Spirited Heart

Although you do not usually think about it, every decision you make affects your future and the way people perceive you. Whether you decide to learn a new skill, relax for a few days or just improve your current abilities, you constantly have to choose one thing over the other, since there are always alternatives you can opt for and multiple ways you can spend your time.

Spirited Heart allows you to do the same thing with a fictional character's life instead, in order to see how different decisions affect the final outcome and have some fun in the process as well. Although there isn't too much actual gameplay involved, other than clicking on the desired options and navigating dialogue trees, the story can get quite captivating, especially since you have the power to complete change its course.

Speaking of which, the story is actually very malleable and you can even opt between a few different starting points as well, by picking one of the three available girls: a human, an elf and a half-demon girl. Not only that, but there are also a few childhood stories to choose from, such as the daughter of a farmer or an artist. Depending on your decisions, the attribute points you start off with can vary a lot, which has significant consequences later in the game.

In essence, the game is basically a life simulator, since you start off as lonely girl in a strange new village and you must wake a living for yourself, by working a job, making money and meeting new people. While the first two can be achieved by practicing the desired skills, the latter requires a bit of tinkering and dialogue to get right, since people react to what you are telling them and it is quite easy to remain alone for a long time, if you mess up your responses.

Since nothing is really moving around most of the time, the graphics are almost entirely hand drawn and static as well, although there are a few animations to spice up the visuals from time to time. The characters are very nicely depicted as well, as are the different environments you get to visit along the way. Unfortunately, the background music can become repetitive after a while, especially since there is not much else to distract you from hearing it.

Spirited Heart's greatest feat is the fact that the story is very susceptible to changes, which makes it interesting to go through it multiple times and see how your decisions affect the final outcome. The huge number of skills and attributes that can be increased and perfected should keep you occupied for a long time as well.