What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed

by Amanda Walker profile

Horror
2021

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(15)
4 star:
(19)
3 star:
(4)
2 star:
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Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 39
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- Max Fog, February 18, 2024

- oscar-78, October 24, 2023

- Laney Berry, September 26, 2023

- WillFlame, September 14, 2023

- gattociao, August 23, 2023

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Incredible Gothic Horror, August 21, 2023

The less you know about this game going into it, the better. However, I will say that the atmosphere created by the game surpassed my expectations. While I would take the warning in the author's note at the beginning of the game seriously, this is an incredible game with a unique and well executed command set and a compelling story line.

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- Edo, August 17, 2023

- elysee, April 24, 2023

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Yeah I can't really find fault here. Very good and emotive game :), April 1, 2023
by Cygnus (Australia)

Another great one by Amanda Walker! Similar to Colourtura, it has really cool mechanics. Instead of interacting with objects, you get to emotion them. As with most Walker games, there’s a great hint system. Beautiful and lovely, heartbreaking and impactful.

This one was really hard to find a fault with. Like, at all. Amanda makes beautiful games, and this one has incredible mechanics, corresponding to emotions, which resonates with me a lot. Wracking my brain for anything I can fault here- oh. Not much extra content, I suppose.

But that’s just unfair to the entire game- it was a linear (ish) experience, a puzzle deduction game, and overall, amazing mechanics. I would definitely play again. I did cry.

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- MoyTW, March 29, 2023

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Innovative and clean, but falling flat emotionally at times, March 22, 2023
by ilyu

By far my favorite part of What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed was the mechanics, which struck me as exceedingly clever and well-fitted to the content. I found the system of discovering new verbs and then figuring out which puzzles to use those verbs with satisfying, especially so when you found a verb that you'd been hunting down for a while (for me, this was when (Spoiler - click to show)I found the "confuse" verb and immediately shot toward the attic, where the latch that needed to be turned had been waiting for me from the very start), although I do wish there had been some more difficult/less obvious puzzles (my favorite and the one that struck me as the most complex was (Spoiler - click to show)opening the box with the key). I thought the piecewise information drops were well-paced and I was curious enough after each to continue seeking more snippets of the narrator's backstory, but once I had it all I found the overarching story to be a little simple emotionally. Some of the NPCs ((Spoiler - click to show)Eva and Ian) struck me as lacking in nuance (especially (Spoiler - click to show)Eva, who was also abused by their grandfather and made responsible for her sister from a young age. I was put off by the characterization of Eva as wholly remorseless and the choice to portray her as fully the villain, without an ounce of regret in her, when the grandfather—who arguably instilled Eva with resentment toward Margaret by punishing Eva for Margaret's actions and causing Eva to blame Margaret for the abuse they both suffered—was redeemed on his deathbed), though I enjoyed the narrator's internal complexity.
Overall, I found the game and story to be clean and clever in its conception, albeit a little too clean in its emotional setup. I'm not certain I would play again (although this may just be that I rarely replay games in general), but I would certainly recommend it to all—even if I took issue with some moments of the story or the emotional payoff, I'm glad to have experienced it.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
I'm an idiot but this game is great, March 19, 2023

This was my first IF foray. That being said, it has ignited a love of these games for me.
I found the storytelling immensely immersive, and the preface gave me enough information to feel comfortable diving right in.
I played through the game multiple times. I accidentally softlocked myself into being unable to finish the first time through, as I (Spoiler - click to show)set the body ablaze, ran downstairs, LOVE'd into the door handle and used RAGE instead of CONFUSE. For whatever reason I was unable to HATE the handle to jump out of it, since it was on fire. Parser showed no exits, either.
I felt like a total dumdum since the HELP command literally tells you that you can't softlock the game, but as my mom likes to say, "idiot proofing? more like proof I'm an idiot." In this case, I'm sure I did something wrong, so I restarted.
The second time round, I was far more diligent. I used a pad and paper to help myself navigate more easily.
Immense re-playability, though I wish it ended differently. I don't love ending which include (Spoiler - click to show) revenge tales and murder simply because it doesn't feel as satisfying as a happy ending. In this case, I don't necessarily think that a happy ending is possible, but murdering NPCs also seemed unnecessary.

All in all, I liked it. Simple enough for me, but thoughtful enough to be playable twice. A really great intro to the genre, and I look forward to coming back to it when I've got more IF under my belt.

Note: this rating is not included in the game's average.
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