Heartbound

And this is exactly why I don't trust early access games anymore. Yet another paid demo for an abandoned project. Will change the review if the game is ever deigned to be released. Maybe.

roach

I played this 2 years ago, came back and not much has been done. I miss the old Pirate Software :(

Great art style, great hook, original story telling. But anyone saying this game is fantastic is a paid actor. Of course this game is early access but unfortunately the old meme of “Paid Demo” wasn’t far off. After two years something should have been done. Solo devs have made games like this in less than two years.

Not good

Definitely one of the best games I've played in a while and certainly deep enough if you want to go down that rabbit hole! Although I mostly bought it because of the cute dogo!

It's a very simple game by design but when you can relate or understand some of the references from things like Spongebob to Star Trek TNG and if you ahve been following Pirate Software long enough I like to think this is a fictional parallel to Thor's real life. I can't say more without spoilers but I am excited to replay the game and unlock all the achievements this was long overdue and I cannot wait for the some of the incomplete parts to be developed so I may return and explore more of the story. I definitely get some Earthbound, Undertale vibes but HeartBound is it's own thing. The OST is beautifully woven into the story and art styel.

As much as I love a choose your own adventure, there are better games out there, with more clear changes and shift of what happens.

Also, Thor, you are a fool for claiming the wizard school game is pro trans people.
I cannot honestly support you.

Game is being brigaded by r/livestreamfails frogs addicted to hate. If you want actual reviews, sort for anything from before 2025.

Still not finished with the game, but love the graphics, gameplay and for me the main thing in games is the story/lore and this game has an amazing story.

So far, so good. Looking forward to more!

I dont like Thor anymore

So when you charged us money in 2018, you should probably work to provide a finished product.
Can't wait to see you on YouTube again after you finish blaming someone about bad calls on world of warcraft and get their hardcore characters killed.
Maybe we'll even hear you talk about making DRM for your game so people wont pirate your unfinished game.
Hey, remember when you streamed for the express purpose of working on your game? Pepper Ridge Farms remembers.
In all seriousness though, please continue telling us about your experiences at blizzard during the time the higher ups were stealing breast milk and sexually harassing their employees.

This review will stay up even after the game releases, this shit is ridiculous. Should have just stayed working on your game and shut the hell up.

The art style of this game is beautiful, the music is nice to listen to, and the story is so intriguing! I can't wait to find out more! I've enjoyed watching how much this game has grown in the few years since I first bought it, and I'm excited to see what changes the next time I play it! It's been so fun seeing this story as it's being created. I haven't really had an experience like it with any other game.

Beautiful game with a very fun experience. Thanks Thor!

I'm obsessed. you can tell its not finished but i am excited for the new monthly updates that are coming and whats ahead for the game itself. it is heartbreaking and fun its got a good story going, and i cant wait to see where it goes.

I bought this game in 2020, played what content was available at the time and was looking forward to more, I've since checked in on it and very little to almost nothing has actually been added since I last played, essentially you're currently paying £8.50 of your own money for a slightly bigger demo, which while it isn't a lot, is more of a ticket of a promise of more content. I paid for that ticket over 5 years ago and in that time I've seen a lot of promising devs start development and end development with some really impressive titles, Heartbound however seems to be stuck in a content bloat cycle as it currently stands. A lot of promises of cool (in theory) ideas that are clearly taking more time to develop than initially planned (when the game is actually being developed). From what little I know of the dev they are known for streaming and doing a lot of projects on the side which is entirely fine of course but I feel like it, in at least some way, has impacted the games update cycles.

As it currently stands I cannot recommend the game as it is, honestly with the current content I feel as if it should have just been the demo currently available and the actual payment should have happened when the game was complete or nearing completion.

This is coming from someone who likes Thor, liked the game when it came out, and adores the entirety of the ARG as it releases. I really enjoyed the first two chapters and the ongoing ARG but in terms of how development has gone it feels like the team has fallen victim to Scope/Feature creep. I genuinely hope they choose to scale back the level of detail included in locations. Development time jumping from two chapters in three years to not even one in five is crazy. THE ENTIRETY OF GARTEN OF BANBAN OCCURRED BEFORE ANIMUS RELEASED.

That being said the above statement in early access is a little misleading, the game hasn't received a content update BECAUSE all updates before chapter three is fully complete are released through the dev builds located in the game's steam settings. (The codes to access these builds are in the game's community posts.) So all posts about developer inactivity are void.

This being said inability to deliver is a separate problem. I cannot recommend this game in its current state, and will not. Not until Animus (Chapter 3) releases and good headway is made into Chapter 4 because its not worth the price. You can experience all the comedy and emotion this piece has to offer by watching a few YouTube videos. (And probably gleam the deeper lore better than any single player can.) Best wishes to the Pirate Software crew.

I can dig it! One of my most anticipated as far as seeing the end result. I noticed something new each time I launched the game.

Sound- great, catchy, moving. Visuals- comfy, nostalgic, very detailed, like finding an old game or toy you didn't remember you had but are stoked you rediscovered it! Replayability- keep your eyes peeled and you'll be surprised and delighted. I do hope choices and consequences are expanded in the coming patches and updates (minor gripe!). Fun Factor- exactly as advertised if you can read, think for yourself, and process information like a normal (non-phallic-headed) gamer. Overall, I feel like the vision for this game is meant to also be an experience on a personal level, each person taking something different away from it. Can't wait to see more.

Give this one a go if you're even slightly intrigued!

I thought this dev supported *killing* games, not letting them starve from neglect.
Pathetic behaviour of the lead dev aside...
Seven years of """development""" and this game is still not even half-done. You start running into barred-off unfinished content within the first ten minutes of gameplay. It's been in early access hell for the better part of a decade, was supposed to release about that long ago, and the only updates that'll be pushed from now on will likely be specifically to get rid of Steam's new notice that an Early Access title has gone too long without an update.

You'd get a better RPG experience from YiiK. Don't buy this borderline abandonware.

It's not a game. It's a scam scheme. I'm a professional software developer with almost 20 years of experience and this trash looks like a bad student project which still isn't finished after 7 years of "development"!
I hope Steam will forcefully refund all those "early access" "games" i.e. scam schemes where developers are doing literally nothing other than posting meaningless update and no new real content once or twice a year.

You should really know the reputation of this dev before you consider buying this game. This game has been in early access for over 6 years, and that's because this dev treats this game as a side-project that he works on whenever he feels like it. The dev himself said on stream that he treats the game as just an outlet to vent rather than a passion project. Steam even warns you in the early access disclaimer that he hasn't updated the game in over 14 months.

The dev has been spending far more of his free time streaming himself playing World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and other games which resulted in a crawling development speed. In 2023 he abandoned the game and stopped updating it to go start a business, take trips to Vegas, and spend more time streaming other games. At one point someone made a (now deleted) forum post asking if the dev was dead, but the dev replied saying "Nah, I've been super busy at Def Con and gaming conventions". Its been over 14 months and we haven't received a major content update, which has caused people to start complaining and change their reviews to negative.

It's 2025, and now the developer is back. He responds to his community's disappointment by mass deleting multiple forum posts, banning anyone that disagrees with him, and locking any remaining forum posts to prevent any criticism. He called his community a bunch of raging babies on stream and seemed genuinely confused on why players were mad at him abandoning an early access game and leaving players with a seriously unfinished product for over 6 years.

The game hasn't received any major changes since 2023, and its still unfinished, so if you do buy this, you should seriously lower your expectations on this game ever being finished.

Love the game, can't wait for the full release. Great gameplay, brilliant narration, awesome music. Fack the haters. Thor, the creator is the most solid guy in the gaming community. Glad to follow him.

It's an Undertale knockoff with less to do, characters that aren't half as interesting or charming, worse writing, and less visually appealing maps.

I genuinely don't care about whatever drama the dev is apart of, this game itself is just a bootleg of a more popular game, but done without any understanding of what made the original so great. If this somehow changes when the game is done, I'll update but I imagine when it releases in 2035 this will still be a thumbs down.

Art is very well done, but seems to have been abandoned by the developers. The parts of the game that are there are enjoyable otherwise. I hope that the game will be completed someday but at this rate of development it's not worth buying.

this is the wishing well of games, where you throw $10 at it wishing they gave a shit enough to complete it

beautiful audio, interesting gameplay. very excited for monthly updayes

Ngl, I honestly forgot this game existed until the recent stuff with the dev came up.

I don't care about that stuff that's happening, but I will say, it's not really a great sign for a game, that it hasn't released after years upon years upon years of being in Early Access.

It's a neat game, but I have to say, it feels like it's been ages. I get devs taking their time with development, it's a big project. But this has been in production for absolutely ages; especially considering when it was posited on kickstarter in 2017

Going to have to give it a thumbs down, but I will change it to a thumbs up when the full release comes out. I want to play the full game, but it's just not worth it right now, nor is it worth the money, when buying the game right now, is basically just funding the game's development. That's now how single player games should be funded.

Please finish the game Pirate, that's all I ask.

Fun game with amazing little messages about life. Love the mail room infinite loop and the message it conveys

Man, where to begin. Pure emotion from the start. The emotion drives the exploration which I haven't felt in a game in quite some time. It felt like being back on an old-school system, getting lost in the game purely for the intrigue. It's been a while since I've picked up an indie game and put in this much time from the start. Looking forward to what becomes of this project.

This is a good game. Its not finished, its in early access. The dev does not deserve the ongoing reviewbombing.

Review bombs are stupid.

This is a lovely game that is in development and the available play through has plenty of virtues. It has accessibility considerations built in and is centered around a narratively compelling story and nostalgic gameplay. I look forward to further updates and the eventual completion.

The demo is cool sure. Gets you hyped for the game. The Early Access is garbage. There's not even another battle which is what sold me on the game. The multiple playthroughs were Damm near identical. To top it all off the game hasn't been touched in over a year. I just checked in on a video saying he would update the game monthly starting February 1st. Well February is about to be over and nothing has been done.

Dead EA game. No updates in 12 months then developer puts out a do nothing patch to attempt to reset steams timer, which is a pretty scummy thing to do.

Game itself is a walking sim with some ok dialogue and mini-games. I think I completed all content in just over 3 hours. The product as is right now I can't recommend.

Bought six years ago to support an indie dev who was making something cool. Checking back on the game six years later, development seems to have stalled, and this new monthly update thing seems to be an extremely small amount of content with Chapter 3 still "in development" with no apparent timeline as to when this game will be finished. I'll change my review to positive in a heartbeat if they actually get some content of substance out the door, but after waiting 6 years, patch notes with things like "a Quit button has been added to the menu" as main selling points aren't enough for me, sorry. My lesson in never buying Early Access.

Great game, played a few hours of it and loved it. Has some "action" (mini-games) but the game itself is more like old rpg games (pre-2000s). Soundtrack is very nice and can get stuck in your head, but that's not a bad thing.

The Developer has abandoned this game even if he doesn't want to admit it to himself yet. This game launched in 2018 on Steam with the first 2 chapters out of 5 done and the game was supposed to be complete within a year or so. Ever since the Kickstarter that was launched in 2017 the game has had nothing but set back after set back. It's been over 6 years almost 7 since this game launched on Steam and PirateSoftware has yet to finish even one chapter and the whole of 2024 did not update the game once. To his credit he did finally do an update February 1st of this year, but it was barely an update and not one that was worth waiting 13 months for. Even Steam doesn't recognize it as an actual update.

Now I'm not here to attack anyone even though he permanently banned me from the forums for stating the complaints are warranted, but to warn of the current state of things. It's fine if PirateSoftware got burnt out on the game or just doesn't know how to finish it, but he needs to be honest with himself and with all of us who bought the game. He either needs to move on from it and delist it or finally get to work on it because it should not take 6 years to complete one chapter of a 5 chapter game. Especially a game like this. Because remember he wanted this game done within a year or so after the Kickstarter was finished in 2017 and it is now 2025 with no end in sight.

Do not buy this game even if you are a fan of his streams because this doesn't seem like it is ever going to be finished.

This is Abandonware and a Kickstarter scam. Steam needs to take action on early access abuse like this.

Developer not only failed to "develop" their game, it is unfinished and the developer decides to become a streamer to stream the development of their game only to: 1. Not develop their game at all 2. Stream themselves doing literally anything BUT develop the game 3. Get into major controversy acting like an egolord 4. Waste everyone's time with a half-baked game that hasnt received an update in going on a year and two months and it isn't fully completed.

To be honest, I couldnt care about this guys controversy, but why are you getting into drama that youre on the LOSING SIDE OF just to ignore your one main project you started streaming for this whole time. What a joke, such wasted potential.

"Ah yes, great game guys ! It looks good and has a cool story, overall I look forward to see the full release !"
That was 5 years ago.
Well that's not a problem if the devs follows with updates on twitter etc, right ?

I'm going to be polite enough so my comment doesn't get striked by steam.

You became a streamer. From all of your free time where you should have worked on your game you decided to put on the clown make up and not care a bit about your creation.
I'm not mad because you abandonned your game.
I'm mad because you abandonned a great game in creation.
You're not toby fox creating the next best piece of art in the video game industry. You're not team cherry working on one of the most waited game of the century.
You have no real reasons to have quit the development. You're plain lazy and while people wait for the release, you're out there clowning on them on stream.
And you are very self aware of this because apparently some threads have been blocked and comments deleted.

This review will stay up as a warning for the newcomers and if you try to remove it, I will put it back again until you quit being a coward.
But I might remove bits of this review if I believe the full release is good. No man sky did good in the long run right ? Time to redeem yourself.

Note: The last update made by the developers was over 13 months ago. The information and timeline described by the developers here may no longer be up to date.

Dev stream jokes and Easter eggs but not really much meat on the bone for years in EA.
Don't forget that the game is the point and if the basic experience doesn't get done then what you're really doing is ripping off your community.

bought this game about 5-6 years ago, still unfinished
last update was over 13 months ago
the story and characters in this game are incredibly boring
since early access release on steam this game isnt even halfway finished to this day, has ~~3 hours worth of content and barely added anything with updates

Pirate clearly has other priorities. Streaming makes too much money compared to video games. Sad to see him fall so far to greed, this game was so promising

I've had pretty solid experiences with Early Access games in the past. Wanted to support this dev team's work and enjoyed what I did play. I decided to wait for a full release and play it all together, but this likely won't happen for a very long time, if at all. The most recent update suggests otherwise, but I don't have any faith in that. This had a very successful Kickstarter campaign and has been pulling in funds consistently here on steam for years now. On top of that, it's been boosted heavily by very successful Youtube and Twitch channels by the dev. Would definitely not recommend supporting Pirate Software unless they improve their reputation and deliver on things that are laid out. This also makes me less supportive of Early Access games a bit, which is a bummer.

Thanks to the new feature of steam that allows you to see the last update it says "The last update made by the developers was over 13 months ago".

Game is dead

This is not a bad game, by all means. It is engaging even if the dev isn't confident about his writting skills. The soundtrack is original and art is pleasant, as well as gameplay is casual enough and seems like a more accessible Undertale (from someone who didn't play Undertale).

However, dev refuses to acknowledge to his consumers that he took more than he could chew with all the side projects in his life while leaving this game in hiatus indefinitely, and continues to be arrogant towards disappointed paying customers and clearly does not distinguish negativity just for being negative from negativity born from care.

At this point in time, and i emphasize this is from a consumer point of view, I can not recommend the investment in this game due to this being an unfinished product with unclear expectations while having been "in development" for so long and still providing such a short and significantly incomplete experience while still marketing it, which is wrong.
The dev is now making stream money, so let him finish the game before investing.

Honestly, completely forgot that I had this game, but recent events reminded me of it's existence. (completely irrelevant and dumb drama tbh, but to each their own)

More than 3 years since their last major update is inexcusable, dev clearly has other priorities rather than dedicating time for properly developing their project.

It's a short experience with little to no combat encounters (more focused on the story but the game's prologue tricks you into thinking that it will feature turn-based combat, that might change in the future). A pity, since the game has a lot of charm and heart that shines on what's already in the game (the story is engaging), but nobody in good faith should support this game until it's finished, might end up being abandoned or see little to no progress.

Hoping for the best.

while the dev's recent behavior does make me upset, what makes me more upset is the issue that has lead to one chapter of the game not being completed in 5 years: feature creep.

no one asked for animus to have shit like a day/night cycle that runs in real time, to be basically another game inside of this one, etc. i fail to see what this adds to the story. if you wanted to make an animal crossing esque game, you couldve made that standalone, rather than tacking it onto this one and causing heartbound to take far longer to develop than it had a right to. i played the game last in 2019. then, everything up to animus was complete. animus had a short intro done that you could just wander around, but nothing really to do. that much game - about 2-3 chapters including a prologue - took 6 hours to beat and was fine pacing-wise to me. it was fun. i enjoyed it. i think its really weird to have 2-3 chapters take like 2 years to complete, and a 3rd - not even the final chapter, its the middle - take over 5 years.

animus doesnt feel like part of heartbound. it feels like a separate game shoved into heartbound because the dev got distracted. this is some yanderedev level feature creep issues, saying nothing of pirate's other issues.

people dont have to bring up the things the lead dev has done when the game itself is enough to justify not getting the game. the game isnt complete, and likely wont be for a few more years. because the dev decided to code an entire different game into the game instead of finishing the rest of it first.

tdlr: animus has taken much longer than it needed to, doesnt fit into the rest of the game, and the game couldve been completed much sooner if the dev focused on getting from A to B in it and THEN adding bells and whistles that only some players would bother with.

Patches have slowed to a crawl ever since the studio moved to a bigger focus on being twitch streamers first game dev second.

There has also been very little communication about the slowing/lack of progress. First two chapters are good and early on stuff was developed pretty fast, but I honestly expected the game to be done by now after so many years. Communication has gotten a bit better, but only after demands of the ppl that bought the game, will see for the future and update my review accordingly.

this game has not hade any major updates in a long time i recommend not buying it until the game its 100% done