Tin Hearts, a story-rich puzzle adventure game, is on the way to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One later this year. Check out what we learned when chatting to developer Rogue Sun’s managing director Kostas Zarifis!<\/p>\n

What is Tin Hearts?
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Tin Hearts is a story-rich puzzle adventure game set in an alternate-timeline version of a Victorian universe. It\u2019s in development from Rogue Sun and is published by Wired Productions.<\/p>\n

When does Tin Hearts launch?
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We don\u2019t yet have a launch date for Tin Hearts, although the Tin Hearts site says it’s coming this winter. We\u2019ll be sure to keep our eyes peeled.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s it about?
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The story of Tin Hearts revolves around that of Victorian inventor Albert J. Butterworth. The story promises to be \u201cdeeply emotional,\u201d so be prepared! It will also apparently span both generations and dimensions. Intrigued? So are we. \u201cWe often describe Tin Hearts as \u2018Lemmings meets A Christmas Carol\u2019,\u201d Zarifis explains. \u201cSimilarly to the Charles Dickens classic, the player embodies a sort of amnesiac ghost which flows through these mysterious rooms guiding these little toy soldiers from one door to the next. For someone who doesn’t know anything about the game it may actually seem at first as if there is no story at all and it’s just a pure puzzle game. There’s a lot of environmental storytelling in the game so players who enjoy that sort of thing will actually pick up on the story pretty quickly, but for others it might come as a mid-game surprise,\u201d Zarifis continues. \u201cBy the late game we’re hoping everyone will be very invested in the characters though. The main vehicles for narrative delivery are environmental storytelling as I said above, narrated letters which you discover along the way and cutscenes which like I said kick in a bit later down the line. However, the gameplay itself is another major vehicle as we’ve poured a lot of effort in ensuring the story and mechanics operate in service of each other as opposed to competing with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Later, Zarifis adds, \u201cAs we had landed on a mechanic we enjoyed, we then wanted to find a narrative that worked well with it. We thought about what these cute little things that you were guiding along should be and the idea of little clockwork toy soldiers was gaining popularity among the team. Our Art Director went away and built one of these characters and we all fell in love with it instantly,\u201d Zarifis continues. \u201cThe entire narrative and world of the game then really organically emerged around this one iconic character and by trying to answer questions about who its creator could be and what his life could be about.\u201d<\/p>\n

How does Tin Hearts play?
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In Tin Hearts, we guide our soldiers through the world by making use of the various contraptions we come across. \u201cThe way the soldiers navigate the world is very simple actually: if they hit an angled surface, they deflect in that direction,\u201d Zarifis explains. \u201cThat’s it. But the game, across its four Acts, does all kinds of interesting things with that concept. Pretty early on you unlock toy drums that act as trampolines, bouncing the soldiers to literal new heights. There’s balloon machines that create balloons for them to glide with, and toy pinwheels that can change their direction when in flight. And I’ll try not to spoil the later chapters when things take a turn for the steampunk,\u201d Zarifis hints.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s the world like?
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Tin Hearts is set in an alternate-timeline version of a Victorian universe. \u201cSo the entire world and narrative for Tin Hearts actually expanded out of our exploration of the core mechanic,\u201d Zarifis says. \u201cTin Hearts actually started as a VR game and at the time of its conception we wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before in that space, but also something that would have a core mechanic that we could quickly prove would be fun. As we were prototyping different ideas we discovered that playing around with things of a tiny scale inside a VR space had a strange sense of magic to it. Combining this attribute of VR with a proven core mechanic was what led initially to the concept of Tin Hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to make sure that gameplay, story, but also world building worked completely in tandem in Tin Hearts,\u201d Zarifis explains. We start off in the Attic Workshop World, where, Zarifis tells us, \u201ceverything is lovingly hand crafted and there’s lots of warm tones, wooden materials and a generally nostalgic feel (the art team watched a lot of classic Disney animations when building these environments).\u201d Later, we move to the House World, \u201cwhere more everyday objects start to feature in the world (and the puzzle solving!). Through these objects and rooms we learn yet more details about the characters of the story. As for the Steampunk Workshop,\u201d Zarifis concludes, \u201cwe’re trying to keep that as much of a mystery as possible leading up to launch.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Any news on the Tin Hearts achievements?
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We don\u2019t yet have the Tin Hearts achievements \u2014 \u201cWe’re actually still designing them for the later parts of the game, so… if you have any suggestions I am all ears,\u201d jokes Zarifis. \u201cIn general with achievements we try to follow a similar approach to what I said before: keep it varied, keep it rewarding. So you won’t necessarily see many \u2018oh, you did the X thing Y times\u2019 sort of achievements in Tin Hearts. But there are quite a few Easter Eggy type things that you may discover just organically or by just going \u2018I wonder what would happen if I did this thing,\u2019\u201d Zarifis continues. \u201cThe achievements in Tin Hearts are more the \u2018oh… I see what you did there\u2019 type and less of the \u2018yes! freaking finally!\u2019 type, although of course there’s merit in both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tin Hearts seems to be made up of a multitude of elements \u2014 what, out of everything that makes up Tin Hearts, is Zarifis most excited for players to experience? \u201cReally with Tin Hearts we tried to create an experience that’s sort of… ever changing I guess?\u201d Zarifis responds. \u201cWe want people to come to it for the chill atmosphere, the clever puzzles, the beautiful visuals and music… but we want people to keep<\/i> coming back because, just when they thought they knew what the game was about, it actually threw them this new mechanic or twist and now \u2018This Changes Everything\u2122\u2019. Some of my favourite games have been like that and we’ve aspired to maintain this quality with Tin Hearts. It does mean a lot of extra work for us,\u201d Zarifis jokes, \u201cbut it’s worth it in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you think? Will you be setting out on a puzzling adventure when Tin Hearts launches for Xbox? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tin Hearts, a story-rich puzzle adventure game, is on the way to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One later this year. Check out what we learned when chatting to developer Rogue Sun’s managing director Kostas Zarifis! What is Tin Hearts? Tin Hearts is a story-rich puzzle adventure game set in an alternate-timeline version of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.trueachievements.com\/customimages\/128131.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-xbox"],"yoast_head":"\n