Is it me, or is the point and click genre making a bit of a comeback recently? Having just finished Shardlight in the last few weeks, and presently wrapping up The Day of the Tentacle Remastered, there’s been a nice revival in what might be my all-time favorite genre (if I could only pick one). I also been playing Heaven’s Hope, and with some help from my favorite adventure game streamer, 123Pazu, have accelerated my play through during some of the tougher sequences. To be sure, Heaven’s Hope is not one of hardest point and click games I’ve played, but like any such game of decent length, there’s bound to be a puzzle or two to throw you for a loop.
That said, the adventure begins with Talorel, angel apprentice, literally falling from the sky. He struck some object on accident and managed to come crashing to the earth during the age of the Spanish Inquisition, as (bad) luck would have it. These first moments of the game give the player a well rendered and nicely drawn scene to soak in, which makes a good first impression. We meet our protagonist, the young Talorel, and his two NPC angel friends, Myriel and Azael, the latter of which seems to have it out for Talorel. These two provide Talorel and thus the player with some directive and feedback, or even a hint if you click on the corresponding icon in the HUD. Together, with the player’s wit at the helm, you must help Talorel regain his halo and wings and return to Heaven.
The name Heaven’s Hope is clever in that the town neighboring the one that Talorel fell into is called Heaven’s Hope, and Talorel encounters many puzzles and several NPCs there to aid and work with, or around. Anyone familiar with the genre will feel right at home with the gameflow and controls, although the addition of being able to double click to instantly zip across the screen and also being able to fast travel in between locations is a surprising plus to help move things along. A simple mouse-driven control scheme with icons give Talorel the ability to look at, interact with, and talk to objects and people, with an inventory system to combine objects with as you’d expect. The gameplay design is comfortable familiar and hey, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, right?
To that end, Heaven’s Hope stays the course. I had no technical issues with the game and I thought its puzzle designs were very good overall, especially for a studio’s first game. Most puzzles follow a comfortably but rarely too predictable design, and Talorel will pitch in with some useful feedback if you’re on the right path, but still missing something. Talorel has a lot to say to you and the NPCs, so it’s good that the voice-acting in both English and German is nicely done and well-written.
Point and click adventure games are almost unique in their graphics in that you can have technically low-end pixel art like you’ll see in something like Shardlight, but it’s perfectly fine because the art design is still so good. With Heaven’s Hope, you get a pretty good mix of both world’s in that you have a technically impressive graphics engine combined with nice, detailed artwork. However, this combination may have come at some cost as there aren’t, as it turns out, a whole lot of places to visit or ‘rooms’ to explore. It’s subjective really, but how much mileage you get out of the game’s length and variety in terms of places or ‘rooms’ will vary. For me, I thought it was just a bit on the underwhelming side, but again, for a $20 game from a new studio, it’s really not that bad.
And that’s exactly what I would go on to say about the overall experience — it’s a solid, competent and enjoyable point and click adventure with some quirks and an overarching understanding that it’s not one of the best in a very crowded genre. But it is likely one of the strongest entries you’re likely to see in the genre this year, and hopefully it’s a sign of things to come from Mosaic Mask in the future.
