LIT ON THE SPOT - REVIEW:

Haven is a game that celebrates love with a wholesome vibe and simple mechanics. Its narrative excels at developing the central relationship between the main characters, but the lack of conflict and some boring parts eventually hampers what could have been a great and memorable experience.

Haven is about two runaway lovers. Yu and Kay have successfully managed to escape together in Yu’s small spaceship to a faraway planet called Source, which is divided into small floating islets connected by “flow bridges”. After an earthquake, however, their ship is badly damaged, leading them to search the planet for parts that could help Yu repair it.

The narrative handles exposition very well, drip-feeding us information about their lives before Source with dialogues that briefly mention what they are running from and how their homeworld operated. The writing has a great “show, don’t tell” approach when it comes to the personality of its central characters: we can already guess that Kay is a biologist – or something of the sort – long before his past profession is mentioned, for example, just by observing the enthusiastic way by which he comments about the fauna and flora of Source.

Yu and Kay are basically the only characters in the game and their relationship is at the heart of the story. They’re young people in love who have successfully managed to run away together, which means that their dynamic is full of energy, spirited banter, erotic tension, and romantic declarations: “I'd rather endure a thousand earthquakes than risk being away from you,” one of them says after they are hit by the earthquake.

Each one of them means the whole world for the other; being together is the only thing that matters for them, which is reflected in the way their conversations usually go: “I have good news,” Kay tells Yu at the beginning, when asked about the planet’s characteristics, “I love you.” The writing perfectly captures the passionate energy of youthful love, making Yu and Kay seem perpetually locked in a honeymoon phase, when even the action of talking about mundane stuff, like doing push-ups, becomes the perfect opportunity to flirt playfully with each other.

Yu and Kay, of course, don’t lose a single opportunity to have sex: when they are role-playing to pass the time, for example, pretending to be leading a revolution back on their home planet, the role-play quickly gains erotic connotations that, in turn, quickly evolve to physical interaction. When they talk about food, they find a way to flirt; when they are talking about Source, they flirt; when they are talking about a magazine they found, they flirt; when they are talking about the strange creatures they came across, they flirt: it’s repetitive, yes, but the repetition is kind of the point. The same way a person can’t stop saying “I love you” to their partner when they are together, Yu and Kay can’t seem to stop flirting with each other.

Haven is filled with interactions between the two of them. Sleeping, eating, cooking, exploring, almost every action makes them talk to each other about all sorts of things. Yu may complain that Kay made her side of the bed “too sticky”, or Kay may become annoyed because he can’t find an important ring and fears that he has lost it in one of the islets. They also talk about their past lives – which are a puzzle that we’re to put together – commenting about their decision to run away and if they have any regrets about it.

They have their moments of insecurity – passing through the common “I don’t deserve you” stage of a relationship – but often display a great deal of optimism regarding their situation – no matter how dire it is – that can be touching in its desperateness: they have to remain optimistic because they’re alone in an alien planet together. There’s no one forbidding their love, but also no one to turn to for help but themselves. They decided to be together, and so now have to face the consequences of that decision.

But this optimism also leads to the problematic part of the narrative. It lacks obstacles that push the central characters to their limits. After their ship is damaged in the earthquake, they simply go explore the islets for parts, but nothing interesting happens: there are almost no events that test their love or trust in one another. They’re always understanding and empathic, taking great care of each other. It’s indeed great to watch a healthy relationship unfold, for once, but the narrative doesn’t offer anything to cover for the lack of drama. There’s always the promise that whatever they are running from will suddenly appear and tear them apart, but this part of the story comes too late, robbing most of the game from emotional charge.

It’s almost at the end of Haven that Yu and Kay have their first fight, which leads to a great moment reminiscent of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, when the game systems make the player feel the absence of one of the characters: the game ties the possible actions of each character to a part of the controller, so when one of those characters is gone, the player loses that part of the controller. It’s great and heartbreaking when it happens, and the game could have used more moments like that.

The gameplay of Haven is not its strongest suit, but it’s far from bad. Technically, it’s a turn-based RPG, since when you find creatures in Source you are transported to a battle screen when the characters and monsters take turns attacking each other. You control Kay with the left part of the controller, Yu with the right, and you have four options available: use a melee attack, a ranged one, defend, and “pacify” fallen enemies, lest they come back to fight again.

In Haven you don’t kill the creatures you find, but “pacify” them by removing the red crust that is turning them aggressive. This is fundamental to the “wholesome” vibe of the game, as gratuitous violence is not encouraged, celebrated, or rewarded in any way: Yu and Kay fight only to save the very creatures they are battling against.

Enemy design is great in the way it pushes the player to think about which action to use – and against which monster. There are enemies that are only weak to ranged attacks and enemies only weak to melee attacks; there are enemies that change forms, switching their weaknesses; and enemies that become vulnerable only after they land a blow on you – which makes the “defend” action actually useful; a very rare thing in RPGs.

Yu and Kay defend not only themselves, however, – this wouldn’t make sense thematically, after all – but also each other, so it’s a common strategy to make one use a shield while the other prepares to attack the soon-to-be-vulnerable monster, with the player choosing the character with more health to defend. And, if they both use the same attack at the same time, they unleash a more powerful version of it, encouraging the player to make Yu and Kay work together. But the game could have gone a step further and made the main characters have different stats and proficiencies – one being better at melee than the other, for example – to shake things up and make the decision process more complex. The issue with Haven’s combat is that it’s not developed the way it should, which can make battles feel a bit repetitive after a while, as they tend to unfold similarly.

The other side of the game is exploration, which could have also been improved on. Yu and Kay’s goal is to explore the planet to find parts to restore their ship – luckily for them, there was once an attempt to colonize Source, so there are abandoned buildings and installations scattered around the islets.

One of the problems is that the islets all have the same look, with some slopes, blue grass, and one or two tall mountains, which makes them blur together after a while. A few more landmarks would have gone a long way in helping to make the environments stand out.

The map function in the game, then, is not useful but necessary to navigate Source effectively, as it’s easy to get lost if you’re only using the environment to guide yourself. One thing that aggravates this problem is that you can’t see which islet connects with the one you are in without the map: there’s a flow bridge (a bridge made of blue energy) that leads you out of the islet, but there’s no visual indication of where you’re going to end up in. This makes Source feel a bit disjointed and confusing, which is a shame.

Finally, you have the flow threads – blue lines in the air that extend as you hover above them, following them to an unknown destination. They’re a great idea, but Haven doesn’t know what to do with them. The first mistake is making them recharge your “batteries”. The islets in Source are tainted with rust – the same red crust that makes animals go feral – that can be removed by just going over them with Yu and Kay, which consumes their “flow”. To recharge it, you must ride some flowlines. The problem is that it’s a boring process: you can find any thread and just go back and forth over it to recharge. These flow threads would be great if they were rare and guided you to unexpected places; in other words, if they were intrinsically tied to exploration and always led to somewhere interesting. But, alas, they’re everywhere and serve basically no purpose at all.

Exploration would also have benefited from a more interesting setting. Source has few secrets up its sleeve story-wise – its backstory is kind of irrelevant in the end – and there are too few secret areas to find as well. It’s a wonderful moment when you discover a beach in a certain islet, which leads to great scenes between Yu and Kay: Haven should have had more of these scenes and less of floating over random blue threads that lead you nowhere.

There are some nice touches in the game that help build its wholesome vibe. When exploring, you can either control Yu or Kay, alternating between them with the press of a button, but while you’re flying with one of them the other can join up and then they fly together holding hands. If you stand still for a while, they will embrace or kiss, which recovers their health. Their ship, meanwhile, is called “the Nest”, making it sound like the warm, sex-filled place that it is, and they curse with the word “Bloot”, which is just cute.

Haven is an unusual RPG that ditches the usual “end-of-the-world stakes”  so typical of its genre to focus on a love story, with a great pair of main characters and som.e interesting ideas. It has its share of problems, of course, but its heart makes up for it.

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If you think about romance in games, you probably think almost exclusively about the romancing process. Two characters meet, they chat a little, maybe exchange gifts, even go on a side-quest together and then the game finishes perhaps with an awkward scene of two character models rubbing against each-other. Seldom does a game actually delves deeper and portraits the life of the couple after the meet-cute.

Haven is a game about whizzing around using flying boots in a fractured planet held together by a magic blue substance. But it's also about a couple living together. Having meals. Taking showers. Reading. Flirting in that way only two people who know each-other deeply can.

I haven't seen a lot of buzz for Haven around here, so I should explain it a bit. Haven is a mix of third person traversal with quasi real time combat and visual novel elements. You play as Yu and Kay, a couple of escapees that are now stranded in a fractured planet. In this universe, everything is about "flow", some magic form of energy that allows not only for space travel, but also powers the characters' flying boots. The main mechanic is traversal. Those flying boots allow the couple to swiftly dart around the planet while cleaning up "rust" -- some strange stuff that is corrupting the creatures of the planet.

Rust-affected creatures become aggressive, which is when combat comes into play. Both characters have a melee attack, a range attack and a shield. Once a creature is down, you finally placate them and they go on their business. It's not super complicated on the surface, but soon you meet different critters that must be dealt with a combination of attacks, some of which require coordination between both characters.

And that's in credibly fun with a partner. Playing solo, you control Yu's attacks with the face buttons and Kay's with the d-pad. Coordination is just a matter of pressing the correct buttons in the correct order. But in co-op, when each player controls each character, coordination becomes a matter of communication and strategy. My girlfriend and I had a blast. We high-fived when successfully pulling off some complicated strategy, mirroring our characters on screen, and had to restrategise after each failure.

Once a creature is down, you placate them and they go on their business, which leads me to the fact that the game is filled with positivity. Yu and Kay are not a destructive force on the world. Combat is not about killing adversaries but about purifying the animals from the rust that is making them angry. On your journey, you meet all sorts of cute creatures, like Oink, which help you further by giving you items, fast travel, or opening up new areas.

If the devs would've left it at that, Haven would've been fine, but not only they made a game with really satisfying gameplay, they also wrote a touching story centred around a mature couple. The writing is down to earth and the two voice actors do an amazing job delivering their lines. Yu and Kay will chat between fights, during traversal and between meals. There is a lot of content there and not a single interaction was dull. Be it Kay trying to convince Yu that shooting starts are a thing, or Yu trying to remember the name a of song, my girlfriend and I were always smiling and laughing.

Finally, a big standout is the music. The up-beat electronica soundtrack by Danger goes perfectly with the relaxing flow of traversal.

Just under the wire, but it being the 30th of December, Haven rocketed itself to my top games of the year; which is saying a lot in a year in which I played Hades, Outer Worlds, The Missing, No One Lives Forever, Greedfall, and many other great games.

I just completed my second play through of Haven, and my score weighs on my mind. I did not enjoy my initial time with the game soon after release, but recent changes made by The Game Bakers had me intrigued. And to their credit, those changes did increase my enjoyment of the game. However, I've come away feeling that my final score, while higher than it was when I first played it, it lower than I initially suspected it would be. The revamped characters and modified story, that both allows for Queer protagonists, made a strong set of first impressions during this second play through. By about the mid mark I was certain I'd give the game four stars, feeling that I was finally really liking Haven.

But as the credits roll, the most I can muster is the feeling that I simply liked it, but no more. A great deal of the reason is due to the horribly clunky controls. Haven, simply put, is not fun to play. A few things can be done early on to make it tolerable, like adjusting the PoV to maximum and toggling the ability to control the camera while gliding. Yet it never solves some of it's glaring issues, like the ability to easily get stuck on terrain, the fact that drifting is an unfriendly and barely precise way to adjust momentum and direction that fights the player more than it helps, and that accidental u-turns happen too frequently leading you to fight some more with your controller and characters to get them to go in the desired direction. The latter can be improved by turning camera control while drifting off, but the pros of the free camera far outweigh the cons. While I was able to tolerate the controls early on with my QoL tweaks, eventually it wears thin and it's hard to really enjoy movement in the game. Compared to another game with superb gliding mechanics, The Pathless, I wish The Game Bakers had improved this aspect.

The other big roadblock preventing me from truly enjoying the game was the combat. Combat is not particularly complex, but as you progress through the game The Game Bakers didn't increase complexity or difficulty, they increased tedium and the need to use consumables for AoE or multi target attacks. The latter is very unfortunate because it seriously limits your combat abilities. I'm not a big fan of abilities or attacks linked to consumables, and nothing Haven does with the idea is interesting enough to convince me otherwise. But the tedium that sets in by end of game is what really hurts it. It's a needlessly cumbersome combat system with attacks tied to annoying QTE timers that sucks the fun out of what starts out as pretty neat. Also, the fact that you can't chose your target during combat means that fights can drag out simply because the game's AI isn't smart enough to target the most optimal enemy. The poor AI targeting, the attacks bound to consumables and the increasingly clumsy combat UX completely drag the game down.

I still managed to have fun, I enjoyed Yu and Kay much more during this second play through, felt their story made much more sense, and felt that the ending was far more impactful as a result. But the elements that give Haven a slight edge towards greatness are hurt too frequently by the clumsiness of the mechanical aspects of the games. The Game Bakers would have done well to leave Haven in the oven a little longer.

An impressive deviation from Furi, but a flawed one at that.

The Game Bakers impressed pretty much everyone with their last release, Furi, a pretty damn hard boss rush game with incredibly intense gameplay and tight controls. Haven is pretty much the inverse of that. Here, we are much less concerned with combat, and much more worried about exploration and character development. Furi's story was pretty barebones, and could be ignored for the most part, while Haven's story takes center stage for the majority of the adventure. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, although you wouldn't be blamed for feeling that this a step down from how tightly designed Furi was.

Haven does arguably look better than its predecessor though, and the world looks as beautiful as it is dangerous. Kay and Yu's character designs are just great, and each of the creatures that you'll find roaming around Source are visually interesting and help the planet feel alive. I spent a lot of my playthrough climbing to the highest points on these segmented playgrounds that make up Haven's overworld, and would often appreciate the views that the game rewarded me with. The day/night cycle also presents a lot of visual variety in each of the different areas, and also helped break up the games pace by forcing you to return to the next and sleep after exploring all day. The only complaint visually is that character animations could sometimes feel a little stiff, and rewatching the same animations during crafting and combat got old pretty fast.

Luckily, the story here is pretty good, and the world building is some of the most natural I've seen in a video game. Maybe I'm just impressed after playing through MGS4 that a game managed to build so much lore about it's world without any 20 minute long exposition dumps, but for how much we learn about the Apiary and Kay + Yu's struggles through natural dialogue feels really impressive. It's incredibly naturalistic story telling, and none of the plot points ever felt forced. There's lot to infer about what we don't see about Haven's world, which is perhaps what The Game Bakers are best at. Somehow, they've made Tell, Don't Show work for their stories. Kay and Yu's relationship is also super well developed, and is only showcased more with incredible vocal performances from Janine Harouni and Chris Lew Kum Hoi. Both play the parts incredibly well, and it made the relationship between the two feel much more natural than what you would expect from an Indie game. Kay and Yu's journey keeps you much more emotionally invested as a result, and makes you really want to see the story through to the end. The only complaint is that the ending to their story feels a little abrupt, and perhaps inconclusive to many of the questions posed by the game's narrative, but at the very least it is absolutely worth the journey there.

Haven's gameplay however, could've used some more work. The majority of the gameplay loop here is exploring Source looking parts to repair the Nest. Along the way you'll clean "Rust" off the planet, collect materials for crafting/cooking, and do some light RPG combat. It sounds fine in theory, but Haven's systems just aren't deep enough to keep the game engaging for the full length of the story. A lot of time is spent aimlessly gliding around the planet gathering rust and other materials, and it just simply isn't that engaging past the first few hours. Plants are just placed in seemingly random spots in the landscape so it's not like it is hard to find them, and unless you are going for the 100% islet cleaning achievement there's virtually no reason to continue collecting rust once you are two thirds of the way through the game. If there was a bit more of a survival aspect to Haven's exploration it could go a long way towards making the minute-to-minute gameplay more engaging. Fortunately, Haven does sport a pretty fun combat system, albeit very simple. You control both Kay and Yu at the same time while charging up different attacks against the enemies you face. It's a much more timing focused version of your usual JRPG turn based combat, and pulling off combos feels pretty great. It is perhaps a bit too easy at certain points, but it works well enough for the pace of the game.

The crown jewel of Haven though, has to be it's incredible Soundtrack by DANGER, who also worked on some of the tracks from Furi. This soundtrack is absolutely incredible, one of the best I've heard in a videogame in quite some time and seems to get better with every listen. Danger perfectly captures the tone and feel of the story with his electronic beats, and the ending theme to the game is one of my favorite tracks from any game ever. The soundtrack is so good that is actually carries you through the monotony of gliding around Source, and lifts the overall experience that much more.

Overall, Haven is a little rough around the edges. The unengaging exploration that takes up the majority of your game time and the unsatisfying ending sour the experience, but the characters and story are more than strong enough to carry your time through, and the combat system is surprisingly engaging for how shallow it is. If all else fails you'll at least hear some fucking awesome music during your time with it.

It may seem like I'm playing games focused on relationships on purpose recently, between Maquette, Florence, and Haven, but it's really just a coincidence, I swear.

I've heard about Haven here and there and was a bit curious to play it, especially because it seemed to be really good, and since my BF just asked me to play it together, here we are.

Watercolor Intro

The intro of the game is so cool, made with a watercolor style, and beautiful music, really puts you in the right mood and makes you even more eager to try it.

Overall, the game is pretty cool visually, from the various draws of the characters used when they talk, to the colors used for the planet and the numerous islands (you will get Namec vibes).

The islands themselves are very nice to look at, in a relaxing way, even though the same can't be said as for their level design.
It's not like it's bad as a playground, but just that there are just a bunch of islands with a remarkable look, while the others just feel "generic" and not really worth looking at them more than needed to get your job done.

This is not the only issue tho.
The 3D model of the characters and the monster were truly bugging me, especially seeing how cool the environment was.
They went for a cell shading look, but, especially on the main characters, it's too flat, and when I looked at them in the face, especially at her, I got creepy vibes.

The animals are not bad but not very original either, so discovering new kinds of monsters was less exciting.

And don't get me started on the loading screen drawings.
OMG, I can't say how shocked I am by the low quality of those drawings.
It feels like they felt the need to add them to the loading screen but only had 1 hour to do them all.
I cringe every time the game loads and shows one of them.

The first hours

Even though the watercolor intro was a nice start, I can't say the same for the first hours of the game.

Haven starts with a lot of questions and that really helps in getting you into it. You are curious about the story of the couple, about why they moved into this new planet, what this new planet is, how long have they been here.
And it's cool how Haven reveals its details bit by bit through the dialogs of the two, which are very well dubbed (I will miss their voices, can't lie).

But, again, it's not all good.

Flowy jerky movement

After starting it, the game tries to teach you the movement mechanic of the game, which is floating, instead of a classic walk.

I thought this was one of the cool points of the game, and that it would have been very streamlined and more focused on the feeling of floating, BUT it's so hard to move and turn!
We had a "hard time" getting over the tutorial, and even after that we still had issues, or, even when we get how to move, we still could get into the flow (of flowing).

One of our major issues is that we couldn't move the cameras while floating and had to stop to do that, just to discover at the end of the game there is an option for that.
This is of course an issue of mine, I could have looked there but didn't want to get some mechanics spoiler that sometimes you can get from the options, and also didn't expect it to be an option either.
I wonder why the devs didn't put it on by default tho, since you could just not use the right thumbstick to avoid moving the camera.

I know I'm knit-picking on the movement, but it's the main thing you will do in this game, so I expected it to be really fleshed out.

Another issue we had is that sometimes u need to do just small movements.
You can walk, but it's super slow, I guess done on purpose to make you want to use the flow movement, but when u press the button to flow, the characters go turbo and so you end up going too far and need to go back.
My eye is twitching just thinking about that.

Too much talking

That said, another thing that made the beginning more annoying is that, maybe to set up a lot of things related to both story and mechanics, Yu and Kay, the main characters, talk A LOT.

Their dialogs are cute, maybe a bit too cheesy (like they almost always end up having sex), and are interesting since you can always discover more about them, but sometimes you get too many of them with little character progression or story, and more just a way to add details to the character to make them feel even more special and characterized to the point of being a bit ridiculous.
You know, more or less like when a character in a long sit-comedy starts to have an infinite amount of passions or "obsessions" just because they don't know how to make it interesting anymore.

I've to say that, especially related to video games, I'm not a fan of long dialogs, so, of course, this was an even bigger issue for me, and maybe for someone else could be a plus instead.
The only real downside is that sit-comedy effect, and that the writing was a bit too cheesy for me, like if the target were teens.

Let me skip the combat

The last thing about the first hours thing is the combat.

Especially at the beginning, the combat seems very... pointless.
You have like only a bunch of choices, and it feels like they don't really matter.
The game even has an automatic combat option and we could understand why they put it there, being that boring, at least at the beginning.

Later on, with more enemies, you had to understand their weaknesses and how to expose them for some of the enemies, so it became more interesting, or at least a bit more compelling.

I guess, with time, we just understood and accepted that the combat was totally not a focus of the game but more of a way to change the pace, so that you don't always just roam around.

Also, since u need to go back to the ship to recover, you have to perform well in combat to avoid having to go back to it every 2 islands, and that made doing well in the combat something you want to do, and therefore we didn't use the automatic battle option anymore.

Half Co-Op

The very last thing, I swear, about the start, was the co-op mechanic.

We knew that the game had a co-op, but when we discovered that just one of the characters could lead the movement, we were a bit disappointed.

We are used to play even single-player games together, just giving each other the controller from time to time, so it was not a big deal, but of course we were not a fan of it either. Still better than not having it, since you don't have to switch controllers and also have things you can do while the other moves.

Then there is the dialog system. The game gives every player one character to control, so I used Yu while he used Kay, and so I expected to be the one doing the choices for her, but the game makes both of you agree on what each character pick as an answer.
It was not so bad, since we just agreed that I was Yu and he was Kay, and when Yu had to pick and answer, I was the one that chooses the answer I liked and he confirmed, but it was a bit annoying.

The combat is the only real part of the game where the co-op really works, since you have to collaborate to make the correct choices, and sometimes you also have to do some timing minigames.
Again, combat is not hard, but at least we had to talk to do the right thing, so that was fun.

May the map be blessed

So, the beginning was not the best thing of the game, we felt overwhelmed by dialogs, felt combat was shallow and pointless, and we also felt that the exploration was pointless.

Until the map was given to us.

Then, my collector soul waken up, understood that cleaning all the islands from the rust covering them was tracked into the map, and the game clicked for me (not as much for my BF tho, but that's life).

Chilling vibes

The game didn't really change from the beginning, you get some new abilities here and there that revitalizes the experience, a bit of backtracking (done in a good and not overwhelming way), and also some resource gathering and management, but I guess I just get into the chilling vibes of Haven, and started going from islands to islands, to cleanse it and follow the story of the couple, that was getting more interesting.

I would pick the soundtrack

I think the chilling vibes are what truly worked for me in this game, and it wouldn't be so chilling if it wasn't for the music.
The music is so nice and you find yourself happily wandering through the island cleaning rust while slowly moving your head following the beats.
If I had to pick one single element of the game, it would be the soundtrack.

I am on Source

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but in the end I truly felt like I was with them on Source, the planet where they landed, feeling free from the rest of society, trying to just survive, but happy because I am with my love, together in this crazy things we did because we couldn't stand being apart.

I liked how they give the game an ending that didn't have a super epic climax at the end, and instead, it just ends.
It may feel like it misses that one last mega boss with 4 phases, but I just felt that it made everything feel more grounded, real.
It was the last touch to give life to this experience.

Haven also features another ending.
I've appreciated that they put it there, but it feels it was rushed, being portrayed with just a few drawings that are not really on par with the rest of the game quality (still not as bad as the loading screen). Only the music manages to give that ending an emotional impact.

Miss you, Birble

I have to be honest, Haven is not an experience that adds something new to the videogame medium, something I may have expected from the few things I heard over time.

All in all, is just a classic adventure game, with its share of rough edges.

But, I would lie if I said that I won't miss Yu and Kay (and maybe Birble too since it was so helpful).
And somehow, I'm happy to know they can finally live together, peacefully, on Source.