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Hero's Hearts
 Hero's Hearts is a wonderful puzzle game in which you maneuver your Hero around a 29x21 grid and pick up all of the Hearts and scramble for the Exit before getting waylaid by various obstacles. The game is at once simple and rich, challenging yet quick to play, varied and thought-provoking.
Of all its qualities, my favorite is its turn-based nature. Although you may be assailed by worms or rocks (if triggered), such objects can only react, so you can take all the time you want to plan a move.
And what outstanding qualities Hero's Hearts possesses! With about thirty distinct objects to thwart and amuse you it is as easy to devise your own levels as it is to play the one thousand ingenious levels provided. I constructed some easy levels to entertain my then six-year-old, who later made up forty of his own, and some difficult ones to challenge adult experts.
A word about the experts. Several very bright, grown-up email buddies suspend "real life" for a few hours a week to discuss, solve, and boast genially about their Hero's conquests. The levels are not only fun to solve but also fun to "optimize" (i.e., find a fewest-moves solution). Some of these experts have contributed levels to the distributed game, and I have learned a lot from all of them.
Some of the thirty objects in the game are simple, some complex, all interesting. Among the simple ones, rocks fall, balloons rise, arrows shoot in the direction they are pointing, balls bounce off ramps, sod extinguishes fire or solidifies water. Some complex critters include creepers, which move inexorably left and turn blue hearts red so you can eat 'em (but don't try to share real estate with a creeper).
Then there are worms, who pursue your Hero with the purpose of...well, gruesome things are better left unmentioned. Some of Hero's email buddies don't like worms, alas. I defended them once, writing "I do like worms because they are relentless, hostile, and stupid. Trying to outwit them is good preparation for the morning commute. Once at the office, though, I sometimes feel as if I am dealing with rocks and balloons -- single-minded, yet not as bright as worms."
Everett Kaser, Hero Hearts' author, put a great deal of consideration in to the game's amenities. Game instructions are thorough and concise. Help is available on any object with a right-click. Note papers left about early levels provide additional hints and reminders and serve cleverly as an in-game tutorial. Games are easily saved, restored, speeded up, slowed down (to watch how various moveable objects react to being triggered).
The replay game options are especially good: the player may repeat one, ten, one hundred, or one thousand moves at a gulp. And the replay is fast. A hundred moves takes about a second on a P166, unless, of course, the game is deliberately slowed down. Speed is very helpful to the player who needs to maintain a train of thought and not become frustrated by game mechanics. The player may also replay from the beginning up to the last "n" moves. Naturally, you set the value for "n", so taking back the last few fatal blunders is easy.
Animation is spare and unobtrusive, but amusing. Hero himself, for example, waves his arms to become conspicuous and taps his foot or stands arms akimbo when he loses patience with your dithering. Music and sound effects are appropriate and optional.
To help you judge whether Hero's Hearts is for you, you may want to know that this reviewer also likes Lemmings, Smart Games, Pandora's Box, jigsaws, Solitile (mah-jongg), The Incredible Machine, and Spectrum Holobyte's BreakThru. But by all means be your own judge and download the 605Kb shareware version from Everett Kaser's website.
Everett's Hero's Hearts is, in this reviewer's (fan's) opinion, a work of genius and the best puzzle game he has ever played.
Copyright © Albert H. Them 2000.
All rights reserved.
System Requirements:
Any one of Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95 or Windows NT. Minimum 16 Mbytes RAM (or 8 Mbytes RAM and at least 8 Mbytes of Virtual Memory).15 Mbytes of disk space for licensed version, or 2.2 Mbytes for shareware version.
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