¶ GameplayDistant Hearts is a small level-based puzzle game about guidance and connection. The player switches between two roles:
The goal of each level is to reunite the two creatures by clearing the obstacles keeping them separate.
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¶ StoryYou are a wandering spirit, roaming through the open fields. Along the way, you encounter creatures unlike yourself. Though rarely alone, they stand just out of reach, their paths blocked by heavy stones or locked gates. You feel their deep longing, so you set out to help them clear away the obstacles that keep them apart. With each reunion, your heart and theirs fill with warmth. Carrying that light, you continue on your journey.
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| Message: Love doesn't need an explanation, it just needs to find a way to embrace itself. |
¶ Design Pillars
¶ 1. Precise, grid-based Movement
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¶ 2. Short, level-based environmental Puzzles
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¶ 3. Guiding the creatures to manipulate the world
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¶ 4. Simple abilities
This simple set of abilities ensures that most players will easily understand what they are capable of, so they can focus on the puzzles at hand
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¶ Game Loop
¶ 1. Observing the level |
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The Player scans the level for things like:
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¶ 2. Planning the approach |
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The Player tries to determine how they can manipulate the environment to bring together the creatures by:
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¶ 3. Acting according to the plan |
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After deciding on a plan, the player takes action and:
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¶ 4. Switching to the next level |
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When the player joins two creatures together, they get some visual and acoustic feedback that tells them they did something great. After that, an overlay tells the player to press the select button to switch to the next level. |
¶ Aesthetic
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¶ Color |
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The color palette is kept simple to make it easy to look at and also to be able to clearly differentiate each element in the level. While the environment for the most part contains colors on the natural side, the characters in the levels are designed with more striking and bright colors to make them stand out more. As a whole, the colors of the game lean towards pastel colors, though still having a little more saturation than a complete pastel look. |
¶ Characters and Shape Language |
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Each character is designed with a clear silhouette and a distinct color, making them easily recognizable and readable within the level. The spirit has a typical ghost-like shape, to give the player a hint that they might not be constrained by physical walls and objects. To put even more emphasis on that, the spirit has an idle animation where it hovers over the ground, gently moving up and down, with a shadow beneath it underlining the fact that it flies. The creatures on the other hand clearly stand on the ground. Their bodies do not move up and down and their feet are also standing right on their shadow.
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¶ Animation |
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To make the static screen a little more lively, we implemented an idle animation for each character where the sprites change just ever so slightly, kind of like a stop-motion animation style. We took this inspiration from the game Baba Is You, where this is in fact done with every single object in the game, even stones.
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¶ Music and SFX |
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The background music and sound effects for this game were made using the online tool beepbox.co. While the title screen has a cute but short and minimalistic song playing in the background, when the player starts the game, he is greeted by a natural ambience with birds chirping. When the terrain of the levels change to the winter theme, this ambience is replaced by the sound of blowing wind and also a very minimalist melody with a leitmotif of the title track. This melody only contains high notes played on a glockenspiel, to put emphasis on the cold and quiet calm environment. Besides the background music and ambience, the actions the player takes in the game (like walking, pushing buttons or merging creatures) are also supported by little sound effects. These are mostly played on square-wave or chiptune-like instruments, to fit the pixel aesthetic of the game. |
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¶ Team
Programming: Nikolai Bohse, Caroline Römer
Art (In-Game & UI) : Nikolai Bohse, Caroline Römer
Level Design: Nikolai Bohse, Caroline Römer
Music and SFX: Caroline Römer
¶ Technology
Game Engine: Godot 4.4
Godot Plugins: Controller Icons
Music and SFX: beepbox.co
Art: Aseprite
¶ Assets
Font: Grape Soda by jeti
¶ Documentation & Itch Link
Download our Documentation (PDF)