Back to Hearth
Podoba Interactive · 2025 · Atmospheric, Exploration, Walking Simulator, First-Person, Cozy
PC
Very Positive99% · 302
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About Back to Hearth
MISION
The Calamity devastated this small village, stripping it of laughter, voices, and life. You play as a character determined to repair the damage, clean up the homes, and rekindle their hearths — creating comfort so the villagers are no longer afraid to return.GAMEPLAY
The village has 5 houses. Each one needs to be restored — sometimes with a hammer, sometimes with a broom or a screwdriver. Some repairs also require drawing special "gestures".RESIDENTS
Once the house is cleaned and the fire is burning in the stove, you have to wait a little. The residents are about to return. You will have the opportunity to listen to their stories.EXPLORATION AND NARRATIVE
Back to Hearth is a game about more than just cleaning houses — it’s about uncovering the lives once lived within them. Each home holds memories, belongings, amulets, and other details that gradually reveal the villagers’ stories. Some of these items are added to your Collections after interaction, which you can view anytime in the main menu.FEATURES
- short game - 1 hour of playtime
- melancholic fall atmosphere
- setting of an Eastern European village, specifically a Ukrainian village
- casual meditative gameplay
- opportunity to eat apples, grapes, and raspberries
- opportunity to chase after chickens
- personal and household items that allow you to learn more about the residents
- collections (search in the main menu)
- graphic stylization, like in games of the 2000s
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
The small walking simulator about Ukrainian rural hinterland, very atmospheric with a great art style. Все буде Україна!3 found this helpful
Short and sweet. A cozy game, no pressures to do it quick, just taking your time to enjoy the sights and sounds and eat all the fruits. I remember playing one chapter of this for Haunted PS1 Demo Disc curation, and finding the EXP very pleasant then. Since then they added a lot of small things to flesh out the world and mechanical depth. No longer are you just finding tools and then clicking on objects to repair them, but there is a small tracing mini game. Thankfully it's very forgiving. And there is a plethora of flavor text for many items strewn across the levels. Over all still a very pleasant EXP. The narrative through line across the chapters really comes together in the ending.2 found this helpful
This was a nice short game. Cozy but you can still feel the touches of grief and loss that come from being made to leave your home, and coming back to it knowing it can't be the same. Thank you Podoba for sharing this story.2 found this helpful
A beautiful little bite of the creators' home. You can feel the love and pride infused in every bit of this game. Слава Україні!2 found this helpful
It’s been a very long time since I’ve taken a long trip somewhere foreign, very strange, maybe cold. Though no matter how wonderful the experience was, I never forgot the feeling of coming home. To walk through my front door and just be warm. Back to Hearth is that warmth. A sub-two-hour experience that I first thought was going to be akin to their subsequent game, Dread Fields, which I had played first, and is itself a cozy, slow-burning horror. Coming back and now playing Back to Hearth heightened the looming dread I had already set for it, and seeing it slowly melt away into the warmth of cleanliness and community was truly something. I’m an American with little perspective or understanding of Ukrainian, steppe, and small-town culture, yet every second of Back to Hearth oozed what I can only see now, as the Ukrainian Experience: Community, folklore, getting by with scarcity after being forced to relocate, and the heart that life that steels, the quaintness of a small, cramped, warm home where privacy is practically impossible. Every collectible sucked me in with its history, as they’re all trinkets and small parts of Ukrainian life: toys, wards, instruments, and the arts. I…1 found this helpful
Loved this lil game! So cozy and the story was cute This indie studio has really talented people <31 found this helpful
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