Heaven's Vault

With Heaven's Vault Inkle offers us another extraordinarily packaged adventure, able to concentrate on very few playful elements, decorated with overflowing aesthetic and artistic qualities.

Heaven's Vault communicates the beauty of assigning meaning to symbols, and thus the people who wrote them.

It lacks the infectiousness of 80 Days, but as a story and a reckoning with history, it leaves most videogame fantasies in the shade. [Issue#332, p.120]

An intriguing game for graphic novel fans with a lovable old style art design.

At the end of the game something is revealed about Aliya, and she must make a choice. Unfortunately, neither option held any impact for me. The core mystery of Heaven’s Vault and the puzzles that must be solved to illuminate it are compelling. Yet, like its world and its core character, Heaven’s Vault gets caught up in physical things and forgets the human, rendering its final revelations as cold as the dead moons where Aliya digs up her artifacts. Then again, perhaps it’s fitting for an archaeologist that the story she uncovers is more compelling than her own.

Heaven's Vault may have one of the most well-realized video game worlds ever, with your curiosity and personality molding your story through the Nebula. Whether you're fascinated by history or just by a personal sense of duty, there's a lot to love about Heaven's Vault, even if the clunky movement and frustrating sailing sour the overall experience.

With its beautiful piano and violin score and occasionally arresting visuals, it is a game meant to be a meditative experience. Players should relish in slowly uncovering new facts about an ancient peoples and sharing this information with their friends, new and old. But even as trimmed as the game is, with small "open-world" locations and limited movement, it still seems like too much polish was placed around a core element that is enjoyable in its simplicity.

This game scratches an itch I didn't know I had. The characters are compelling, the gameplay is fascinating and the art style grew on me throughout the course of the game. I love the depth of thought that has been put into the language decoding puzzles, which gives you enough freedom to feel like a genius when a translation comes together while also subtly supporting you towards that conclusion. I started playing after the quick travel was implemented, so I didn't notice this being as much of an issue for me.

A game that achieves what it's trying to. If the core conceit of translating an ancient language excites you, the game will really land. Really a triumph of translating interactive narrative concepts into an adventure game with puzzle elements. It won't be for everybody, but if it's for you: it will delight you.

What a game! Characters are unlikable and annoying. The whole traversal and interaction system is clunky and obtrusive making playing the game feel like pulling my own teeth. Then why do I like it? The gorgeous art, the story, the mystery, the ancient forgotten language and the entire language system that's been created to try and decipher it all! Were is not for the fact that this game's story had sunk its teeth into me, I would've left it as another half played steam gamer in a pile of unfinished games, but if its in that library of yours, give it a chance 7/10, shut it clanker

I played several hours of this game and still do. It's an interesting study in language translation. I like the dialogs in general and the way they are presented. But they can be too fast sometimes. The weak part is surely the exploration. The boating thing doesn't have good control and is excessively boring. I like the, on foot experience and finding items but it's very sluggish because there is no option to go faster then walk, and walk slowly. The 2D drawing is a mix bag. I don't like them too much. They just don't fit that well. Update: I give it a 55%. Not the kind of game for everyone. If you like puzzles and exercising your brain, it's not that bad. The auto saving was a big problem in the end, since I found myself stuck in the main quest. The lack of any way to come back on saves is a big problem in this game. I saw many bugs with Huang interactions too.

I really tried to like this game but it's TERRIBLE! I'm only giving it a 4 and not a 0 because it has a nice soundtrack and a good artistical touch in the drawings but it's not only pointless and boring, but also also choices don't really matter at all in the end. This game reminded me of that joke about games having multiple endings: all the same thing, but in different colors! Gameplay is mediocre at most. Too bad, because the iniatial idea sounded pretty good.