Blackheart Review

The world is falling apart. As the youngest son of a dysfunctional royal family you forge a secret alliance with a magical creature to try and put it back together. With a balanced difficulty level, tight narrative, and a satisfying gameplay loop, it’s insane to me that Hyporeal’s Blackheart has not been picked up by a publisher.

I don’t typically play shooty top-down games, but I did enjoy Hades enough to be looking forward to its second instalment. Although distinct from Hades in many ways, Blackheart utilises the stronger elements from it, making it a great way to tide over fans until their next release, and beyond that, to get hyped about what Hyporeal may do next. As someone who was halfway through the recent Zelda release, and who historically adores the franchise, I became way more obsessive about returning to the world of Blackheart.

Gameplay is a mix of shooting your newfound magic in landscapes swarming with monsters, dying a bunch before defeating boss challenges, and returning to the Blackheart kingdom of Credoss to level up your stats and make passive-aggressive jokes with your siblings. The system of levelling up, spell types, and modifiers is elegant and intuitive, and expanding on and increasing these abilities is genuinely exciting. Combined with your dash movement and a cooldown period for most actions, battle scenarios are frenetic, with diverse enemy attacks and movements, and some you learn to fear every time they spawn (friendly PSA: watch for the floating lizard freaks!).

Much like Hades, the small cast of characters is conventionally attractive and hyper articulate, although their appearances are less important here. While their shared level of intelligence does not make them super distinct from each other, it does make the dialogue sharp and condensed, thankfully not weighing down the player with text in the relatively short, and arguably perfect, playtime of ten-ish hours.

All of the king’s children begin in Succession-esque manner, all seemingly vying for their chance at the throne and throwing verbal jabs at each other. As the story progresses they become softer, motivations become clear and nuanced, steeped in their historical failings and interpersonal dramas. Moments of levity may have been welcomed through a loveable idiot sort of character, but that may be a personal aversion to seriousness, something that is already undercut slightly by the sibling rivalry.

The overarching story is surprisingly expansive. Although it’s clear who the good and bad are (the owl who bestows magic on you is immediately suspicious), it surpasses the often tedious save-the-world plot to include musings on the supernatural, kingdom politics concerning refugees and borders, and ultimately, whether magic is a necessary evil in a cruel and corrupt world. I suspect the narrative experience to be this considered because the game is based on previous novels written by founder and director, Josiah Hunt.

Each new game environment isn’t simply a field to kill to the top, but linked to the story arcs. The art style is admittedly not my favourite, containing heavy outlining and quite a lot of detail, but with such chaotic sequences it is probably necessary for this style of gameplay. In the beginning, I felt the level of detail condensed into small assets made some things illegible, but over time I either got used to this or the level designs became more simplified. Overall, I was delighted by how engaging moving through the world was, with just enough complexity before becoming disoriented and annoyed.

Continuing comparisons to Hades, Blackheart is both more and less punishing. I argue the boss battles are much harder, yet roguelike elements are not utilised; when you die you return to a relatively close save point. This was a refreshing decision and means all your energy is used in the big Soulslike fights, which entails learning the boss attacks and movements after dying a minimum of 10 times. How the devs balanced the level of difficulty and the excitement of learning and succeeding is a mystery to me, and the game’s most impressive aspect – it doesn’t hold your hand, but neither does it slap it away at every opportunity.

As someone who was halfway through the recent Zelda release, and who historically adores the franchise, I became way more obsessive about returning to the world of Blackheart

The healing and levelling up systems are also novel, and fighting feels rewarding despite the lack of item drops from your enemies. Levelling up is based on bottled essence you find around the world, to be used back in Credoss, and your health slots are filled by finding hearts outside of battle. In battle, it is up to you to heal yourself, and this pause in fighting adds another element of intensity.

As I played Blackheart on the Steam Deck, my play experience differed from the desktop version. The game is fresh out of the oven, so there are some bugs to be worked out that the developers have either already fixed or are actively fixing. The Steam Deck froze a handful of times, some UI elements were a bit janky, and some spells could not be controlled easily through the gamepad (although the best spells seemed obvious to me anyway). These all had workarounds, ones I was more than happy to make to continue playing.

The biggest letdown is that once the game ends (there are two endings and a secret third one), is that you cannot return to the game. This was particularly frustrating as I experienced a bug that meant I couldn’t go to Credoss before the final battles (fixed now), and so was left with the essence for levelling and items which I could never use. The developer has considered making this a possibility in future and likely underestimated how enjoyable it would be for players to continue collecting spells, modifiers, and story pieces.

Final Thoughts

The gameplay loop is the (black) heart of this game. While the narrative undoubtedly wraps a beautiful black bow around the whole, the core fighting and ability mechanics unite everything in a cohesive and affecting experience. The level of quality is surprising for a small team of four working in New Zealand, representing an impressively solid introduction to Hyporeal’s work and I’m actually scared of what they may accomplish in future. A final word for players and game publishers out there: pick up Blackheart before the world does.

Reviewed on Steam Deck // Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics