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Haven Review. A little warmth during the cold season

 

If you’ve been stunned by high-profile releases of expensive and massive games, it makes sense to try something less aggressive and more sophisticated. About eternal values. With a leisurely pace and creative mood. Haven , for example.

F95Zone figures walk along winding paths. Team The Game Bakers distinguished themselves four proudly ago with the action game Furi , and that project was full of the clang of sabers and flashes of laser pistols. Now the same guys have released a game that you can take instead of a sedative. Not to be confused with sleeping pills.

Before us is a three-dimensional adventure with elements of arcade and role-playing game. Much of the process comes down to meditative and leisurely activities such as dialogue and collecting consumables. Haven instantly immerses you in an atmosphere of peace and youthful romance, this is perhaps the main advantage of the game. In these days of endless stress and bad news, the mood of Haven is especially valuable. However, there is also a peppercorn in the game.

In the story, two lovers, a young man Kei and a girl Yu, escape from the totalitarian world of the Hive on a starship. There is no choice for same-sex couples, the story is emphatically old-fashioned, which only benefits her. According to the rules of the Hive, young people cannot be together, they have already chosen couples by the wise administration. The distant planet is uninhabited, it was abandoned many years ago. The ship is damaged by an earthquake, a strange red substance infects the local fauna with rabies, and the pursuit of the fugitives is inevitable. A lot of screen time is allotted to the narrative part, and even without the sharp twists of the script, it turned out to be a rather fascinating space robinsonade.

Kei and Yu turned out to be voluminous and interesting characters. There are two in the center of attention, but such intimacy gives the desired effect: addiction and empathy for lovers comes very quickly. Young people are revealed in dialogues, and there are a lot of these dialogues, sometimes Haven resembles a visual novel from a Japanese assembly. At the same time, the texts are written smartly, with good humor and an even style. And the voice actors are fully accustomed to their roles, you don’t need to be Stanislavsky to appreciate their work. The Russian translation is done in captions, and for this the localizers are grateful for this.

The new world is represented by flying islands. Pieces of solidity are interconnected by transitions from pure energy. Each islet is small in size, but when studying, our robinsons will surely find something interesting there. These can be sources of clean energy – the so-called Stream, or something edible, or animals of varying degrees of goodness. After several hours spent on expeditions, the landscapes become monotonous, and the filling of the locations is repeated. This is not critical, but an attempt to go through Haven voraciously can end in banal boredom, the process is not as exciting as in the Über-action games of our time. Therefore, it is better to return to Haven by taking breaks.

Fights with woozy beasts came straight from the JRPG. The battle takes place in real time, with each action given a few seconds to fill the activity bar. Opponents stand face to face, you cannot move around the arena. That is, in Haven , a pseudo-step mode of fights is implemented: you should not yawn, but you can take an action only when the scale is filled. A huge amount of tactical delights, as in any Shadow Blade 5eshould not be expected. In Haven, fights only add to the gameplay as a secondary element.

Battles are largely lost against the background of the general pacification of the game. After the next skirmish, the understanding comes that it would be possible to do without assault at all. Fights don’t spoil Haven , but she doesn’t really need it either, the game is not about that. The defeated animals do not die here, but are pacified. And at the first meeting with a local lizard (the spitting image of a monitor lizard from planet Earth, and terrestrial lizards are still the villains), there is an option not to attack at all, it becomes possible to stroke the aboriginal …

The island travel system is much more fun. Our lovers took the anti-gravity boots from their home planet. Now they can slide and drift at a sufficiently high speed without touching the surface. No, these are not Quill’s wonderful Guardians of the Galaxy rocket boots, but they are also a very cool and useful device. The movement is significantly accelerated and it becomes pleasant and easy to fly through the pastoral landscapes of another world.

Conclusion:

A part of the role-playing game can be found in the light non-linearity of the same dialogues – sensible answers will lead to strengthening the morale of the fugitives. We are also gradually increasing eight metrics, from impact strength to drift speed. Well, straight to their classic Japanese RPG came fuss in the kitchen with all sorts of alien peppers and melons.

But the game has a luxurious design. A riot of bright colors refers directly to the hippie movement, they were rebellious no less than Yu and Kei. Characters and environments of HuniePop 2 are painted in the spirit of colorful minimalism and look very stylish. And electronic music reminds of the cheerful motives of the 80s of the last century, experienced players will surely remember the best things of the group A-Ha.

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