This minor patch adds the first secret ending to Heartbound. All endings are canon and there is no true ending.
Normally I wouldn't release a small patch like this but I find this to be significant. This is a pretty huge milestone for the story and also heavily updates the ARG. Our more puzzly folks have been aching for new stuff so this one is for them.
Have fun and happy hunting!
Known Issues
RURU language has not been updated past Fern/Rhode in Animus.
New Content
The ARG has received a major update.
The Good Friends route now has a conclusion.
FRFR language has been updated to include Avocado's section of Animus.
ESMX language has been updated to include Avocado's section of Animus.
PTBR language has been updated to include Avocado's section of Animus.
JAJP language has been updated to include Avocado's section of Animus.
Internal Changes
Wiki-Warriors can now turn off the Animus Pocket Watch with Left Shift.
This should improve the quality of maps on the Official Wiki.
Bug Reporting
Please report any issues via DM on Discord to Thor#5264.
You can also send these to GoPirateSoftware@Gmail.com
Include a screenshot, it makes it much easier to fix!
Upcoming Content
The rest of Animus (Chapter 3) is being actively developed.
The Mossbacks are up next and will include some heavy topics.
Heartbound is a FINALIST in the Game Maker Awards!
This is honestly a pretty huge honor so thank you to YoYo Games for doing this!
We're competing with four other awesome titles for the Most Anticipated game category. The voting doesn't require an account and only takes a few seconds to complete. If you'd like us to win then please take part in this!
This has been a really rough couple of months as shown in our latest development video. Thank you for being an awesome community and being there for us. I never expected such kindness and it means a lot to me.
This is the last minor patch for Animus. After this it will be two major patches and the chapter will be done. The next one will be all of the Mossbacks storyline. After that we will launch the boss fight and Animus will end.
From there we don't really have a huge amount to make. Animus was largely the most complicated section of the game. Jotunheim and [REDACTED] will be a breeze by comparison.
I can't wait to show you what's coming next. You guys rock. ːHBHeartː
Known Issues
Multiple translations are missing for Avocados section and beyond.
We're working to get these finished and implemented as soon as possible.
New Content
Avocado can now invite you over to her house.
Emelio now talks about giving you a better axe.
Emelio can now only fix the hands of the Pocket Watch.
A stolen potion is now useful for something.
Certain environments in Animus now change based on your choices.
The Pocketwatch now appears in Lores bedroom.
The Pocketwatch now appears on the bridge if you're a terrible person.
The Factus now appears in Lores bedroom.
The Factus now gets other cacti talking.
The Aspects now judge you for your actions.
You can now meet the Mossbacks.
There is now an Auto-Save before a fight in a terrible place.
There is something new to solve.
Bug Fixes
Looping Animus as a positive and then negative route will no longer break combat.
The final message at the end of Animus is now visible again.
Avocado can now react properly to Emelio fixing a portion of the watch.
Fixed audio transforms on Terry for multiple routes.
The Artifact no longer disappears from Lores Bedroom when thrown.
The Pocketwatch no longer uses sprites from the wrong texture page.
The Pocketwatch now slides onto the screen instead of popping into place.
Lore no longer slides inside a tentacle in the darkworld version of Emelios house.
The Amphibious Magician achievement now works correctly.
A thrown shoe now splashes correctly.
Various dialog portions no longer leave the textbox.
Rebuilt part of the core text system to be more resilient.
Underscores can now be displayed in the Heartbound font.
Lowercase 'f' and 'l' have been modified to be more readable.
The Disclaimer cutscene now plays again at the beginning of Avocados section.
Animus Day music no longer plays after the fishing mini-game.
The Early Access description has been updated.
Linux users should now be able to launch directly from Steam.
Internal Changes
Wiki-Warriors can now turn off shadow effects to take better screenshots of maps with Left Shift.
This should improve the quality of maps on the Official Wiki.
Studio Changes
We've hired a new Brazilian Portuguese translator.
We've hired a new Russian translator.
OST
There are now 97 songs in the OST!
Forest Sprits has now been correctly renamed as Forest Spirits
Please report any issues via DM on Discord to Thor#5264.
You can also send these to GoPirateSoftware@Gmail.com
Include a screenshot, it makes it much easier to fix!
Upcoming Content
The rest of Animus (Chapter 3) is being actively developed.
The Mossbacks are up next and will include some heavy topics.
Development Update - May 2022
Development Update - February 2022
Updates on Heartbound, our studio, and our global community. This month has been tough for a lot of people. You got this, don't worry.
Development Update - January 2022
These videos will go out every month to show what new content was worked on. This won't showcase everything that goes into the game just some general direction and specific changes. If you want to follow the team you can find us all at the links below. Hope you guys enjoy!
Starting from January 27th until February 3rd, Heartbound will be 20% off. Happy Lunar New Year everyone! ːHBHeartː
When is the next update?
Really soon actually. I just finished all of the timelines for the end of Avocado's section. This includes a ton of tie-ins to the other chapters so it was a bunch of work to get finished. This stuff will be good to go for the translators soon.
What else is going on?
Planning to release a monthly video update of everything we've worked on to keep everyone updated. Was originally going to be a text post but video carries better on all the socials out there. First one should come out in the first week on February as we get the pipeline for that to handled.
Where can I follow the development?
I stream Heartbound dev Monday to Saturday every week over on Twitch. You can also come hang with the community on Discord or Guilded!
As always, thanks for being awesome. You guys rock.
-Thor
Steam Winter Sale
Starting from December 22nd at 10:00am PST until January 5th, Heartbound will be 20% off. This is our first sale ever for the game and something I was pretty hesitant about before. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and this brings some cheer to you and yours!
Heartbound is still in Early Access why are you going on sale?
I think the last patch really set up enough content that I feel comfortable finally engaging in sales like this. Last year a number of people were upset that we didn't put Heartbound on sale so I thought it would be best to do it this year. With everyone being hit financially by the pandemic it felt even more appropriate to do so.
Why were updates slow this last year?
No easy way around this one, I had Covid. As a small team we can't really adapt to illness and injury as well as larger studios. It took me a little over a year to recover and I am finally back on track and making the game at the pace I feel happy with. For everyone who was upset about the release cadence... sorry. As far as we can plan it won't happen again. Some stuff is just unavoidable.
What's next for Heartbound?
We have a ton of stuff we're working on for Animus right now. Avocado's storyline is roughly half-released and the other half is finished internally so I'm pretty confident in getting the rest out to you in the next few months. After that, we're going to be focusing on The Mossbacks storyline which is a lot of family dynamics and dating related stuff. It's pretty heavy, might hit some people harder than others, and something I'm pretty happy with in terms of writing.
When that is finished Animus will have it's final battle and we will be working on Jotunheim. Going forward we will also be putting up monthly development updates here as announcements as I have really only been leaning on the stream to distribute information.
As always, thanks for being awesome. You guys rock. ːHBHeartː
After a long hard year of recovering from Covid I'm back working on Heartbound. It's super nice to be able to just hammer out new stuff and keep making the game. Sorry for the delay but it was absolutely unavoidable.
This patch has a ton of secret route content and a small amount of main route content. The next focus will be on main route content to finish off Avocado and The Mossbacks storylines.
Thanks for all the feedback and support. You guys rock. ːHBHeartː
Known Issues
Russian and Japanese have some missing translation files.
Due to the pandemic we had to hire new people for some localization positions.
Missing translations will be fixed as soon as we can get the new team members set up.
Language updates will be made as micro-patches and updated here.
Sorry for the inconvenience!
New Content
All save files have been reset due to structural changes.
A number of new achievements can now be obtained.
Emelio, Fern, Rhode, and Avocado can now judge you for your actions.
Avocado can now teach you about fishing.
There is now a path best left untraveled in Animus.
There can now be a fishing rod in Lore's bedroom.
Things have changed dramatically in the void between chapters.
New facial expressions were added for Lore, Fern, Rhode, Emelio, and Avocado.
Added more facial expressions to Fern and Rhodes home scenes.
Lores combat sprites are now animated for every mini-game.
The mouse cursor now centers on the screen whenever it activates during combat.
The mouse cursor now fades in/out whenever it activates/deactivates.
Lores weapons now fade in/out whenever they activate/deactivate.
Lores weapons now change polarity based on your actions.
Losing to the Barghest is now a path forward.
The ARG has progressed to the next stage.
Surprise Pirate detection is now funnier.
Two talky animations can now be played at once.
Textbox borders can now fade out.
Fixed After Launch
These are issues we've fixed after launching this patch. Thanks for the reports!
Lore now says his proper dialog when fighting the Barghest.
Text regarding a specifically colored beard no longer breaks out of the text box.
Updated text in the Iron Mines to reflect the proper state of The Artifact.
Fixed a repeating sound if you beat The Barghest fight in the middle of the dodge game.
Raging Shadows now plays correctly during combat again. Thanks GMS
finger guns*
The Artifact now makes sense when it appears in The Mines.
Misery and Mania now know which one is the brother and which is the sister.
French has now been released.
Linux builds can now be run from the Steam Library. libcurl.so.4 is cursed
Heartbound will no longer run at reduced framerate on some monitors on Linux.
OScars face now matches his dialog on all large monitors in The Tower.
Lunch Rush can no longer cause duplicate text to appear in the room.
Dillohome introduction cutscene no longer has a chance to softlock.
Going to lunch with Rhode and then doubling back to talk to Fern no longer softlocks.
Bug Fixes
Machines running on Integrated Graphics should no longer turn into a visual blender.
The continue arrow is now half the animation speed it was before.
All characters now preload into texture memory on room load to improve performance.
All room dialog now unloads from memory when leaving that room.
Removed a number of redundant flags in the dialog system across the entire game.
Buttons on the keypad in The Tower now display correctly.
Surprise Pirate mode will no longer trigger if you run Heartbound directly from its folder.
Ferns hair has been fixed on her sad face.
Combat textures were pruned to remove redundancy.
Combat no longer continues if the enemy hits 0 health in the middle of a round.
Rhodes aggressive stance was updated to remove minor pixel errors.
The game client will no longer run at reduced framerate on some monitors.
The Barghest health border is no longer duplicated during The Boss fight.
The Observer is now the default talky expression for all dialog.
Broken glass is no longer on Dads head after fighting The Boss.
Logs will no longer improperly stop looping when pushed to the right or down.
Thrown weapons will no longer briefly appear outside of the arena.
Enemy healthbars no longer have missing pixels on either side.
A number of effects will no longer be cut short if Lore loses during The Barghest fight.
Shaders will no longer cause the screen to distort.
The collision model for weapons is now more precise.
Lore's really nervous face no longer has mouth movement.
Fixed some art inconsistencies on Lores Pajama Darksider talkies.
Fixed a doorway in Binders Trial.
Lore can now wear a hat in his pajamas.
Language selection buttons now have larger text.
Internal Changes
All of the games sprite sheets have been updated for improved performance.
All internal references to characters have been changed to ENUMs for easier tracking.
All FR language files have been updated to FRFR.
All RU language files have been updated to RURU.
All JP language files have been updated to JAJP.
There are now more debug tools for the Wiki Warriors.
Please report any issues via DM on Discord to Thor#5264.
You can also send these to GoPirateSoftware@Gmail.com
Include a screenshot, it makes it much easier to fix!
Upcoming Content
The rest of Animus (Chapter 3) is being actively developed.
The Mossbacks and the finale to Avocado's storyline are up next.
Steam Awards!
Hello everyone!
It's time for the Steam Awards again and this year Heartbound is up for the Labor of Love award! Over the last several years we've worked every day on the game and we're not stopping until it's finally completed. If you haven't caught the development streams then that's a great way to check out the progress or reinforce that Thor really hasn't died and the game hasn't been abandoned. ːHBHeartː
Outside of that, it's been a heck of a ride getting to where we are today and it's all thanks to you. We wouldn't exist without your support and love as a community so thank you for being there for us and for making Heartbound possible.
The next major update is coming soon (or it's already out depending on when this post automatically launches) and we're really excited about it. Thank you again for everything you've done. You all rock so much.
