1208: Spirited Heart

Inspired by my recent excursion into Hanako Games’ Long Live The Queen, I decided to check out another “life sim” game that has been sitting in my virtual pile of shame for some time, ever since I picked up a “Manga Bundle” from Hanako and Winter Wolves a while back. Spirited Heart is a very similar sort of game to Long Live The Queen, only instead of playing as a princess-slash-queen-to-be, you’re playing a “normal” person in a fantasy world. Specifically, you’re playing as an 18-year old human, elf or demon woman coming to “the big city” for the first time and trying to “make it” before she turns 30. Just like real life, then.

Spirited Heart does a number of interesting things that distinguishes it from Long Live The Queen. Chief among these is the fact that you’re not playing a fixed character — you’re playing one of your own design, to a certain extent anyway. There isn’t any option to customise your character’s appearance, for example, but the way you play does determine what sort of person your character ends up as.

This starts right from the beginning of the game. Choosing a race sets your initial basic statistics, and you can then tweak this starting set of abilities by “role-playing” a few simple scenarios with multiple-choice questions. By the time you’ve answered these basic questions about your character’s childhood and adolescence, you have a good idea of who they are and what kind of person they can be, and can start working on their statistics further.

The way the game works is that each week, you choose whether your character goes to work or takes a week off. Going to work allows you to choose any occupations you meet the prerequisite stat requirements for, while resting allows you to restore your health and morale, which can often be negatively impacted both by going to work and through random events that occur. You can’t go to work if you’re too unhealthy or if your morale is too low, so sometimes you need to take a week off in order to progress. Working, meanwhile, often improves your stats and allows you to earn money, which can be used on more effective vacations when required.

Occasionally during your work day, you’ll have “random encounters” with the game’s other characters. These visual novel-style scenes see your character interacting with these other potential love interests — both male and female (assuming you’ve bought both the basic heterosexual game and the standalone Girl’s Love expansion) — and occasionally offer you a choice to advance your relationship.

This is probably the most interesting thing about the game: the emergent narrative created through the stat-building gameplay combines with the prescripted narrative of the visual novel-style romance scenes to create something that is much more than the sum of its parts. For example, in the game I’m currently playing, my character is a strong young woman who grew up on a farm and thus doesn’t have a lot in the way of social graces. In her career so far, she has worked as a farmer and a builder. In the latter case, she encountered a young and somewhat clumsy elf noble whom it transpired she was building a house for. Somewhat later, after improving her skills enough to become a maid in a noble house, she ran into this elf maiden once again and discovered that she was betrothed to a fat, unattractive nobleman who obviously didn’t give a shit about her. And thus we’re into a pleasing “star-crossed lovers” sort of situation as my commoner character attempts to prove herself worthy to this noble elf maiden and her family. I don’t yet know how that ends yet, but I’m curious to see.

Just to confuse matters, partway through the game, my character was visited by her Goddess and tasked with attaining a particular “title” by the time she reaches the age of 30. Unfortunately, pursuing the elf of her dreams and following the Goddess’ quest are not really compatible, since the Goddess’ quest requires me to become an Artist, while pursuing the elf requires me to continue working as her maid. CHOICES. DECISIONS. CONSEQUENCES.

Like Long Live The Queen, Spirited Heart is a fairly no-frills production with minimal graphics, animation and sound, but like Long Live The Queen, it’s also a surprisingly compelling game if you take it in the spirit in which it is intended. It’s a role-playing game in which you’re not battling monsters or going on epic quests; you’re living a (relatively) normal life in a fantasy world and trying to make the best of your situation. It’s an interesting little game, and one which I see myself playing through a few times.

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