After crushing its Kickstarter funding goal back in 2014, Alonso Martin’s Metroidvania RPG, Heart Forth, Alicia fell off our radar for a few years. Despite being several years overdue, the campaign is still updating semi-regularly with the game’s progress. Elite Tier backers get to test the newest alpha version 7.0.6 that’s coming out soon.
As with any self-proclaimed Metroidvania style game, Martin and his team have spent a great deal of time working to balance the game’s difficulty. Since the developers want their game to appeal to both hard-core veterans as well as those new to the genre they’ve devised a system of checkpoints to mitigate some of the more frustrating aspects of death’s consequences.
Heart Forth, Alicia makes use of the traditional “save-station system” gamers have grown familiar with over the years. Players can only secure their progress after visiting a save point in the game world. Older versions of the game included a handful of checkpoints as well, to help players avoid repeating cutscenes. Initially, the checkpoints weren’t a central part of the game’s design. This has changed in their latest Kickstarter update.
Exploring The New Checkpoints
Now, players are able to trigger checkpoints more regularly, and respawn from these points in case of a death. This prevents players from growing increasingly frustrated over progress that would usually be lost on respawn. Of course, in order to properly save progress, players are still required to visit the save-stations.
“With these checkpoints sprinkled around the world, the game feels significantly more enjoyable for everyone, granting you more freedom to venture into the unknown while maintaining the intended level of challenge and difficulty,” the update explained.
Of course, currently only elite tier backers have access to the alpha version of the project. Everyone else has been left to wonder if they’ll ever finally get their hands on the game. It’s a fair concern since they helped raise over $232,365 three years ago with no end-date in sight.
The update also included a host of brightly colored gifs and additional improvements the team has been working on. Sadly, there was no mention of when we might expect to hear about Heart Forth, Alicia getting a release date.
