Heaven's Vault Reviews
While issues with the dialogue and a less than stellar space flight mechanic hold the game back from being truly great, there is enough good here to make it well worth your time. The relationship between Aliyah and Six is realistic and fun to see where it goes, and the environments and world building featured are top notch. If any of this caught your attention that may be a sign that you should be heading out to do some archaeology amongst the stardust.
Although Heaven's Vault boasts no groundbreaking animations, an emphasis on dialogue and language truly makes it stand out as an innovative puzzle game. With characters as colourful as the worlds you visit, you are guaranteed to be swept into an intriguing storyline shaped exclusively by you.
Playing Heaven’s Vault gives the same sense of satisfaction as curling up with a favourite book. With top-notch writing, exotic locales, and a true sense of adventure, Heaven’s Vault is a triumph.
An intriguing game for graphic novel fans with a lovable old style art design.
Review in Italian | Read full review
It is safe to say that there is no other title in the history of video games that offers a similar experience and atmosphere to Heaven's Vault, but the fact that there is no voice acting in a game that relies so heavily on dialogues and conversations, is a huge mistake that costs Heaven's Vault greatly.
Review in Persian | Read full review
It’s a completely unique kind of game, mixing deep character development, intergalactic sailing (literally), mystery solving, and even ancient civilization linguistics. To top it off, it looks gorgeous, sounds decent enough, and runs surprisingly well on the Switch.
Heaven's Vault may have one of the most well-realized video game worlds ever, with your curiosity and personality molding your story through the Nebula. Whether you're fascinated by history or just by a personal sense of duty, there's a lot to love about Heaven's Vault, even if the clunky movement and frustrating sailing sour the overall experience.
The game is ambitious for its translation mechanics and its big-picture look at the evolution of culture through the ages.
Heaven's Vault is a game deeply concerned with the past, how it affects the present, and whether or not it can predict the future. Its fantastic translation puzzles and intricate story are often overshadowed by its unfortunate need to constantly pause and load, sadly denying it the higher score that it otherwise deserves. Aside from these technological issues, Heaven's Vault is a world that's beautifully realised, with a mystery that you'll be thinking about long after the game is done.
A markedly different approach to adventure gaming; while it won't be for everyone, Heaven's Vault will undoubtedly attract a cult following.
At first it seems that Heaven's Vault is an absolute treasure and you can just marvel at the creative ideas that Inkle Studio came up with. But in between all those moments when I loved the game, some of the gameplay mechanics made my eyes glaze over and the experience would lose its luster.
Regardless of how I feel about the game's overall funky mechanics and technical quirks at times, Heaven's Vault deserves credit for putting effort into building a bit of a different world that you'll need to endeavor to explore and understand...
A fascinating, fantastical world let down by plodding pacing.
An ambitious narrative adventure that mixes fun lore with fiddly mechanics.
Heaven's Vault will satisfy budding archaeologists and linguistic fanatics in fits and starts, but the overall experience that brings those mechanics together leaves a lot to be desired. Alongside technical frustrations and tedious movement between locations, this is hardly a game we can recommend with any sort of confidence.
The core mechanic of decoding a language is fascinating, but it can't overcome all that surrounds it: a slow-paced narrative with dated gameplay.
Exploring the lost ruins of ancient civiliyation is not as much fun as it should be.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Heaven's Vault is a different game than most, and that alone makes it worth celebrating. It comes with many a wart, and it never really gels together the way a more conventional game would, but I had a great go with this moon-hopping, language-studying archaeology adventure.
Inkle's follow-up to 80 Days is an archaeology adventure like no other.
Quibbles aside, I did greatly enjoy Heaven’s Vault. All of its major design choices are artistically brilliant without sacrificing the more visceral thrills of its gameplay, something which many other “games as art” titles have an unfortunate tendency to do. It’s a bit on the longer side – especially if you play through it twice, which is encouraged by the developers – but it’s well worth it, especially if you play it cuddled up on the couch during what remains of winter.