Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest

Expectations. I went into this game hoping for something akin to the choose-your-own-adventure books of the '80s. Did I find what I was looking for? Well... kind of. The good. The game mechanic is a really interesting take on visual novel plus rpg that actually is reminiscent of the choose-your-own-adventure books of yore. It was easy to get into and I enjoyed the gameplay. The bad. Oof. The narrative. The story has so much in common with a Stephanie Meyer type of approach to YA novels. Whereas hers were sexy vampires glittering in sunlight, here it is cool activist werewolves. There's also nonbinary characters in here, but their characters, as well as everyone else really, are so hamfistedly introduced and so paper thin that it, at least for me, took away a lot of the immersion and enjoyment of the story. I assume that there are those of you who enjoy these kind of stories. If so, this game is for you. If not, then you might as well pass unless there's a heavy discount and you want to try it for the gameplay. What could be better. Release the game engine as open source and be for visual novel rpgs what TADS was for text adventures! Recommendations. I'm writing this review about a week before Halloween. If you're looking for ghoulish adventures with strong female leads and young characters with seamless inclusion of queer characters and intense, immersive stories, I strongly, warmly recommend Night in the Woods and Oxenfree. These two are point-n-click adventures rather than rpgs, but the recommendation regards story and characters rather than game mechanics.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest provides a nice blend of classic Fighting Fantasy / "Choose Your Own Adventure" style storytelling on top of a popular tabletop roleplaying game setting and with an art style, sound design and general polish (no pun intended!) which makes it shine. One of the strengths to the game is the way it adapts to how you play - if you want to play the character as quick to anger and desperate to get things DONE then you can.... and then, replay and take a different tact and see how this affects the story and the options available to you at each turn. A single play-through takes about 3 hours and there are 5 endings. There's also various ways to reach them depending on your decisions which may reveal different paths through the story. I loved how atmospheric the game was - the combination of excellent writing, art direction, sound design and, of course, werewolf subject matter, which raised it above similar games in this genre.

The game has a really strong Werewolf: The Apocalypse feel about it. The devs have captured the spirit of the pen-and-paper game really well. The writing is solid, although some parts are ambiguous, and you the choices can mean something else than you suspect they do. Another downside is... it's VERY SHORT. 2-3 hours, and you're done. The game seems unfinished. Just as you are getting yourself involved, and things are becoming interesting, the game comes to an abrupt end. As if someone cut out the entire heart of the story. All in all a very decent game, especially for the PnP fans, but it definitely could use some more work on fleshing out the middle part of the story.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the forest is a visual novel based on the pen and paper tabletop series by White Wolf Publishing. What separates Heart of the forest from other visual novels is its inclusion of gameplay mechanics. Taken directly from its source material, players will need to manage their character's Rage, Willpower, and Health stats. Different dialogue choices or actions will see the player gain or expend some of these stats; depending on the stats of a player at a given moment, certain options will open up or become blocked off, leading to a myriad of branching outcomes. In the case of the health, should a player deplete said stat, they will fail whatever event they are trying to complete. But rather than restart from a previous state, the game will continue on, with the consequences of their failure. Addtional stats such as Cunning, Spirital, and Analytical, are also improved depending on the choices made by the player and will allow the narrative to further branch. Overall, these mechanics go a long way to giving the game a bit of heart and make it a breath of fresh when compared to other visual novels on the market. Heart of the Forest follows the story of Maia: an American with Polish ancestry; she's traveled from America to a small town in Poland to better understand her family's legacy. Once there, Maia becomes caught up in a multi-factioned conflict with the forest at the heart of it all. The environmental themes make sense for a werewolf narrative and come at a good time, but they also dwarf the narrative and almost make the supernatural element seem like an afterthought. Depsite having a decent cast of characters, the game is too short, roughly three hours long, to make much use of them. Instead they feel more like archetypal characters simply meant to espouse ideas important to the world of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Further the game comes to an abrupt ending which invokes comparisons to the infamous 'The Order 1886.'