''Heaven's Vault'' is an archaeological science-fiction

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

released by Inkle for

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and

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on April 16, 2019, and for

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on January 28, 2021.

Gameplay

In ''Heaven's Vault'', the player takes the role of an archaeologist called Aliya Elasra who has a robotic companion called Six. The game follows the course of their adventure as they 'sail' between the moons of the Nebula searching for a missing

roboticist Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

called Janniqi Renba. The player has to decipher and learn the hieroglyphic language of the Ancients, a lost civilization. This involves finding and collecting inscriptions from ancient artifacts, sites and ruins and translating and discussing texts with other characters. The developers say that over a thousand words written in Ancient, the game's fictional language, can be found and say that its pictorial glyphs are inspired by Ancient Egyptian and Chinese writing systems. The player can choose their own route through the story and around the Nebula as it employs a non-linear approach to narrative storytelling, allowing the player to make choices that impact the plot.

Reception

On its release, ''Heaven's Vault'' was met with "generally favourable" reviews from critics for

, with an aggregate score of 76/100, and "mixed or average reviews" with an aggregate score of 71/100 for

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

Music

Laurence Chapman composed the soundtrack for the game. Chapman recruited Brookspeare Music for recording the strings. He also added subtle synth pads as a reminder that Heaven's Vault is a science fiction game. Richard Brooker from Brookspeare Music also mixed the soundtrack.

Novelisation

In 2021, Inkle published two tie-in novels for the game, ''Heaven's Vault - I. The Loop'' and ''Heaven's Vault - II. The Vault''. Written by Jon Ingold, ''Heaven's Vault'''s writer, the books also follow the story of Aliya and Six, but feature a different plot to the game.

Accolades

References

External links

*{{official website, https://www.inklestudios.com/heavensvault/ 2019 video games Adventure games Archaeology in popular culture Fiction about interpreting and translation Nintendo Switch games PlayStation 4 games Science fiction video games Video games about robots Video games developed in the United Kingdom Windows games Single-player video games Independent Games Festival winners Inkle (company) games