Heartbound

Heartbound is a story-first role-playing game that leans on character writing, quirky humor, and a combat system that tries to keep battles from feeling like plain menu work. By our assessment, its best quality is the combination of small-scale emotional storytelling with a willingness to play with the usual RPG shape. The trade-off is that this kind of game depends heavily on how much the tone and writing land for you, because the mechanics are not trying to be broad or flashy. In practice it feels like a game that wants attention to its dialogue and its odd little turns rather than just to damage numbers. Compared with bigger RPGs, it is more intimate and more eccentric, and that makes it stand apart without pretending to cover everything. It suits players who like unusual indie RPGs with a strong personality, and it leaves little room for anyone who wants a straightforward power fantasy. The combat and writing carry most of the weight.