. Whenever anyone moves, their feet turn transparent. I am not sure why they do that while I at least kind of understand the after-image thing that happens every time you start moving.

Random added comment about the main character. Her expression is actually determined by which way she is facing. You can most notice this by getting to an area where the camera is close on Aliya’s face and then panning around. As she spins, her expression changes. It seems to be them just using the same poses for her dialogue scenes and normal movement. And interestingly enough, this game has a turning radius for Aliya’s movement, too.

It is a different experience for times you want some slow, mysterious exploration. Getting more of the language is interesting, and learning more about the nebula is fun. There does seem to be a lot of ways your smaller interactions can go, so there is a lot of scenes in the game you won’t see in just one playthrough. Then, at the end, will Aliya be able to find Heaven’s Vault?

Find it on Steam.