Icebergs and Puzzles: Hero's Spirit
Or, how the game is the puzzle is the game.
I've been chipping away at a reasonably (see: very) obscure puzzle game called Hero's Spirit. It was released on December 31st 2020 and has only 77ish reviews as of this post. I was actually debating if I wanted to make a post about iceberg puzzlers or focus fully on this game and opted to split the difference and do both at the same time.
Fair warning, there will be spoilers up to the point I'm at in the game. However as the title should indicate I'm far from fully immersed into everything the game has to offer so I wouldn't worry too much about it; my hope is that this post will pique your interest enough to give it a shot.
But first, we need to talk about icebergs.
Glancing The Abyss
Icebergs have been used as a relevant metaphor for something that is far deeper than what the surface would indicate, which is why I combine the term here with puzzler. Traditional puzzle games typically only have one layer. You can think of Super Mario Picross, or Tetris, or Zachlikes. The way these games might differ is in terms of allowing players to express mastery or creativity through optimization, but the flow usually involves solving a puzzle, understanding new mechanics, and continuing from there.
What makes Iceberg Puzzle games different is that there are now multiple different layers of progression. Blue Prince, Void Stranger, Paquerette Down the Bunburrows, these games present you with surface level puzzles that once solved, become a network of clues and solutions to other more esoteric puzzles. And as you can intuit, Hero's Spirit is one of them.
Hero's Welcome
The base gameplay in Hero's Spirit is (to its benefit) not that complex. It is functionally similar to a sokoban game without the sokoban part. The focus is entirely on player movement rather than pushing blocks; enemies with a number above their head will rapidly home in on your position and kill you. To defeat them you simply need enough Swords, a slime will die to five swords, a bat to ten and so forth.
(an example of = bat with 0xA above their)
Don't mistake simplicity of the gameplay for ease, as the game will have no problem throwing encounters, environmental hazards and puzzles to solve that will leave you scratching your head. The world is filled with secrets; items hidden behind every corner that unlock new passages (sometimes literally, other times figuratively), shortcuts to shortcuts to new areas to old areas.
Thankfully while the game is vague it is not cryptic; NPCs will frequently give good hints as to where things are and what you should do next. I haven't truly felt lost during my playthroughs as I always had another avenue to investigate once I got stumped; though that said the further you get into the game the more brainpower it expects you to put into things to unravel it. Don't expect NPCs to do all the work for you.
(a friendly NPC with some helpful information)
I might be unfair comparing this to Blue Prince but to me, Hero's Spirit is what I wanted Blue Prince to be. Blue Prince has a way of getting in the way of your attempts to solve the game, but Hero's Spirit by way of its design presents you with the world and kindly asks you to figure it out. I think some people might find the game a bit lacking because it may not have direct puzzles in the way other games might, but when you peel back each layer it becomes clear that the game as a whole is the puzzle to unravel.
One of my biggest problem with iceberg puzzle games is that at some point they tend to drop the pretense of the regular gameplay in favor of solving the game as a whole which often has little to do with what you've been doing for the past 15-20 hours. So dropping that pretense up front by having a simple gameplay loop goes a long way.
(wait, how did you get here, shoo, shoo!)
Presentation-wise, I really like the game's overall aesthetics. The sprites are simple but effective and crunchy. The music is surprisingly good with decent variety between all of the different areas. It's not something that I think will profoundly stick with me, but I still enjoy the OST.
I'm currently around 27 hours into the game and have a long ways to go. I treat the game more as a hero's marathon than a hero's sprint, keeping distinct notes and directions for things to do when I pick up the game and play it for a few hours every now and then. It's sort of hard to explain some of the other things I like about the game without giving up the mystery because, well, the mystery is the game. So I can only hope that if you've finished reading this, it might've caught your interest even a little bit.
Hero's Spirit is on Steam for $5.99 and I hope more people give it a shot.