Heretic's Hope

The thing I appreciate the most about Heretic’s Hope is the same I appreciated about Devotionalia: it sets out to tell a story whose subject matter, structure, rhythm, style, etc. are very much at odds with most things at IFcomp, and even more at odds with most things in videogames, and even most things in popular culture.

“What is it to be holy?”, the game asks. What kind of question is that in a videogame? The game doesn’t compromise to make the subject more player-friendly. Hats off to anyone willing to do all this in such a coherent way.

The story is fine, the aesthetics stunning, the interactions well thought. I have problems with them sll, but minor. It’s memorably written and illustrated. Both the story and the design follow the same principle: horror vacui. It’s a very dangerous thing to try, and you need to have it under pretty good control. The game keeps piling characters, locations, plotlines, pictures, colored words, decorated frames, but amazingly, it mostly pulls it off. Perhaps it's the sheer imagination of it all, even when it's way too much.