Heart is another game by Grant Howitt, and it is set in the same world – heck, the same city – as his other RPG, Spire. I wrote about a Spire Bundle last week. Whilst Spire explores a towering city that stretches into the sky, Heart explores the terrifying undercity beneath it. The game is described as:
“a standalone RPG of thrilling and desperate dungeon-crawls in the unreal world below Spire. As a Deadwalker, tech-armored Vermissian Knight, Junk Mage, Deep Apiarist, or other obsessed character, you delve into the outlawed cathedrals, predatory buildings, and twisted night forests of a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process.”
So cool!
There’s a long history of these sorts of undercities in media. In video games, you’ve got stuff like the undercity of Baldur’s Gate and the lower levels of Midgar in Final Fantasy VII. In film and TV, the undercity of Coruscant is explored well in some later episodes of the Clone Wars series, and I love the undercity represented in the 2001 anime, Metropolis. The best example I can think of in books is London Below in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. This is a rich concept.
Unusually for Bundles of Holding, this bundle consists of only a single tier. There’s just not that much published for this game currently, I suppose. The bundle costs $16.95 and contains the following content:
Clearly, the main item is the core rulebook. At 226 pages, this is the only large book in the bundle, with the others having only 32 or fewer pages. The weirdness isn’t limited to just the setting of the undercity, but is carried through to character creation with Deadwalkers, tech-armored Vermissian Knights, Junk Mages, and the Deep Apiarist. One review I read spoke of playing as “someone who hollowed out their body, filled it with magical bees and are now a wandering hive bursting with magical honey“.
Awesome.
My favourite thing about the game is the zenith abilities. These follow zenith beats, which are big, climactic events for characters that progress their story arc and unlock the zenith abilities. The use of the zenith ability will normally kill a character in a satisfyingly dramatic manner. For example, the zenith ability for the Vermissian Knight reads:
Amazing.
The rest of the items in the tier are small PDFs. The Burned and Broken supplement is really interesting as it’s all about bringing your characters over from Spire to be playable in Heart. This is really cool, as it allows you to play out a descent from Spire into the undercity.
Sanctum is also really interesting, as it allows the players to build a haven, a sad little settlement that they must protect. This sort of play has always really interested me, so it’s cool to see it being added to Heart.
In terms of value, you’re getting the core rulebook (normally priced at $25) for $16.95 and then some free content on top that would have added up to $36. Now, I think these PDFs are a bit overpriced. The bundle price seems pretty reasonable for them. I’d say this is good value, particularly when taken alongside the Spire bundle.
You can click here to visit the bundle page on Bundle of Holding.
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