The Void Rains Upon Her Heart

Review

Deep in a cave, an alien girl is kept at bay by strange monsters. All she wants to do is to walk bare-foot outside, to feel the soft cushion of the grass on the soles of her feet, and to smell all the various fragrances emanating from the flowers. As her appearance is far from conventionally appealing, the feeling of rejection and distress way heavy on her heart. But what if these monsters could come to love her? She might be able to free herself from the cave and walk freely where ever she wants. Will she be able to remove the void that rains upon her heart?  

The Void Rains Upon Her Heart is a retro shoot ’em up game where you control the heart of an alien girl, that shoots heart projectiles into monsters in order to defeat them and make them love her.

This game is currently available on early access and has a couple of modes of play at this stage. You can play a story mode, which has two levels of difficulty with a third one available soon. The other mode is the quick play, but you must purchase (radiate in the game) monster cards with the tedrids (credits) you’ll receive after each battle to be able to play this mode.

The story line consists of beating 10 monsters which includes the final monster, the Void, in each of the difficulty modes (light and heavy rain difficulty). Before entering each of the battles, you’ll be presented with up to three monster cards, randomly generated from the 18 available in the game, and all you have to do is to choose which one you want to fight. Until you radiate (purchase) each monster card, you’ll have no idea what attacks and defences the bosses have until you fight them. However, you‘ll be able to see his level of difficulty and which tetrids (there are six in total) you’ll receive at the end of the battle, if successful. In addition, you might have up to another two gift cards next to the monster card. These cards will unlock new abilities for your next battle if you win your upcoming fight. However, one of these cards might come with a challenge, such as not getting hit for the entire fight. During the fight, and each time one of your projectiles hit its target it, you will accumulate points which will go towards the tetrids that you receive. Each 1,000 points will earn you one tetrid. As I mentioned above, there are 6 coloured tetrids and you’ll need them to radiate either a monster or gift cards.

There are over 80 gifts cards in this game, which greatly enhances the re-playability.  Each of your attempts will be different.  You can usually purchase either a gift, or monster cards, if you have accumulated enough of two specific coloured Tetrids, but sometimes you’ll need three of them, especially for your panic attacks.

This brings me to the gameplay. Your heart will automatically shoot projectiles towards the enemy. On many occasions, you’ll be overwhelmed with enemy bullets and the only way to avoid having your heart broken is to use the panic attack, which destroys all projectiles that are close by and will inflict great damage to the boss if you are nearby. You only have a few panic attacks available to you, with ten bosses to beat if you want to win the game, so use them wisely; as long as the dot in the middle of your heart is not hit, you won’t lose any health.

Nice pixel graphics, nice soundtrack and the controls are responsive. I must admit that the story is a bit flat but the game is pretty good if you like shoot ’em ups.