Heaven's Vault

I adore this game, but it won't appeal to everyone.
If you enjoy language games, logic puzzles or learning new languages you will probably love this. The process of gradually deciphering the the 'ancient' symbols is deeply satisfying and the changes between repeats of the game make it surprisingly re-playable.
That said, there are a some issues. Character sometimes randomly vanish in the middle of conversations, or the 'camera' angle will suddenly switch to show a blank wall. These issues do not prevent the conversations from continuing, but they are rather jarring.
It's fairly clear from the dialogue that there were more locations planed than were built, and I found this somewhat frustrating.
Despite these issues I have enjoyed it so much that I have played for a total of nearly 500 hours.

Great idea, but not great execution. The dialogue is slow and unskippable, it is especially annoying if for ex. you have to bring the relics to the librarian and then wait for a century until he comes back. The graphics also look outdated, considering when the game was released (even though, as I said, the dialogue structure is the worst part). Lastly, there is not that much exploring you can do on your own - the story line is set in stone, and there are no side quests to tickle your interest. All in all, I can definitely see what they were trying to do, but it wasn't done the way it should've.

Tortuously slow and one wrong dialogue option can cost hours. The lore is cool but it's just unplayable.

I'm not doing it justice by comparing it, but this is like if you shoved Chants of Senaar into Outer Wilds, in a good way

Absolutely worth playing, though the biggest flaw is that it doesn't really outline when certain actions are consequential, but, perhaps that's part of how it should be

Intriguing concept, but implementation is a non-starter. Very little to draw you forward--tepid plot and hardly any actual translation so far, which was the entire draw of the game. Paired with cumbersome movement, interaction, and UI, and I'm calling it quits after about an hour of playtime. I've heard it gets better, but I don't have the patience for that. Play Chants of Sennar instead.

This game is one of my all time favourites. Yes it can be a bit of a walking simulator BUT if you explore you are rewarded with deep lore of an expansive universe. There is a lot to learn about this world, the people in it and an ancient language long lost that you can work on learning to read. I bought this game towards the end of 2022 and I find myself coming back to it a fair amount to explore and see what new things I can learn. I am constantly fascinated and awed by this game, the worlds you visit are so unique and gorgeous in my opinion. Personally I would love another game with more lore to expand upon what this game gives but I have also found joy in the books which delve a little deeper into the lore.
TLDR: If you like exploring unique landscapes and learning about places definitely try this game, I hope you love and treasure it as much as I do

Peak

The gameplay is unpolished af. But everything that has to do with the language puzzles is absolutely incredible

Incredible game. I'm astounded it was made by such a small team. It's a very slow burn, so I reckon it's only rewarding for those who are patient and can see the intriguing linguistic puzzle adventure that it is through the slow pace that is uncommon for games these days.

After beating it, I curiously opened the New Game+, and have discovered that this game has fascinating replay value! Give it a go if you enjoyed the first playthrough. The possibilities are as myriad as the Rivers.

I moved my mouse 5mm to the right and accidentally clicked the wrong prompt, and my character walked all the way back to the ship and left instead of picking up the 1 item we came there for. Immediately uninstalled.

excellent game. word puzzles aren't the deepest but can be a challenge. love the setting, the strangeness of it all.

Oh where to begin with super ambitious project. The game sucks. This was too big of a concept and what was put together is a complete mess that does not work at all. The flow, design, controls, everything in some way is negatively effected. It is just not good. It is a real shame as the foundation is solid and the potential was really high, just did not come together at all. People loved to mention the lore, but being actively impeded, denied, and redirected away from any meaningful progression you lose interest real fast and could care less about the lore. A lot of games now are potentially too fast to burn through where you wish for more, but there is not any. This has the opposite where by there is so much to do, but the pacing is so slow you need a robot friend in real life to wake you from your nap, this game is that slow.

TL;DR - A game about exploration that punishes you for exploration.

~

Heaven's Vault tries very hard to not railroad you... except in all the instances it does.

I was having a good time sailing around in my boat, finding random shit that allowed me to get better at translating the ancient texts... then (without warning) I'm locked into the fucking endgame from half the galaxy away, and probably 10-12 hours earlier than I wanted to do the finale.

If you meet named characters, you better get the first conversation right or you'll either never see them again or have any future interactions basically consist of them telling you to fuck off. This includes characters necessary for achievements.

Regarding achievements, it's telling that there's one for starting a New Game Plus, because otherwise you'll probably never want to play the damn thing again once some of the above bullshit happens.

A really creative and captivating game about piecing together a forgotten history. The game has lots of odd design choices and is very slow paced (agonizingly so in some places) but I feel that these things mostly just add to the game's unique character. The story is very freeform in how you approach it and while I've only played through the game once, there appears to be a large amount of differing pathways through the game based on your choices which change what things you find and learn.

Uncovering the mysteries of the game world is interesting in itself, but I also enjoyed the themes on the importance of history.

While the system of deciphering the language is fun, it rarely offers insights into the story, so I think it's best to approach the game as something like a visual novel with this deciphering minigame rather than as a puzzle game, but I think it's still well worth playing.

Needs a fishing minigame.

Interesting set-up. You play an archeologist in a fantasy universe. Your search for a lost roboticists leads you to unearth hidden places and decipher an ancient language. Slowly the puzzle pieces start to connect and you learn what happened in the past in your universe. Ultimately you have to make a decision what to do with that knowledge for the future of your universe.
Beautiful music and graphics. I found this a very relaxing playthrough, and the ending showed this game is very replayable. It became clear that your choices will lead to different pieces of information about your universe becoming available to you or not. Will you have a clear enough picture to make the choice?

Heaven's Vault is a game that's slow, plodding, and deliberate. It's a beautiful world, engaging story, and pleasantly methodical puzzles. There's just so much (intentional) friction (to set the tone) that getting anything done feels more like a chore than it should.

Buy it on sale.

Very nearly a masterpiece. Held back by some clunkyness, UX issues, bugs, and inconsistent presentation.

The sheer amount of words that are stressed through italics made reading the dialogue unbearable. Literally every line has a randomly stressed word for whatever reason.

I wanted to like this game for its promise of translating a language but after one long hour I had only translated TWO phrases, which were both handfed to me.

I wanted to like this game so much.

TLDR: Painfully slow gameplay with clunky or missing UI. Interesting ideas that are frustrating to engage with because of the timed element to the dialogue. Mechanics that discourage authentic exploration- more like a branching visual novel than something I felt in control of.


Every Pro has a corresponding Con:
I found the art style interesting and nice to look at- of course if you look at it too much you might miss dialogue options.
The language mechanic is a nice idea but clunky to actually interact with.
I love the point and click idea but the character moves excruciatingly slow through spaces that are hard to navigate and difficult to interact with. Exploring is just rubbing your character against all of the edges of the areas so that your character will decide to notice something. Nothing that you can see and choose to interact with.
I love the idea of collecting artifacts and text except that you never see any of them and have no inventory to look at what you have- so you will be asked to trade these items away without being able to know what you have. I would love to see the objects in this art style.

Cons:
Sailing- you spend a long time doing this, it serves no function, you can't mess it up (even if you miss your turn you can jump back to where you just were) and it takes FOREVER. There is theoretically dialogue happening during this but you are also trying to steer, and get locked in dialogue when you stop to look for artifacts. The dialogue stopped corresponding to what we were sailing by and directions for turns happened after we had already made the turns.
Lack of Invetory/ Dictionary- what kind of point and click doesn't have an inventory? How am I supposed to keep track of the objects that I am collecting? I know I can see the words, but looking at these words is set up in the most unhelpful way possible. I also can't tell what I actually have vs what I have seen.
There are also some frustrating incongruities. You seem to be the only person who 'sails' but the objects are appearing in shops and markets all over the place. Artifacts are everywhere but you have no knowledge of the language. What kind of university has such huge volumes of artifacts and texts but has done no work being able to decypher them? You have been using the hopper your whole life but need them explained by a robot? You fly through space but you can't bring air with you onto a moon where the air is low? I am prepared to suspend some disbelief but it kept taking me out of it.

great game

Phenomenal game and story! A lot of it is too slow paced for my liking. But the world and history are so rich and detailed and the process of slowing learning things through translation was a joy.

A profoundly novel, inimitable and unique experience.

Many games touch on the subjects of discovery and exploration, Heaven's Vault breathes it,

Your actions and dialogue have consequences and it's very easy to ruin relationships - actions can't be taken back due to a punishing save system and a design direction that doesn't let you go places just to 'check if you missed something'. You can miss entire story arcs ( Such as the Empress ) and absolutely ignore entire locations (Elboreth) and relationships (almost everyone) and still have a coherent and satisfying experience!

Aliya, the protagonist, is a bitter, unfriendly harpy, but this can be navigated. Her experiences shape her and take away options - my own notable moment was her developing a fear of doing anything remotely athletic, which the game demands every other location, turning to that as a very final resort.

The new game plus mode is lore-friendly and provides even more of the main translation-based gameplay while upping the difficulty.

The only notable demerit of the game is the fact that a less organic more 'gamey' mode wasn't provided where one could go back and forth between locations without cause and not suffer quite so much the consequences of their Aliya's decisions.

Full Recommend.

Loved this game, felt unique for very many reasons (mechanics, aesthetic influence, etc). Very satisfying puzzling and a compelling setting and story.

A beautiful piece heavily focusing on the story. The rivers flow frustratingly slow at some places, but I liked the language discovery mechanic (most of the time) and the setting is quite mysterious and unusual. This was not a game I could go through in one sit, but rather it kept calling me to come back for many shorter sessions, likely because it's slower and doesn't keep constantly pumping that dopamine like many faster games do. Still, I completed the game once in about 18 hours of total gameplay, and plan to go for New Game+ to find the things I missed on first playthough. Big recommendation for anyone interested in mystery games!

A slow burn exploration and discovery quest with unique but jarring presentation of 2D sprites in 3D environments. Seemed interesting at first with language deciphering, but really dragged down by unlikable characters and boring story.

Lots of text dialogue between the main protagonist and her robot companion.

Game progression is very slow and the story about time loops, soul rivers, ancient robot conspiracies is not engaging nor meaningful to sustain continued game play.

Heaven's Vault is a unique game, though not without its flaws. I picked it up as part of my Metroidbranias journey, which I embarked on after playing Outer Wilds. Heaven's Vault is undeniably a knowledge-driven game—you rely heavily on learning an ancient language to unravel the mysteries of the world: who the past civilizations were, what happened to them, and what fate awaits in the near future.

The ancient language is, without a doubt, the most standout feature of the game. While it’s not as complex as real-world languages, it's intricate enough to keep you engaged for the entire game, constantly pushing you to discover more texts and expand your vocabulary. What makes this learning process so compelling is the internal logic of the language. Words aren’t random; they follow a recognizable structure that gradually becomes clear as you encounter more examples.

There are roughly 40 symbols in the alphabet, each playing a different role. Some act as base symbols—such as water, person, or light—while others indicate parts of speech, like nouns and verbs. For example, combining a noun modifier with the base symbol for water gives you "water," while adding a verb modifier produces "to drink." Base symbols can also be combined to form new meanings—light + high results in "star." Additionally, there are special symbols for negation and possession. Whole words can be fused together, creating longer and more complex meanings. For instance, the word "grateful" stretches to a whopping fourteen characters!

You encounter new words while exploring the game world—etched into ancient walls, hidden in old books, or inscribed on mysterious artifacts. When faced with an unknown word, the game presents you with a small list of possible translations. If you see the word again, the game tells you whether your guess was correct. If you were right, the word is added to your dictionary; if not, the game removes one incorrect option and asks you to try again. As your vocabulary expands and you grasp the structure, the game stops breaking phrases into separate words, it presents them as a single unbroken sequence, forcing you to identify word boundaries yourself.

While language learning is Heaven’s Vault's crowning achievement, traversing the game world is its Achilles' heel. In a sense, the game shares similarities with Outer Wilds—you travel to a destination first, then explore. However, in OW, both the spaceship and your suit serve as mechanics you must master. Even in the late game, a careless mistake can land you in a sticky situation.

There are a few key distinctions in how traversal works in Heaven’s Vault:
1. You can’t freely roam the world. In OW, you can venture anywhere from the start—you may not understand what you find, but the freedom is there. In HV, destinations only become available once you've gathered enough clues about their location. You can sail around endlessly, but aside from the occasional inscribed trinket, there’s little to discover by sheer chance.
2. Travel and exploration are entirely separate mechanics. You sail the rivers, then land on a moon to explore on foot. But since nothing meaningful happens during sailing, this mechanic could be removed without much loss. The only casualty would be character dialogue, but since they chatter constantly while on foot, it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice.
3. Sailing lacks challenge. All you do is choose a turn and then wait for the next prompt. There’s no real risk—if you take a wrong turn, the game simply offers to teleport you back to retry. This makes the sailing segments mind-numbingly dull, though fast travel (which unlocks once a route is known) helps mitigate the tedium.

Speaking of locations, there are two major types: populated cities and ancient, uninhabited sites. Cities can be visited freely, as many times as you like. The other sites, however, are one-and-done—once you leave, you can’t return. This feels like a huge missed opportunity. I would have loved an exploration loop where you could revisit locations after gaining new knowledge, unlocking previously inaccessible areas, and uncovering deeper secrets.

The same issue applies to the ending. It seems there’s no real difference between learning as much of the language as possible or barely scratching the surface. How much better would it be if the game allowed you to reach an ending early, but with less-than-ideal outcomes? Then, with additional knowledge, you could piece together a way to turn things around and unlock a truly satisfying conclusion.

One of the most unique games I have ever played.

I was a little surprised by all of the negative reviews, but after reading through them, I agree that a lot of the common complaints are valid and I can see how this game just isn't for everyone. However, I will say that there is a sort of fast travel where you can pass control to your robot while sailing, but I'm not sure if that was added in a later update, or you have to have sailed in a certain area X number of times or something like that.

Any negative criticisms were far outweighed by all of the things I loved about it: the art, the music, the world, the mystery, and most of all, I loved deciphering the ancient glyphs, which is really the core hook of the game.

Also note that you probably won't be able to solve everything or go everywhere in your first playthrough, as I believe you are really meant to play through it multiple times. Each time, you are able to carry over any glyphs you have solved in previous runs, and the phrases get longer and more complex each time. I can see how that wouldn't appeal to some folks, though, especially if the first playthrough didn't really capture you.

So I'd recommend reading through both positive and negative reviews and deciding for yourself if it feels like something you would enjoy. It might not be for you, but it also might be one of the most memorable experiences you have in a game.

Totally loved the experience. It's janky as hell and has a lot of heart. Definitely give it a shot if you love linguistics, archaeology, and sci-fi. Sci-fantasy? Idk. Aside from all the great puzzle games I've seen it compared to, the mysterious setting also reminded me of Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy. I remember as a kid yearning to know more about these "precursors"... well, in this game you can be the space-faring archaeologist to uncover it all. And no, the answer isn't space weasels!

I love it!

The game is beautiful. The locations to explore are beautiful, and the universe is gorgeous. There aren't a whole lot of characters, but they are all memorable and unique. Deciphering the language is fun, takes a lot of time but it's thrilling to piece the puzzle together and there's always something different to try when you play the game again to collect more information.

I like the hieroglyphs, and they are fun to write on actual paper. I think they look pretty.

There's a but...

As much as I love it, the game is a bit tedious at times. Walking is slow, despite locations being relatively small. After the 1st playthrough I am just exhausted of walking around to try something new. I am exhausted of dialogue that I can't mash a button to speed up, and although there is a slider to really make the dialogue move fast, it makes it hard to read at those speeds. It should've been a button.

I do not like the moments where the game takes control away from you, 7 out of 10 times it just walked me away without any reason and it's frustrating because that's not where I want to go.

I did not like the endless monologue during translation process. Fading into the translation screen only to be pulled out by Aliya talking to herself and then fading back to the same translation screen does not make me happy. I just wanted to check what I've done on previous translations... but the game likes to interrupt you often with filler monologue.

Backup your saves if you want to experiment! It's really not worth it to play the whole game from start if you realize that you've messed up. Oftentimes there is no undoing what you've done, and that means hours of replaying, not to mention that if you want to keep your knowledge you have to reach the end of the game for another new game+

That doesn't mean you shouldn't try rolling with your mistakes, as unintended effects could reveal something new! And you should enjoy your 1st or 2nd run first before doing any save saving. But if you're aiming to try something specific, backup and backup often.

If all you want is to get to an ending and be done with the game, you probably won't be too frustrated by this. It's only an annoyance if you want to explore further in new game +, but you probably will want to dig deeper. Until then, it's quite interesting and fun as everything is new. Except walking, walking is always too slow.

Easy permanent misclicks and missed parts of the story, without save option. Also very slow walking and multiple playthroughs necessary. Very hard to 'complete' all translations.

I've had this game in my library for years, I think I tried to play it a long time ago and the frame rate or something was just too bad for the game to be playable. This time around, inspired by my great experience playing Chants of Senaar, I tried again. It took me around 6 hours to finish the first run through. There is replayability (+ mode), which allows you to play the game again but keep your memory of the words you've learned.

The basic premise of the game is that you're an adventurer 'sailing' around another world, uncovering relics of old civilisations and finding clues to solve a mystery. Many of the relics you find have inscriptions written in an old language, and you can find other inscriptions on walls and fixtures as you walk around. You don't know the language, so you have to decipher it by using deductive reasoning to make educated guesses. The words you learn help you to understand what is going on in the game and to make informed choices. You make meaningful choices, both by your actions and your words. Overall I found the game a little slow in places, (the walking speed is annoyingly slow) but the story-line kept me engaged, and I loved the linguistics puzzles. The art style and music are both beautiful, the game feels laggy somehow, but I'm not sure if this was partly a deliberate choice for effect.

I would recommend the game for anyone who likes puzzles/logic, linguistics, meaningful choices and treasure hunting.

The learning of a fictional language is really well done. And it gives a great sense of discovery. Well worth it.

I love this game. If you like linguistics and archaeology, definitely give it a go! From a gameplay perspective though, it is a bit unpolished. Note that this is a slow game. There's no sprint, walking and sailing take time, but in this time you can discover great lore through talking with your companion

Pros

• Great story, fantastic music, lots of options. The voice acting is great and the visuals are unique in a good way. It's just a fun experience and pretty relaxing
  
• It's incredibly fun finding little artifacts and translating Ancient to learn more about the Nebula's history. While the mechanics of translation are obviously simplified, it works well in game form and as a linguistics nerd it's great fun. There are solid linguistic foundations to the game that make translation easier if you pick up on them
  
• There's a New Game + that keeps all your previous language knowledge so you can try different branching story options and the translations just get longer and harder with each playthrough, speaking of...
  
• There are tons of ways to play this game. By which I mean, the devs did a fantastic job with having lots of little and big choices affect not just the story (through what you know either correctly or incorrectly), but also your interactions with characters (who care greatly about not just what you do, but the order in which you do it). The game seems incredibly simple and straightforward at first, but there are actually tons of intricacies that affect the entire story farther down the line, lots of options you didn't even know you had and locations you may or may not know exist depending on which actions you took and which items you found. The game isn't huge or endless, but it does reward exploration and taking your time to think things through (always think out loud through the Question and Remark options)
  

Cons

• The actual gameplay is a bit...janky. Movement feels awkward. There's an auto-walk that triggers both when I expect it and for seemingly no reason at all. The camera is a bit restrictive as well
  
• Sailing is similarly awkward. It feels like you're always fighting the current and doing the wrong thing. I don't find it tedious like some others do, and there's a fast travel option if you want to skip it, but I do wish it felt smoother
  
• For a game that relies so heavily on exploring dialogue, the prompts can arrive a bit late. I frequently miss exploration dialogue options because the option to reply comes just late enough that I've already moved to a new area or interacted with something else, cutting of the conversation. On the flip side, there are plenty of instances (most notably, when sailing with ruins), where the current conversation will run to completion before triggering new dialogue which I greatly appreciate
  
• Overlapping button mappings (I use a controller). For example, there will be an object that I can interact with by pressing X or B, but I can also respond to something a companion said by using X or B. So if I want to converse without interacting with the object, I have to walk away out of the object interaction range before the dialogue option expires. This is even more annoying given the lack of reloading, because if you accidentally take an action due to overlapping controls, you can't just reload and must live with that action for the rest of the playthrough
  
• There is no save and reload system, the game operates purely on autosaves. If you take an action or make a choice, you must see it out for the rest of your playthrough. Only once you "finish" the game and restart with NG+ can you choose differently
  
• There is also no way to restart your current playthrough. Restarting your game undoes all previous progress, including past playthroughs which means your translations start from scratch. Despite thinking about this game a lot and wanting to come back to it, I rarely do because of this
  
• The robot is constantly trying to hurry you off moons which just feels tedious and repetitive, especially for a game that so thoroughly rewards exploration
  
[*] The game can also force you out of places it's annoying, or sometimes impossible, to return to. For example, if you go left on a moon instead of right, it can lock you out of going right. Sometimes you can come back and explore that path, sometimes you can't. Sometimes the game will decide you've explored enough and just transport you back to your ship even if you wanted to keep looking around, and once on your ship, you can't just land again. You have to sail all the way back around the rivers to that same moon, if it will even let you land again

If you want Tomb Raider without the combat and with actual archaeology, get this game. If you're on the fence about the gameplay, get it on sale. I've definitely gotten $25 out of it, but I would 100% recommend it for anyone at $15 or less.

Really lovely and unique. Discovering how everything works is a really special experience.

A game about archaeology that doesn't involve murdering people? What a concept!

Joking aside this is deep and atmospheric, and quite unique. Reminds me of Ursula K Le Guin's Hainish sci-fi books, and of The Dispossessed in particular.

I saw this game on a list of recommendations since I loved other deduction and mystery games like Case of the Golden Idol and Chants of Sennaar, but I really can't recommend this game.

Heaven’s Vault has a interesting premise — explore ancient ruins, decipher a lost language, and piece together a forgotten history. The word deduction mechanics are interesting at first, and the story is compelling enough to pull you along, however, the more you play, the more the cracks show and it just becomes frustrating and uninteresting to play. Translating words feels more like guessing than solving, and the logic behind why your character understands new words often feels arbitrary. Navigation is clunky, with awkward controls both on foot and while sailing, and the sailing itself — initially kind of cool— becomes a tedious chore. This game is so frustratingly slow.

The game’s art style and animation doesn't work for me, but that's subjective. Some UI elements also look rough, especially the confusing mess that is timeline that is recorded. The dialogue isn't great and there is just so much filler. There’s also a bizarre health bar system that feels completely out of place and is never explained. While the exploration and story have potential, the game is bogged down by filler dialogue, unintuitive navigation, and shallow mechanics. In the end, Heaven’s Vault is more frustrating than fun, and despite its ambition, it just doesn’t feel good to play.

A truly unique game. I have never played anything like it, and perhaps I sadly never will again. The worldbuilding is amazing, the story has a nice feeling of mystery that constantly pulls you forward, and most of the environments are very beautiful. But what this game truly excells at, is the "archeology" aspect of it, especially the translation of Ancient writings. The language itself is surprisingly complex and detailed, while still remaining simple enough in its rules that you can rather easily glean the meaning from any new phrase if you have been paying attention to how the symbols tend to be used and combined. And the only thing more satisfying than becoming proficient at making translations, is seeing said translations influence Aliya's theories and the historical timeline of events.
Another thing I adore about this game is how much your choices can matter! Choosing the order of where to visit, what to do, and what information do you want to share with some of the characters can actually lead to some major changes in the story, and especially, it changes what knowledge you get, which is so, so very important in this game! There are so many choices to make it absolutely worth it to try this game on New Game + *at least* once, and I say this as someone that rarely likes to replay games.

Now, for the negatives:
There are definitely some things this game could've done better, a lack of a direct dictionary of words you've translated and pretty wonky controls are some of the most common complaints I've read, and I agree in full. The banter system is a very interesting addition that I really want to like, but there have been so many times I've pressed "Respond", only to have Aliya say something I'd rather she kept to herself at this point, or worded it in a different way. Which could've been made better by at least showing the player any information about what are you responding to, or how, and not just that you can do it by choosing either the mysterious "option A", or the equally mysterious "option B, but this one's with a question mark at the end". There are also some very occasional bugs, but at least in my case they were always small and not game-breaking.

Also, be warned that this game is *very* slow paced, which can be either a positive or a negative, depending on your preferences. Really good to relax and unwind, but *does* take quite some time to sit down with it.

Overall, even though it is not a mechanically perfect game, it will *always* have a very special place in my heart (it's one of my favorite games of all time) , and in my opinion some of those little flaws only add charm to it. If you don't care about total smoothness of control, and want to experience a truly unique adventure following a grand story of the past, I strongly advise to at least give this hidden gem a try. Especially if you are interested in linguistics or history ;)
Good Faith to you all!

Gorgeous!

This is a game of extremes. Overally, it is one of the best games I've ever played. However, this is also one of the jankiest games I've played (the movement is clunky and the ship sections are tedious). But it's well worth looking past that because this game has some of the highest highs and most memorable experiences that very few other games even attempt.

At a surface level, this game is about translating a lost language based on fragments of text that you can use surrounding context to infer the meaning of. For example, if you see the same character on a bunch of gravestones and on a sword, you can assume it means "death". You can record what you think the word means and eventually you will be able to translate much larger snippets of text. This system is very well done and is more than sufficient to form the core of the game.

But the translation minigame isn't the entire game. Heaven's Vault is an extremely good narrative adventure. This game combines deep and compelling worldbuilding with a responsive and complex storytelling system where your actions actually affect the story you get. I'm not talking about some heavy-handed RPG system where the game prompts you to make "the good choice" or "the evil choice" or a game where you play 99% the same game but choose which ending you want to see. I'm talking about a more freeform system where the order in which you visit planets, what actions you do, etc can cause changes in the world and cause different story trees to unfold organically. They were able to literally turn this game's story into a novel (which is also great). It's that good.

Really good worldbuilding but also really slow, if you have patience this game will be perfect for you

Great game, for real!

After the first playthru I think I'll come back to it once I have forgotten some of the characters and the plot. There is definitely replay value here :)

pretty good game, storywise. very unique visuals
the conlang is a bit hard to parse, i dont think there's a dictionary of all of the words ive encountered but i could be wrong, ive made dumber mistakes while playing games.
it freezes up sometimes when i got to the map to go to another planet, so i have to close it and re open it to continue :(

unlike anything ive ever played! sooo much fun, this experience will stick with me for a long time

I went down a ladder at a dig site.

I realised I'd forgot to turn the generator on and couldn't see anything.

I climbed out of the hole to turn the generator on.

I could not turn the generator on.

I decided to go back down the hole and try to get what I could.

Because I had already gone down this ladder, the game decided I wasn't allowed to go down it again.

The game auto-saved, meaning I could not undo this blunder.

There is only one save slot.

I have to restart the whole game all over again because this ladder apparently does not like repeat customers.

I am about 8 hours into the game.

This is not the first time something like this has happened.

Wonderful game. Some mechanics may get a little boring/repetitive, but the main mechanic, deciphering a fully functional ancient language, absolutely shines through the rest. Highly recomend playing with pen and paper, the game is at its best when you are able to figure out the meaning of some words and concepts a step ahead of it, and use the "guesses" as confirmations on what already figured out.

This is one of the best "language translation" games I have ever played. Although there are few games that do it, discovering a language bit by bit is one of my favorite types of game mechanics. The intricate way that pieces you find, no matter what order you do them, contribute to the story is very well implemented. If you liked Chants of Sennaar or even discovering alien words in No Man's Sky, this game is perfect.

The word to describe this game is unique. You'll be deciphering an ancient language, while travelling from planet to planet, uncovering mysteries, learning more about this strange world, making friends and enemies.

We are so used to fast-paced things, and this game intentionally tries to slow you down, give you a moment to focus on the dialogue, and then some time to process it. There is a lot of valuable lore hidden within seemingly random exchanges with your travel companion.

Being different could bring both good and bad. Maybe this game is not for everyone. But if you can look past mild annoyances, you'll have a truly exhilarating experience. I sure do.

There's not exactly a game here so much as an extended world-building exercise. You're going to spend most of your time reading, and the ending can be a little untidy. Still, if you want to try a really unique premise that almost works, this is definitely worth your time.

I'm disappointed. Inkle is fantastic at storytelling, and Heaven's Vault has the opportunity to be amazing (seems like a great story underneath it all). But it gets wrecked by egregiously bad gameplay.

About 80% of the time, you're either (very slowly) walking around a place or (very slowly) sailing through space. That includes finding the occasional ruin in space--which leads to a tedious back and forth that you've already read 20 times before the good stuff actually comes out. The other 20% of the time, you're solving cool puzzles or going through well-written and intelligently constructed dialogues. That 20% is fun--main reason I kept going for as long as I did. But the other 80% really, really drags.

Think the fantastic Sorcery! series--but instead of moving quickly across the map, you spend 4x as much time waiting for your character to move across the map as you do fighting or casting spells or engaging in dialogues.

One last unfortunate flaw: For much of the adventure, once you've been somewhere once, you can't go back. Go down into a mine and then have to step aside because your kid bothers you? You almost die before heading out--but then aren't allowed to go back in. See something interesting on a moon and want to return to check it out later? Sorry, no can do. Only option is to start another game and wait the 10 hours to go back there and try again. Very disappointing.