Review: Island Of Hearts
- Guilherme Ribeiro
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Will you find your true love?
THE GAME
Island of Hearts is an interactive movie (FMV) game developed by Titan Digital Media and 4Divinity and published by 4Divinity. After being fired from his job and ending his relationship with his girlfriend, our protagonist's friends see only one way to heal his heart: send him to an island of love. There, he meets six women who are also looking for a relationship, each in their own way and with a different personality. Controlling the protagonist, you must make choices for him so that he can find new love. Don't be fooled: depending on your choices, the ending may not be so happy.
MY IMPRESSIONS
The FMV genre has seen significant growth in production in recent years, especially those focused on romance. If you look closely, you'll find many games in this style with the same premise: a male protagonist interacting with various women and eventually attempting a romance with them. These games generally walk a fine line between something fun and something embarrassing. Island of Hearts aims for the funny, but hits the embarrassing. The narrative isn't good, making it seem like the scenes will have a specific sequence regardless of your choices, only altering the ending. Another very annoying factor is the protagonist himself. Initially, he already seems despicable, both in his words and actions. The game even forces you to make choices for him that don't seem good in any case, making him less likeable. As the game progresses, he acts very differently, almost as if he were a different person, but this is done because the game's narrative has to make everything go wrong at the beginning so that he can later become a decent human being, something that could have been done in a way that wouldn't make the player despise the character they control. Most of the options given for responding to scenes are vague, often not corresponding to what you would expect the character to do by choosing that option. Furthermore, there are options so bad that I don't even know who would choose them, such as insulting one of the women for no reason. In fact, this is a terrible aspect of the game: treating the characters badly, which only serves to gain an achievement and nothing more. There are some moments where you must interact with objects to explore a scene, but these moments add nothing to the game, often just the character moving the selected object and making a random comment, without any purpose. In addition, you will have to play some minigames in some scenes, but they are simple and uninspired.
The game is not in Brazilian Portuguese, which will alienate many people who don't speak English, and English is essential to understanding the game's story. The actresses who play the protagonist's love interests are mostly from various Asian countries, but they all speak English in the game. They perform their roles well, even though they have to do some very childish scenes, like holding and interacting with vegetables in a sexual way. In fact, their sexualization is exaggerated, with many moments where the camera focuses exclusively on the actresses' cleavage, often for a long time, which is uncomfortable even if the player isn't there live, it's so embarrassing. There are some supporting characters who appear in some scenes, including the actors who play the protagonist's friends, playing other characters without much change in appearance, which I imagine was meant to be funny, the repetition of people, but it just came across as silly. The possible endings with each suitor aren't the most incredible, often lacking any weight and ending abruptly. Island of Hearts seems to have been scripted by a teenager, leaving much to be desired for those who have already experienced other FMV games in this niche. You can understand what they were trying to do, but the execution wasn't the best.
ACHIEVEMENTS
At the time of this review, some achievements are broken, meaning that even if the objective is met, you won't earn the achievement. That said, the achievements in Island of Hearts aren't that difficult, simply requiring you to try all possible paths, basically. This is because, in addition to some specific choices you'll need to make to unlock some of these achievements, there are some challenges to complete, such as achieving the best ending with each girl or completing the game without gaining any affinity points with them. There's one achievement I'd like to highlight, which requires you to fail. Generally, I don't like achievements like this, as asking the player to play badly doesn't make sense, but in this case, the reward is a scene that I genuinely found funny and caught me off guard. In short, getting 100% of the achievements in Island of Hearts will take time, but it won't be difficult.
CONCLUSION
Island of Hearts tries to be funny, but borders on embarrassing in many moments, besides unnecessarily sexualizing the girls and trivializing the interactions with them. If the game were more focused on actually interacting with them, with more weight given to their choices and a better narrative, perhaps we could have something more palatable. It seems like everything was written by a teenager who played a FMV in this niche and wanted to make their own game. It's a shame, because the girls tried hard to act despite their limitations and delivered their roles well, but the game doesn't hold up on what it offers in terms of gameplay.
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