Heart Forth, Alicia Coming to PS4, PS Vita Early 2016

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Heart Forth, Alicia Coming to PS4, PS Vita Early 2016

Heart Forth, Alicia

Hey everyone! I’m Alonso Martin, the lead developer of Heart Forth, Alicia — an upcoming Metroidvania RPG about a young wizard on her journey to stop a Spirit from consuming her homeland.

Heart Forth, Alicia is a ’90s-inspired adventure that combines the electrifying gameplay of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the expansive world & dungeons of the Zelda series, and the unfolding story style of Xenogears… except it’s a little darker and has its own fantasy twist. You can watch the trailer here.

Up till May last year, I’d been the sole developer of this game for a few years. Thanks to the incredible support of the Kickstarter crowd and the outlets that covered the campaign, the game grew into a much bigger project, and it’s thanks to them that we’re able to bring the game to PS4 and PS Vita in early 2016.

Even the legendary Manami Matsumae (composer of Mega Man, Mighty No. 9, Shovel Knight) came aboard to produce a few tracks for the game! These past months have been one of the best things that’ve ever happened to me.

Features of the game

Heart Forth, Alicia’s inspired by games that hold a special place in my heart and by the things I loved about them. There’s always been something magical about the open-world nature of games like Zelda and Super Metroid where everything’s filled with content, and the compelling story style of games like Xenogears or Final Fantasy VII.

These two things are seldom packaged together in Metroidvanias, so I took it upon myself to make a game where the player can enjoy both the fun, open-ended exploration experience with upgrades and unlockables, and the excitement of taking part in an epic storyline like those in some of my favorite Square games of the late ’90s.

Making this happen is a tall order for sure, but if Heart Forth, Alicia can even bring back part of the wonder and magic those great games had, I’ll consider it a job well done.

  • Adventure through an intricately detailed world filled with wonders, creative puzzles, secrets and lethal dungeons.
  • Engage in fast, agile melee combat with over 20 special attacks & upgrades, and devastating magic spells to annihilate your enemies.
  • Play with powerful RPG elements that include the gear, loot, sidequests, and gameplay depth that make for a classic RPG experience.
  • Discover 5 secret fairy familiars to crush, shock, freeze, and burn your enemies, or save you at your most dire moment of need.
  • Experience a deep and unfolding story that takes place centuries after the War of the Fatherlands, starring a cast of fascinating and complex characters.

Going to GDC!

The nice guys at PlayStation gave us the opportunity to showcase a PS4 demo of the game at GDC this next Wednesday, March 4th @ their South Hall Expo booths. We will be showing a part of the recently overhauled introduction, which is also sporting the recent change into widescreen mode, adding 80 sexy pixels horizontally.

Heart Forth, Alicia

This is both really exciting and thrilling for me, as it will be the first time the game will be shown in public after several years in the making. The team and I have worked our best to make this PS4 demo as fun and engaging as possible, so it’ll be really rewarding to watch people play through it.

Stay tuned for more updates on Heart Forth, Alicia, and thanks for reading!

Heart Forth, Alicia

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94 Comments

  • You people kill me the games are going to come Tuesday regardless.

  • Looks amazing. Can’t wait to play it on my PS4 and Vita. :D

  • So, we finally get an announcement for this game.

  • Looks cool. Will buy.

  • I’ve never pre-ordered a digital game, but this might do it for me!

  • Those slimes look dangerous AND edible.

    Great work!

  • “Metroidvania RPG”…
    Indie devs are incapable of doing anything else? It’s either that or some platforming with just ONE unique mechanic, very few games manage to make something good and somewhat original.
    Or is it that you just wanted money and started the project, because copying some Metroidvania it’s just way too easy in these times, because everybody is doing it?
    This s**t is like casual CoD-like shooters by this point, you played one and you played them all almost.

  • @Viewtiful_Gene: The irony is that you’ve got a Hyperdimension Neptunia avatar. One can say the same things about that series and Compile Heart in general.

  • Seems like a cool game, but man, the name has to be changed. A comma should never be in the title unless its a list ( like Guns, Guts, Glory or something) .

    I guess the only way to demo games with sony anymore is to go to these conventions?

  • I have never agreed with the term “Metroidvania” as those two games are only very slightly similar and those minor similarities are far from exclusive to those two games even during that time period in which they came out. Now that rant portion is over, this game looks fun.

  • I find it amazing that the Vita is losing preference from developers to other mobile platforms (ios, android, winphone, etc) and the “Vita Nation” has an orgasm over this SNES-based, old school RPG.
    We’ve lost mortal kombat, street fighter, metal gear solid, bioshock -the list goes on- to mobile and still the unlimited (J)RPG wave floods the device. Just when you think the Vita has had enough, another wave starts. BTW thank you bandai namco for yet another jrpg. So much for making sports games and give the platform some variety huh.
    I guess kazuo hirai is right then.. “give the gamers this bomb and let it explode in their hands. We already have their money.”

    The Vita deserved much better than this.

  • I has never heard of this game, but it looks amazing.

  • Alonso here, the lead developer. Thanks a bunch for all the encouraging comments! It really boosts our spirits to see people excited about the game. We’ve put in a lot of love into it, and we hope players will be able to feel it as they explore the world and story of Heart Forth, Alicia.

    If you enjoyed games like Castlevania: SOTN, Xenogears, Zelda OOT or even FFT, you’ll definitely have a good time with this game. And if you missed those titles, maybe you’ll want to take a look :)

  • All these people whining about their “free” games are too funny.

    The game looks fantastic by the way.

  • This looks incredible. Definitely giving all of those other sprite based games a run for their money.

  • Lol at ignorant, entitled, and dumb people coming on here asking for the March IGC.

    spacedelete2 is a prime example in here.

  • This looks amazing! I cannot wait! Also, thank you for supporting the PlayStation Vita.

  • congrats Alonso! :D I’m definitely getting this on my Vita and PS4 #BestOnVita :D

  • Looks amazing! Thanks for supporting Vita.

  • the more I look at the GIFs (bring on the WebMs!), the more I think the animations look AMAZING <3

  • @Alonso Martin

    please get rid of the checkpoints , we need SavePoints.
    i’m looking for a OldSchool Experience in the Current Gen , i’m sick of HandHolding , Checkpoints , Autosaves , Dumbed Down gameplay , Regen Health and Easy Casualized games.

    i hope you understand what i mean :)

    btw i can’t wait for play this game , count me in.
    oh i forget to mention that if You guys are planning to make a sequel or a new game i would like to see a 3D game with the camera in the back.

    :D

  • Hey Alonso, telling me about an Indie Game on the Ps Blog that’s a year out makes me think the Developer is way to full of Themselves to see past Their own Love of a ****** Game Their making. Blame the Headline, “Early 2016.” Telling me this early means I’d forget if I cared in a month, but early enough to remember to say “Forget that Game” when it’s out.

  • Hi Alonso,

    Please do not be offended by the noisy kids yelling in the background. They just want to have their lollipops now, and they mean now, as in now. You know how it is with children and their tantrums.

    Anyway, the artwork of this game hits my nostalgic heart for Golden Sun sprites. These are amazing by the way, I would love to hear more updates from you guys. Keep it up!

  • My Vita just peed a little out of surprised excitement. Looks great!

  • Looks amazing. This is the kind of game I like to show to my nieces, I’m just wondering, will it had translation to other languages like spanish?

  • Game looks great! Will buy it day one for sure

  • Definitely picking this up for Vita next year. :)

  • I resent the backlash against people commenting on the PS+ IGC update, because ignoring such a big part of your blog readership and adding insult to injury by going on your merry way posting about indie games that historically ps4 users have considered lackluster and underwhelming given the potential for what the console can do paired with the influx of ‘metroidvania’ and ‘retro’ trend games going live, which ends up making things stale and derivative IMHO…i’d assume the fact ps4 users have been given these same games for PS+ IGC month in and month out after being promised more elaborate works like DriveClub and then being let down when it never happened would fuel the flame quite a bit.
    They can get a playstation one/psx for dirt cheap and a copy of the actual castlevania symphony of the night by AAA company Konami if they wanted to play 16-bit games, to put things into perspective.
    I feel it’s understandable and could have been remedied so that the situation wouldn’t have had to reach this point, please don’t blame the customer now.
    Everybody can voice their own opinion, no need to be a jerk about it over a few short and simple “I want my ps plus games announce” comment.

  • First.
    Thank you for adding it to Vita.

    Second,
    This is the type of quality I expect for Indie pseudo 8bit games, if you want me to consider buying them.

    Third,
    I hope it is reasonably priced.

  • Alfonso… thanks for the blog post. I am hyped for this and can’t wait to see more. SOTN and the other games you mentioned are my all time favorites…. I have been craving good SOTN gameplay. When you said gear and loot. do you mean weapons, armor etc… I hope so. Is there a level mechanic in the game?

    Thanks again for the info! And thanks for the vita support.

    ———————————————————————————————–

    Please ignore the entitled no job whiny kids who moan about indies because they are too young or too broke to actually buy games and rely solely on plus for their fix and thus complain loudly about 1st world problems. There crap is getting annoying and I could write an essay on that alone but with a blog post character limit i will leave it at that.
    /end rant.

  • Is tomorrow the day the PS Plus games are delivered?

  • Another fantastic looking indie game. And love that it’s coming to the Vita too :D

  • Well if its metroidvania, sign me up!

  • Hey Alonso,
    Sorry about all of these off topic comments.

    When I first saw this post I immediately forwarded it to my girlfriend, we’re both going to pick this up on vita. Can’t wait to see this come out!

  • 2016 does seem a good little bit off personally I don’t care for any games coming out in 2016 0r 17 I care about 2015 the year we are in where are the games

  • At the risk of being blocked when words of wisdom are presented.

    It seems more posters complain about children, than anything else.
    Obviously you need to have kids ( who are what games are intended for ), which helps to teach patience.
    Much like writing posts to get repeatedly deleted, and yet continue to have to speak up.

    Stop blaming the kids who wonder where their free games are, when their parents mIght have trouble affording online.

    But glad Sony had the decency to remove rude comments stating such.
    ( of course they were still said, and they are still hiding from properly addressing the IGC situation and causing this problem for themselves )

  • This game looks great. I just watched that trailer, and I want to play it on vita right now! The graphics remind me of Alundra, but with some really cool effects. Please be simultaneous release with ps4/vita though. I’m getting sick of the delayed vita games. I’m still waiting for Pier Solar on vita…

  • 2016!? FUUUUUU… One of my most anticipated games. I thought it was coming out this year.

  • Hi Alonso,
    Nice touch there with the gifs! Also, this looks incredible. Seeing as I love the games where this is inspired from, I´m certain this will be a great adventure.
    On the Vita!
    Only one thing did catch my eye through, the fairy familiars:
    Graphically, they don’t hone the awesome pixel art put on everything else. Couldn’t they be something like, small living creatures with their own flying and spell animations?
    Kind of like Symphony of the Night, really.
    Keep up the good work! And don’t mind the crybabyes!

  • Congrats on getting some press on your game, with PSBlog and GI. Out of all the indie games I am interested in, This is at the top of the list. That list includes Axiom Verge, Chasm, Enter the Gungeon, Time Spinners, Darkest Dungeon, and even No Man’s Sky.

    Bummed to see it is getting delayed, but it is what it is.

  • This game looks fantastic. I’ll pick it up the day it comes out.

  • Hi, when can we expect to get our $15 credit for spending $100 in the PSN between Feb. 17 to Feb. 24? I haven’t received my $15 credit yet. :(

  • I need this game in my veins, right now!!! Frankly, I can’t wait. I’ve waited SO LONG for this kind of game. I think I started waiting when I finished Castlevania SOTN the 1st time!!!

    I will pay wathever you ask, haha!

    PS: I REALLY wanted to start building my own SOTN style game but you got me on speed. I may start one too this summer, but it won’t be as good since I don’t have artistic talented friends sadly :P

  • Hello Martin, this game looks amazing, and the history looks really great, the only thing i dont like is the experience system, i think looking for upgrades like super metroid or la mulana work best for metroidvanias, but i thing that make them a little harder, you might wanted to reach a wider audience, still looking forward to this

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