Heaven's Vault
inkle Ltd · 2019 · Adventure, Narrative, Mystery, Female Protagonist, Sci-fi
PC
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About Heaven's Vault
✦ AI summary
Explore a mysterious nebula as an archaeologist deciphering an ancient alien language while navigating a branching narrative where every choice and discovery permanently shapes your story and how characters treat you. Heaven's Vault adapts completely to your actions—there's no single "correct" path, just your personal journey through a richly realized world of lost civilizations and hidden secrets.
From the creators of massively-branching interactive adventure 80 Days.
Winner - IGF Excellence in Narrative award 2019
Nomination -BAFTA for Best British Game 2020
Aliya Elasra is an archaeologist, exploring a strange region of space called the Nebula with her robot sidekick Six, hoping to uncover the secrets of the long-forgotten past. When a roboticist from the University of Iox goes missing, Aliya begins a trail of discoveries that will lead to the very edge of her world - and the ancient secret of Heaven's Vault.
Heaven's Vault is not your usual linear adventure game. Progress through the game in any order you choose - the game's fully adaptive narrative remembers every choice you make, every discovery and every action you take, influencing what happens next. Meet a diverse cast of characters who remember everything you say, and who's attitude to you will change with how you act. Some are friendly, some are cautious, and some are out to trick you.
Who will you trust? What will you find? What will you learn? What will you risk? What will you lose?
An entire ancient hieroglyphic language awaits to be deciphered. A puzzle mechanic with a twist: solutions are narratively significant and further the story - but the wrong translation might send you down the wrong track!
"One of the most well-realized video game worlds ever, with your curiosity and personality molding your story through the Nebula" - USGamer
"Heaven’s Vault is both ambitious and beautiful. It conjures a world rich with life... I don’t hesitate to recommend Heaven’s Vault." - Game Informer
"Heaven's Vault is one of the most enthralling narrative-driven adventure games I've played" - Wired
Powered by the ink engine, the narrative technology behind 80 Days, Sorcery!, NeoCab, Sable, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine and many more, Heaven's Vault is a dynamically constructed adventure game that responds to every move you make.
Winner - IGF Excellence in Narrative award 2019
Nomination -BAFTA for Best British Game 2020
Story
Aliya Elasra is an archaeologist, exploring a strange region of space called the Nebula with her robot sidekick Six, hoping to uncover the secrets of the long-forgotten past. When a roboticist from the University of Iox goes missing, Aliya begins a trail of discoveries that will lead to the very edge of her world - and the ancient secret of Heaven's Vault.
Gameplay
Heaven's Vault is not your usual linear adventure game. Progress through the game in any order you choose - the game's fully adaptive narrative remembers every choice you make, every discovery and every action you take, influencing what happens next. Meet a diverse cast of characters who remember everything you say, and who's attitude to you will change with how you act. Some are friendly, some are cautious, and some are out to trick you.
Who will you trust? What will you find? What will you learn? What will you risk? What will you lose?
- Explore ancient sites, discover lost ruins
- Find artefacts and translate their strange hieroglyphics
- Sail an open-world of fast flowing space-rivers
- Piece together the history of the world and an entire ancient language
- Diverse cast of characters that remember everything you say
Translate Ancient Hieroglyphs
An entire ancient hieroglyphic language awaits to be deciphered. A puzzle mechanic with a twist: solutions are narratively significant and further the story - but the wrong translation might send you down the wrong track!
Critically Acclaimed
"One of the most well-realized video game worlds ever, with your curiosity and personality molding your story through the Nebula" - USGamer
"Heaven’s Vault is both ambitious and beautiful. It conjures a world rich with life... I don’t hesitate to recommend Heaven’s Vault." - Game Informer
"Heaven's Vault is one of the most enthralling narrative-driven adventure games I've played" - Wired
Industry leading narrative engine
Powered by the ink engine, the narrative technology behind 80 Days, Sorcery!, NeoCab, Sable, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine and many more, Heaven's Vault is a dynamically constructed adventure game that responds to every move you make.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
It's a translation game but the linguistics UI is rage-inducing. It's a dialogue-heavy game but the dialogue is mediocre and quick to disappear. It's an exploration game but the exploring is painfully slow and it's never clear when control will be wrested away from you for a random cutscene. Great idea, total failure in execution. Cannot believe this even gets mentioned in the same breath as Chants of Sennaar.3 found this helpful
The “translation” puzzles of this game are interesting but I’ve literally rage-quit as the traveling mini-game is so poorly designed and implemented that I feel like I’m either soft-locked or wasting time going round and round in circles. You either can’t actually turn in the direction you’re told to due to the flow of the currents many times and there’s no way to skip the minigame if you’re looking for new locales. Absolute waste of my time!!!1 found this helpful
I don't get the negative reviews lately... this game is unique and beautiful, with immense replayability value. Yes, it would be nice to have a save feature. I suppose I understand why there isn't. But even on my steamdeck, I was able to find a way to make save files. Google the file location, y'all.
This game just rubbed me the wrong way. The 2D animations on the 3D environments aren't executed well. Some of the dialogue is extremely unnatural. I refunded this unfortunately.
As a note: I've been playing this game a lot more longer than what's listed on this review on offline mode, and Steam doesn't track that. This is an amazing narrative and investigation focused video game and I highly recommend trying it. But before I distract myself I want to get one negative point clear: the save system is migraine inducing frustration. The game broadly is a non-linear narrative adventure game, but despite that there's only one save file and I can't save and/or load the game. I can understand that the developers are wanting the choices and consequences of the game to be impactful, but developers in general need to look at these issues from, if not an objective perception, an compassionate and environmental perception. Video games are incredibly taxing in terms of time and resources. People already deal with choices and consequences in real life when they get injured at work and have to get surgery as a result, that's not a hypothetical scenario that's something that's happening to me more frequently as I get older. My laptop runs like a jet engine playing games and some electric power plants use oil or gas when providing power. It's ironic that for a game abou…
It's ok. The UI is harder to deal with than the language.
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