Heaven Alive

Playing and reviewing Heaven Alive immediately after Machina Caerulae makes for a study in contrasts. They’re similar enough that those contrasts are interesting – they’re both New-Twiny games with a 500-word limit, they both have cool visuals and custom interfaces to reinforce the vibe, and they’re both two-handers centering on an abusive relationship where you play the weaker figure, so we’re not comparing Nord and Bert and SPY INTRIGUE here or anything. But where Machina employed a stripped-down prose style and only branched at the very, very end, Heaven Alive takes a more conventional approach – each conversation option spins out into a unique bit of dialogue, which, while terse, are rendered in full sentences. It just about works, but the effort of cramming a more traditional choice-based IF structure into the brutal wordcount cap is too-often visible.

This isn’t to say the game doesn’t know how to communicate with economy: the game is a conversation between your character, a sort of cybernetic major-domo, and your master, an amoral interstellar caudillo, and so the interface presents all the text in two windows, one for him and one for you. The fact that his is bigger, and labelled “EXECUTOR”, and yours is smaller and labelled “WRETCHED”, is all you need to know (there’s also a cool barcode visual that goes with the names; the collage backdrop is cool too). Similarly, while the details of the inciting incident are a bit vague – there’s a ship in need of rescue, but it seems like it’s going to take more effort than Mr. EXECUTOR wants to expend – the power dynamics are clearly at the forefront, with the sci-fi technobabble more or less irrelevant. Again, the interface does a good job of making this visible, with a tracker labeled “approval” always visible in the upper-left corner (with that said, the interface might be slightly over-baroque – it took me a while to realize that the arrows under “approval” were in fact the passage forward/passage back buttons).

But where Heaven Alive starts to sprawl, it runs into difficulties. There are two different nodes, with three choices apiece, before you reach the binary endgame choice, which is an impressive breadth of options, but the consequence is that things can seem to escalate extremely quickly. Like, my first playthrough involved me calling the boss by his first name in an attempt to establish rapport, which he clearly didn’t like, so I apologized. He seemed to be mollified (and the approval meter, after swerving to -1, went back into more-or-less safely neutral territory), but then I had to choose whether or not to “subjugate myself.” Unsure of what that meant, I decided to stay the course, at which point I ripped a cyber-doohickey out of my own neck – I think it was somehow controlling me? – snarling that he was nothing without me. With a little more room to breathe, this ramp-up might have been dramatic and compelling, but as it was it felt too abrupt to land.

After some repeat plays, I found that there were some variations that didn’t come off quite as intense (in particular, if your approval is positive, defiance just leads to punishment rather than a definitive rupture). But regardless, I found the details of the relationship were too fuzzy, and race to the finish line too quick, to establish effective stakes for the final submission/defiance choice; to me the WRETCHED and the EXECUTOR came off as plot contrivances rather than people. Now, this might partially be due to the fact that I never explored the first set of options – real talk, I live in LA and Trump’s currently got the military deployed in our streets, I am not in a headspace where I can click “subjugate myself” to a tin-pot dictator – so perhaps those branches lead to more satisfying outcomes, with pathos arising from the main character’s attempts to rationalize making accommodation with brutality. Still, if, in a project of 500 words, half the endings don’t fully click, that’s probably an indication you’ve got too many of them.

I’ve played quite a few Neo-Twiny Jam games recently (they’re great to show students) and I’m always really impressed by the richness of story that authors can build into such a limited word count. This is a really fantastic example of that. The relationship between the warlord and the vizier is richly drawn through the dialogue (which feels authentic and not overly explanatory), and the music emphasises the atmosphere of dread and unease. It effectively builds a lot of tension in just a couple of minutes. The styling is just gorgeous, too. I played a few times to try and see all the different endings, and I appreciated that the variations between outcomes felt meaningful. I actually didn’t notice the approval counter in the top corner until a few playthroughs in (this is on me for being unobservant); I’m not sure if the numerical representation of the relationship added much to the narrative for me, but that might just be personal preference. A really well-made short game!

This game is very brief, with just a small handful of choices with a small handful of text.

The graphics are lush, though, with active elements and of lot of decorations like bar codes and other elements, giving a sci-fi feel. There is also music in the background that responds to the current situation in the game.

You are some kind of intermediary or servant for a space fleet leader, and you can choose to be rebellious or not, with at least two different endings.

Fun concept, characters are well-differentiated and the small bits of dialogue establish a setting effectively. The brevity of the game means that I was left wishing for more interaction, but the plot arc did feel fulfilled. As always, this author's writing and design were excellent.

Heaven Alive is a short sci-fi horror-like conversation-sim made in Twine, where you play as an advisor to a warlord. Depending on your choices, the way you address your ruler, you can gain approval points, sending you to one of the three different endings. Along with the highly stylised interface and the stringent background music, the small game can make you feel uncomfortable pretty quick. I think I had the most fun trying to be rude to my boss…