Haven presents a lush alien world, one rife with resource gathering and loaded with turn-based combat, as a suitable venue for its forbidden love story. Such an unorthodox collection of disparate elements may have had trouble connecting if not held together by widely relatable and sharply written interpersonal dialogue. It's an assembly that allows its pair protagonists to thrive inside moments of tedium, suggesting a story worth telling takes precedent over action not always worth doing.
Haven showcases the story of Kay and Yu and all of the optimism, idealism, and interpersonal euphoria of a budding romantic partnership. The never-ending focus of their relationship seems to oppose Haven’s adjacent challenges, a rote but earnest assembly of securing provisions via exploration and defeating monsters through turn-based combat. Haven’s general organization and its emphasis on character work may have been the last thing I expected from The Game Bakers, a developer whose previous title Furi was one of the more mechanically demanding games I had ever played. It’s equal parts stunning and puzzling that Haven draws the same level of competence and foresight from a completely different set of skills. As Furi tested my resolve, Haven tests the traps and triumphs of navigating an alien world with a familiar partner.
We meet Yu and Kay somewhere in the middle of their romance. They’re familiar with each other, very much in love, but still figuring out where each other’s boundaries lie. Their intimacy is visible through widely relatable moments of conversation. At one point Yu can’t deny the compulsion to pop a pimple on Kay’s back. Kay has trouble keeping his hands to himself, albeit with enough consent to where it’s not weird or creepy. Both Yu and Kay don’t hesitate to razz each other after they make goofy mistakes. Yu and Kay are kind hearted and equally likeable, and Haven allows them to share a ton of dialogue to develop their relationship. I would hesitate to label Haven a visual novel or a walking simulator, but most of its activity is in service to building conversations between its two protagonists.
Complicating Yu and Kay’s relationship is their status as exiles from a (presumed) fascist government. Elements of Gattaca, in which a citizens’ destiny is arranged by their genetic traits, are remixed into a class struggle and neither Kay nor Yu want any part of it. They’ve stolen a ship, the Nest, and used it to reach the remote planet of Source. Eventually, amid the local wildlife and plentiful provisions, they discover Source is tainted with Rust, a reddish Evil Goo that makes fauna aggressive and environments uninhabitable. The bulk of Haven tasks Yu and Kay with cleaning up Rust, restoring order to Source, and scavenging pieces to repair their Nest.
Haven feels aggressively inclined to subvert basic expectations of narrative-focused games. Its objective starts with movement, an otherwise basic action taken for granted in most every videogame. Yu and Kay, always as a pair, walk with alarmingly slow footspeed. To subvert this, Haven grants Yu and Kay a pair of boots that allows them to glide across the surface of the planet. It’s an unwieldy, slippery process, and complicated by the ability to drift left and right to create sharper turns. This peculiar style renders Haven a racing game but without competition and against no clock. It seems as if The Game Bakers simply wanted players to add a bit of style and finesse to even the most routine actions.
There are, of course, plenty of actions to take with basic movement. Yu and Kay and follow Flow threads, basic lines of electric blue light, the build their available Flow. Having Flow allows them to clear the environments of Rust by wiping out brightly colored pockets of the toxic substance. Haven is separated into a few dozen floating islands, called inlets, and there’s a meta game to purging every single one of its Rust. Like the brash environmentalism that consumed 90’s platformers, clearing waste is a substitute for correcting the faults of humanity.
Occupying almost every island are native animals covered in Rust. The Rust makes them bad and Haven tasks Yu and Kay with removing the Rust through turn-based combat. Keeping it simple, Yu and Kay have one melee attack, one ranged attack, a block mechanic, and access to some finite magic options. Haven is more concerned with timing and logic than fast-paced action and quick reflexes. Trying to figure out an enemy’s patterns—melee attack from Kay immediately followed by ranged from Yu? Kay blocks while the enemy gets tired, opening up Yu for a massive-damaged ranged attack? Both Kay and Yu combined their melee attack for a supersonic smack?—compose the bulk of Haven’s battles. Its brand of turn-based combat doesn’t feel perfunctory or sterile, but toward the last few hours it definitely starts running out of gas.
Exploration is Haven’s final objective. Source is littered with remnants of a failed colonial expansion, and many of the inlets have at least one building Yu and Kay can disappear into and explore. They’ll always emerge with some kind of trinket that allows them to ruminate on an element of their past, segueing neatly into their back stories and the origin of their relationship. Most of these items can be collected and shelved into different pockets of the Nest. It really feels like both Yu and Kay appreciate Source and want to integrate elements of its past into their own home.
Yu and Kay are real people and Haven is consumed with their wellbeing. They’ll get hungry if they haven’t eaten in a while and tired if they haven’t slept. The player is encouraged to bring them back to the Nest by the time Source reaches its night cycle. Around here they can cook food, take showers, use resources to make consumables, chat around the dinner table, and get some sleep. The Nest is a cozy abode, and feels like a lived-in space Yu and Kay have made their own. It has all the trappings of a shared bedroom, and it really adds to Yu and Kay’s presentation as a couple.
I played Haven solo. I only controlled either Yu or Kay at one time, but one would always follow the other and they would frequently hold hands when they were gilding in parallel. When I left the controller idle, they would sometimes embrace and share a kiss. Battles break down into controlling each character with a different side of the controller, and, while this takes some getting used to, it’s not as complex or demanding as something like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Haven is also playable cooperatively on a single screen, should players wish to go that route, although it isn’t a 50:50 experience. One player drives while the other, mostly, rides along.
Sometimes Haven isn’t especially upfront with its motivation. A meter would sometimes refill after battle, but I never had any idea what it did. Kay and Yu would get some Flow upgrades to their gear, but I couldn’t notice a difference. I unlocked some kind of tricks Kay and Yu would do after they started falling, but they were difficult to see and I would have no idea what was happening. I could collect seeds, but I never knew if they were for the outdoor garden or the indoor garden, or how to apply them. I don’t know that any of these elements actually mattered, I finished Haven and spent a satisfying amount of time with its characters, but Haven’s insistence on teaching the player through its environment comes may leave some players missing its finer details.
There is also the issue of pacing. I played Haven for 18 hours, and while you can make the argument that I didn’t need to clear all the Rust or fight every available monster, I couldn’t deny that compulsion. Kay and Yu never ran out of unique dialogue either in the field or back at the Nest, and their dramatic arc never felt compromised by my extended stay. Near the end, though, I was done with finding obscure Flow threads to reach out-of-the-way Rust, battling the same assortment of monsters, or completing tedious cooking tasks back at the Nest. Haven doesn’t starve the player of resources, but its characters are built stronger than its world.
Haven ultimately succeeds because of the strength of its two characters. In one moment in the kitchen, Yu and Kay were debating the merits of the institutions they both rejected. Kay’s position is those institutions were created with goodwill in mind, whereas Yu is convinced they were flawed from the start. It’s one of a zillion sequences in Haven, but it’s endemic to the game’s core thesis. Yu and Kay feel like real people with real flaws. It’s incidental, almost, that they’re occupying an alien world and subsist on the boundaries of science fiction. Haven worked for me, specifically, because of all the times I wound up texting my wife about fictional characters having real conversations we have actually had in our personal lives. I have no idea how that will come across for people who are not me, but Haven’s magic worked inside of my brain.
Haven’s objectives are also a bold choice for its development team. It taps in to emotions and mechanics that stand in direct opposition to their work in Furi. Instead of a maniacally demanding action game with a Carpenter Brut soundtrack, Haven is an accessible and friendly narrative buoyed by Danger’s more melodic synths. The Game Bakers stated they needed a break from Furi’s action and I can think few better shifts in work (and mental health) than Haven. It’s enough to make you wonder why more studios don’t endeavor (or aren’t allowed the risk) to create a more diverse body of work.
Haven presents a lush alien world, one rife with resource gathering and loaded with turn-based combat, as a suitable venue for its forbidden love story. Such an unorthodox collection of disparate elements may have had trouble connecting if not held together by widely relatable and sharply written interpersonal dialogue. It’s an assembly that allows its pair protagonists to thrive inside moments of tedium, suggesting a story worth telling takes precedent over action not always worth doing.
