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Heartwood Game

A Mystery Visual Novel

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Heartwood Game

Heartwood Game

Heartwood Game

Heartwood Game

Heartwood Game

A Mystery Visual Novel

A Mystery Visual Novel

A Mystery Visual Novel

A Mystery Visual Novel

Decidedly Unusual Games
Decidedly Unusual Games
Decidedly Unusual Games
Decidedly Unusual Games
1 Campaign |
Egg Harbor, United States
$2,599 USD 19 backers
25% of $10,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal

Heartwood is an episodic visual novel that will satisfy your thirst for mystery, sass, and secret mutual pining. Meet our cast of characters and help them overcome the illusory island of Heartwood. Explore their relationships; gender will never impact nor define any potential pairing between two characters. Choose wisely. Each episode will either set you back or bring you closer to solving the mystery. 

Play the free prologue now:

The mobile version is still in beta. To improve your playing experience, we are working hard to turn this game into a mobile app.  Help us make it happen

Mrs. Bloom is dead. She lies, seemingly unharmed, deep in the Heartwood National Park. The Ranger, Leon, is the first on the scene. While all signs point to a natural death, something quite unnatural starts happening to Leon–he begins to hear the voice of the dead woman…and she insists she has been murdered.

She urges him to contact her children–Eli, a brilliant diagnostician who never misses a detail, and Esther, the intrepid archaeologist able to tell entire stories from the most simple objects. The three are joined by Almond, a runaway scam artist cryptically interested in the outcome of the case.

The skills of the twins and Almond are powerful assets, but is Leon leading everyone into his mad delusion, or is there more to reality than meets the eye?

Gameplay

 





 

Guest Art by Meowlayn

Meowlayn is a French freelance illustrator with a love for dark fantasy and tender art. She specializes in portraits of hot 2D men with a whimsical touch. She is so small that sometimes automatic doors won't open in front of her.

Get just Meowlayn's SFW and NSFW download pack here 

 

Over the past few months, we have invested our free time and personal resources to produce backgrounds, character sprites, and concept art for future assets. Our first two seasons are already fully outlined, and we have plenty of ideas for more to come. We are running this campaign to pay for the time and work of our fantastic art team and to keep our writer fed.

 

Funding at this stage is necessary to continue paying for art and assets, start paying for the work of the team members who have been doing this on their own time, turn the game into an app to be distributed via App Store and Google Play, and get people talking about it.

The more time and resources we can afford to spend on the game, the faster we will be able to produce new content. $10K is the bare minimum we need to get started; the rest of the money will be raised through in-game currency and premium content. We plan on releasing one episode each month, starting with 12 episodes. Any amount we raise past the initial $10K will help guarantee more episodes.

 

By decidedly unusual individuals. 
We are currently a four-person team branching across three countries. We came together online thanks to mutual interests and turned our individual skills into something greater than the sum of their parts. Our areas of expertise fit this project seamlessly: screenwriting, digital art, communication, marketing, and criminology. We are all experienced working remotely and internationally, which allows us to operate across time zones and without an office. 

Tosha Yezyukov (Drakonishe) 

Mostly self-taught artist since the age of 14, Tosha has given up on their career as a reverse tooth fairy (dental technician) to pursue art instead. They became fluent in English thanks to their studies and online fandom spaces, where they have been making a living as a commission artist for the past two years. Heartwood is Tosha’s second experience working on a game development team. Their hobbies include crafting, gaming, and overthinking social interactions.  

Elizabeth Friedman

Elizabeth is a formally educated medical illustrator, who chose to come and draw anatomically correct hearts for us instead of designing cutting-edge prosthetics for fancy research institutes. We liked her so much we decided to keep her. When she’s not busy trying to interpret our creative director’s vision, you can find her at her local high school, shaping the minds of the next generations. A thankless job for which she is both underpaid and overqualified. Help us raise enough money to take her on full-time.

                                                       

Nathan Mandel 

Nate wanted to be a space cowboy, but the guidance counselor said that there weren’t any job openings in that field. He decided that writing was the next best thing. Born as a farm boy, educated as a criminologist and a screenwriter, Nate is a dual national living in a third place altogether with his hot spouse and two food driven cats. He’s the guy who always carries a notebook with him, jotting down notes every time something absurd happens around him.

Despite this being our first visual novel, our team members have extensive experience in their field of work and are used to high-stakes projects in hectic work environments. We are aware that delays in this field are often beyond our control, and with some of the team still unable to work full time on the game, we know our main challenge will be time management. We plan on maintaining frequent communication with our backers with transparency as our top priority when faced with any delay or setback.

Whether you are able to donate or not, here are 100% free ways to support our project:

- Our Instagram @heartwoodgame is the main channel we use to share news and updates

- Share this campaign

- Play the game

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Choose your Perk

The Early Bird

The Early Bird

$5 USD
Play each update before it's available to anyone else (premium content not included) and get exclusive sneak peeks of what's to come. Make your voice heard! You'll have an exclusive, direct line of communication with our creative team. Let us know precisely what you want more (or less) of.
Included Items
  • Early access to new content
  • Name in credits
  • Suggest future content
Estimated Shipping
January 2023
1 claimed
The Download

The Download

$10 USD
Download the high-resolution digital pack put together by our amazing lead artist Drakonishe and guest artist Meowlayn. SFW version.
Included Items
  • EXCLUSIVE character posters
  • Cover art
  • Character sprites -base outfit
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
January 2023
1 claimed
The Collector

The Collector

$20 USD
High-res downloadable files for all future in-game CG illustrations. To be sent along with each update release.
Included Items
  • CG art
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
January 2023
1 claimed
The Lore

The Lore

$30 USD
PDF download of the Heartwood Art & Lore ebook with exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
Included Items
  • Art & Lore Book
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
May 2023
1 claimed
The Head Start

The Head Start

$40 USD
Start the game with x4 the coins
Included Items
  • Extra coins
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
January 2023
4 claimed
The Romance

The Romance

$75 USD
Free access to ALL premium content to come, always.
Included Items
  • Premium content
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
January 2023
1 claimed
The Big Boy Package

The Big Boy Package

$100 USD
Access to the EXCLUSIVE and UNCENSORED content (digital download) This perk is ONLY available to supporters 18 and older.
Included Items
  • Extended content
  • Character sprites - uncensored
  • Uncensored character posters
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
January 2023
1 claimed
The Very Big Boy Package

The Very Big Boy Package

$150 USD
Access to EXCLUSIVE and UNCENSORED premium scenes that will only ever be available to backers. This perk is ONLY available to supporters 18 and older and it will be made available via download, separately from the game itself.
Included Items
  • Extended content
  • All previous rewards
  • exclusive backer-only content
Estimated Shipping
March 2023
0 claimed
The Easter Egg

The Easter Egg

$200 USD
Create an easter egg to add to the game. It can be an object in one of the backgrounds or a sentence within the game.
Included Items
  • Create an easter egg
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
January 2023
0 claimed
The Patron of the Arts

The Patron of the Arts

$350 USD
Custom full body commission from our lead artist of your character in the style of the game
Included Items
  • Character commission
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
February 2023
0 out of 5 of claimed
The Character

The Character

$800 USD
Your character becomes an NPC in the game
Included Items
  • Create a character
  • All previous rewards
Estimated Shipping
March 2023
2 out of 3 of claimed

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