Othercide from French developer Lightbulb Crew is one of my favourite recent tactics RPGs. It’s an atmospheric and rewardingly meticulous experience that typically pits you against overwhelming numbers, where victory comes about by carefully exploiting reaction abilities, positioning your troop of weary warriors just-so, and manipulating the initiative bar. At times, for me, it’s up there with Into The Breach.
But I do acknowledge that it’s an acquired taste, not least because the narrative and extra-dimensional setting are relentlessly unpleasant – a terrible soup of mother metaphors and Penny Dreadful imagery, in which you pit clones against Silent Hill monsters, then liquefy the survivors to spawn new characters. What’s the appropriate way to follow up a game like that? Ah yes, with an episodic dating sim.
In the just-announced Nova Hearts, you play Luce, one of several “highly attractive people” who have been transformed into superheroes and supervillains by a mysterious entity. I feel like spelling out that they’re “highly attractive” in the press release is priming me to despise them, but sure, everybody in the trailer looks foxy enough.
Over the course of an episodic story, you must suit up and “TEXT, DATE and FIGHT your friends and enemies alike” in turn-based combat. You must also put a stop to various beastly invaders from another dimension, and look into a cosmic mystery. But it sounds like the emphasis here is on getting to know other hot singles, with dialogue and skill progression carried out using an in-game phone. As you’d expect, who exactly you bed, snub, friendzone, etc will shape the overarching plot.
“Will you become frenemies, rivalovers, friends with benefits, or will you find true love amongst the chaos?” the blurb continues. “When you’re not getting down and flirty, use your strategic know-how, stylish combos, and the tactical timeline feature in turn-based battles against sexy supervillains and their ghastly goons.” From the trailer, it looks like they’re going with a classic side-on, Final Fantasy-style format, rather than the checkerboard approach from Othercide.
The first episode of Nova Hearts, titled The Spark, lands on 17th January via Steam, and will be free. The rest of the story will follow over summer 2024. I am… interested to try it, feelings of whiplash aside, though I will note that the concept’s thunder has been stolen by Thirsty Suitors.
