else Heart.Break()

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Evil Tower of Ominousness, anyone?

else Heart.Break() is an open-world Adventure Game, where the key to solving the puzzles is good old-fashioned computer programming.

It's Sebastian's birthday, and you get a phone call about a job -- selling soda pop at the island city of Dorisburg. But as soon as Seb gets there, things seem a little strange. There are computers everywhere, he can't even find his new boss, and the creepy hotel room doesn't even connect to the right door. He's just a young man, alone and lost in a strange city.

Then he sees a beautiful girl dancing at Bar Yvonne, and everything starts to turn around. It's pretty hard to impress a girl like Pixie as a novice soda salesman. But one thing leads to another, leading to Sebastian taking on a evil corporation with a hacker collective.

The unique mechanic of else Heart.Break() is based on hacking the various objects in the game, which unlike Hollywood Hacking involves actual programming in a BASIC-like language called Språk. As such, it uses a lot of tropes that aren't typical in media, but are typical among computer programming.

Playable in English and Swedish.

Tropes used in Else Heart.Break() include:
  • City Noir: Dorisburg, a rainy city towered over by corrupt corporation
  • Disc One Nuke: The modder. You get it fairly early in the game, but it's very powerful -- enough to win the game in less than 15 minutes. Much of the game is exploring how to use it and learning to program in Språk (because why not have another DSL?).
  • Drunk on Milk: Try hacking water by adding this line: Drunkenness(500). A technique like this can also be applied to make a Booze-Based Buff.
  • Fiery Redhead: Pixie, of course, who will get angry at Sebastian if you pick the dialog that makes him an insensitive clod.
  • Hollywood Hacking: Played with. Some things like the Master Computer are definitely there, as with the ability to hack into things you probably shouldn't. On the other hand, the interfaces are a very realistic code editor and methodical programming.
  • Larval Stage: Sebastian goes through this as you, his controller, finally figure out how to hack into everything. Cue passing out on the desk after a hack session turns into sleepless nights.
  • Love Triangle: Sebastian starts falling for Pixie hard, but Ivan is already her boyfriend.
  • Magical Computer: As you explore the modder, you realize that almost any object in Dorisburg can be changed to do something entirely different. That feeling when you realize that some NPC had already hacked all of the trash cans in the game.
  • Magic Smoke: A syntax error causes the computers in the game to emit black fumes until you fix it. Thankfully, Dorisburg is so full of magic smoke that the computers never run out of it (i.e. they keep working).
  • The Men in Black: The Typers never talk to you, but they do chase you down if you stepped over the line.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Eventually, you hack your way past everything.
  • Password Slot Machine: It's not the best way to open doors, but you can make one of these fairly easily:
for i from 0 to 9999
    var ok = Unlock(i)
    if ok
        break
    end
end
  • Programming Game: And how! But the most straight example of it is the fish game (trial #3), which is easiest to solve by multiple trials instead of mathematically.
  • Put on a Bus: Sebastian, once you rescue Ivan or break the Heart, must leave Dorisburg or be killed by Monad. Sorry, 100% spoiler here.
  • Rapid-Fire Typing: Averted unless you, the player, are good at extreme typing. This game involves real programming, which is typically much more deliberative.
  • Retreaux: It's a modern Unity engine game -- the pixellated textures are there for style alone.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Sebastian tracks Pixie to her place of work despite the fact that she's been very evasive about it, and she really calls you out on the stalking. This is all your fault, player.
  • Suddenly Sober: Drunkenness(-100)
  • Tron Lines: The Internet appears to be made of lines and colors.