Else Heart.Break() is a high-res low poly adventure about hacking the world

The first few hours of else Heart.Break(), an oddly named and punctuated adventure game about a young man's start in the hip small town of Dorisburg revolves around many of the things that can overwhelm anyone in their first weeks of full adulthood: a big job, your first adult crush and an unfamiliar neighborhood that seems almost impossible to navigate.

At times, else Heart.Break() can feel painfully old school and not just because it has the low polygon look of a Playstation One game. Time does not stand still for you or your in-game avatar, Sebastian, and the lack of an in-game means of tracking objectives and destinations (i.e. journal and map). It harkens back to my own youth playing Sierra adventure games with one hand on the keyboard and the other gripping a pencil to take notes with.



The game was created by Erik Svedang, an independent games maker from Gothenburg, Sweden, who describes the else Heart.Break() on it's official site as, "A game about friendship, love and technology in a place where bits have replaced atoms."

Of course, over time, the streets of Dorisburg become more familiar. Much like the beloved Dreamcast classic Shenmue, every building in the city can be entered and explored. And as you do, the seemingly alien culture of its neighborhoods become less strange, and you fall into predictable rhythms: work, friends, drink, hang out and sleep.

The not so hidden twist to else Heart.Break() is that it transitions into an adventure into recoding reality. This doesn't happen until you meet a young woman named Pixie, who, after some the preliminary 'meet awkward,' introduces you to a device called a 'modifier,' which lets you use a fictional programming language to decipher and change objects in the world.

As a game subsystem, hacking matters more than similar mechanics in other videogames. That's because of the attention to detail given to Dorisburg matters: with a city so fully simulated, its reality is more palpable and changeable. Svedang writes that "instead of rigid puzzles you will learn how any problem can be solved in whatever way you find suitable."

Soon you'll find that limitations you felt in the first half of the game such as the constant need to sleep and the tedious traveling from on one side of town to the other can all be worked around through hacking. One solution already gaining fame among players is hacking a glass of water to reduce sleepiness and drinking it. It's as if else Heart.Break() was designed deliberately for players to get annoyed enough to hack solutions.

Else Heart.Break() isn't without problems. The camera can get wonky and the aesthetic of hypersaturated architecture and '8-bit chillwave' soundtrack might not be for everyone. But with some funny writing that feels almost typically idiosyncratic of Swedes and an empowering concept, it's an adventure game you won't forget.

Else Heart.Break() is out now for purchase and download on Steam, GOG and the Humble Store. —TJD, GMA News