Heaven's Vault

天穹绝对是一款不适合大多数人游玩的游戏，它的缺点很多，糟糕的UI，对话速度过快且不能暂停，没有中文且节奏非常拖沓；但如果你喜欢以下的内容，我相信你一定能克服这些缺点，体验这款沉浸模拟感十足的语言学冒险解谜游戏。 本作虚构的语言相较于其它很多语言学解谜游戏，是完整的可被真正使用的语言，组成词语的每个符号都有意义，每个符号可以看成一个词素，其中一些有很明显的象形意义；本作的氛围塑造非常优秀，这个虚构世界有着不同时代的历史，有着风土人情各异的聚集地星球，有着曾经辉煌但已经变成遗迹的许多奇观，有着很多帮助玩家解谜的朋友尤其是一直跟着主角的机器人“six”，还有着令人着迷的Nebula，在其中乘着飞船滑翔太浪漫了。游戏的主线剧情也非常有意思，是一场探求真相之旅，这个真相关于这个世界的历史，现在与未来。 游戏最吸引我的地方是，在宇宙尺度上对人文历史的展现，在完全虚构的世界当中，每到一个新的遗迹，都只能根据已经掌握的词汇，再观察建筑，推测那个历史时期是什么样的信仰什么样的风土人情，导致本作的心流体验十分独特。举一个例子来说，到了一个看起来是园林的地方，看到地面上零零散散有很多不算大的人造物，再根据上面的字，就会推测这些人造物是什么，再看到园林中间有一个明显像是神的雕像，就能推测这个神是和什么相关。 由于本作在中文社区中热度太低，我玩的时候没有攻略急得打转，所以写了个配合英文全成就指南食用的无剧透指南，因为是通关一年后写的，可能会有一些错误。

I don't think I've ever played a game with a more irritating and frustrating control scheme. The character walks as fast as a slug. Your obnoxious robot companion interrupts you constantly but the conversations are not interesting at all. And there is a sailing minigame to get from world to world that is so tedious that it makes me question the sanity of the programmers who made this. This game has an interesting premise--deciphering an alien language, but the actual mechanics of that are childish at best. Which is really the tone overall--it's like a child's idea of archaeology and linguistics.

an entire functional fictional language. that i can learn in a way that feels natural, like im an archeologist. no other game like this. i love how these puzzles feel in my brain

The “translation” puzzles of this game are interesting but I’ve literally rage-quit as the traveling mini-game is so poorly designed and implemented that I feel like I’m either soft-locked or wasting time going round and round in circles. You either can’t actually turn in the direction you’re told to due to the flow of the currents many times and there’s no way to skip the minigame if you’re looking for new locales. Absolute waste of my time!!!

Yes, but it should be shorter and let you move faster. Only for patient gamers.

对于Heaven's Vault来说，单周目并非完整的体验，没有多周目对于背景剧情的完全探索，结局就会显得仓促而不了了之。完整的两周目流程下来才感觉大致摸透了游戏的剧情，对各个人物的行为和动机都有了基本的了解，但对于Nebula的历史还有许多细节不甚明了。实际上，游戏的世界观和剧情都是非常完整且充分的，其中承载的历史人文气息，也使得Heaven's Vault多了几分平静隽永的味道，这大概也是inkle的特色了吧。也难怪可以出四册的电子书了（有空我也会读一下的）。剧情之中有许多值得探究的细节，偶尔也能给我带来星际拓荒探索的惊奇感。总的来说这大概是一个关于历史的意义的故事，可能更支持不要沉湎于历史，而要去创造新的历史这样的观点，而非游戏中关于loop的信仰所暗示的“已有之事后必再有”。与星际拓荒类似的渐进式呈现的剧情，与巴别塔圣歌类似的语言破译，Heaven's Vault实际上有着极大的潜力，最终没能到达这样的高度，大概是因为设计上不如二者简洁精炼吧。 游戏中的古语在所有游戏虚拟语言之中算是非常有深度的存在。形态上是由一系列基本的语素符号组合而成，语义通过概念组合构成，基于语素（morpheme）的构词设计丰富了古语的层次，使其更加拟真也更加复杂。然而游戏中的语言破译系统却无法与语言结构很好地贴合，以单词而不是语素符号为破译的基本单位造成了一定程度的错位，导致玩家在后期理解加深后可能会感到力不从心，往往是已经认识了所有符号且基本明白含义，却因为不能手动分词、不能标记带有语法功能性的符号或符号串等等这些系统上的限制，对于某些语料能看出意思却无法完成在游戏中的破译。这算是一个设计上的不足，如果能附加一个符号表，对单个符号的意义和语法规则进行记录，然后破译时加一个分词的步骤，体验应该能更好。（不过作为一个非常喜欢语言学的语言学专业的学生，我其实玩得很开心，个人感觉在语言破译方面比巴别塔圣歌还要有意思一些。老实说，我觉得这游戏不能算是巴别塔圣歌的代餐，首先是更高的叙事比重，然后是因为更加复杂的语言设计和稍显麻烦的对答案机制，无法像巴别塔圣歌那样保证较快到来的正反馈。巴别塔圣歌对语义的猜测很大程度上依赖于直接明了的语境，而Heaven's Vault则有更多对语言内部结构的考量，主要通过基于符号对语义概念进行组合，语境的作用相对较小，语境本身也不太清晰，毕竟考古嘛。） 游戏的体量其实比我开始时预想的要大得多，本以为十五小时可以结束，但最终全成就并基本摸清却花了将近五十小时。游戏的节奏可以说是相当的慢，不过在快节奏的当下，我反倒会觉得能这样慢下来的体验是非常难能可贵的。想象一下在互联网还不太发达，也没有什么攻略的年代，那时候游戏卡关了或者不知道干什么，大概只能先放着下次再试试吧，可能那时候有一天突然搞明白了其实就挺开心的了，即便那可能只是一个很小的点。大概以这种“从前的心态”来游玩Heaven's Vault，每次只玩一点，就会获得良好的体验吧。跳出快节奏，重新调节大脑的感受阈值，或许会发现很多事情并没有那么难以忍受，也或许有许多被忽略的乐趣能被重新体验。

As a note: I've been playing this game a lot more longer than what's listed on this review on offline mode, and Steam doesn't track that. This is an amazing narrative and investigation focused video game and I highly recommend trying it. But before I distract myself I want to get one negative point clear: the save system is migraine inducing frustration. The game broadly is a non-linear narrative adventure game, but despite that there's only one save file and I can't save and/or load the game. I can understand that the developers are wanting the choices and consequences of the game to be impactful, but developers in general need to look at these issues from, if not an objective perception, an compassionate and environmental perception. Video games are incredibly taxing in terms of time and resources. People already deal with choices and consequences in real life when they get injured at work and have to get surgery as a result, that's not a hypothetical scenario that's something that's happening to me more frequently as I get older. My laptop runs like a jet engine playing games and some electric power plants use oil or gas when providing power. It's ironic that for a game about appreciating nature that the developers would choose a save system that would make players restart the game all the way from the beginning if they want to try a different choice and not accidentally lock themselves out of tons of narrative content and context from a bad choice, and use more environmentally damaging resources as a result. There isn't a lot of non-violent or non-emotionally challenging games that are as fun as this game when it's at it's best and not at it's worst (as noted in the video essay: The Unfulfilled Potential of Video Games by Pop Culture Detective). It's mainly just the save system that's the most frustrating part of the game.

This games is so boring... The story is boring... The art is boring.. I had high hopes for this but unfortunately stopped playing it before the hour mark...