Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest, released on PC in 2020 and ported to the Nintendo Switch a few months later in 2021, is a Visual Novel set in the World of Darkness universe, which videogame players would be more familiar with from the Vampire: The Masquerade and Hunter: The Reckoning games. While all set in the same world, the perspectives of each corner of the universe are wildly different, with werewolves being more spiritual and environmental in their focus, elements this game seeks to incorporate into its self-contained story of a woman, Maia, seeking to find clues to her past in an ancient European forest and the various people living, working, or otherwise residing in the area.

This game comes from developer Different Tales and publisher Walkabout Games, who previously brought us Wanderlust Travel Stories. However, while I wasn’t super-enamored with their prior work, this time around I feel like the change in topic matter has made a heck of a difference – Wanderlust’s travel-centric narrative and lack of any central character made that game feel aimless and lacking any sort of compelling focus, but I feel like having a rich, established world already full of high-stakes conflict to play around in, this team has been able to produce something far more interesting, and it’s a lot easier to appreciate the high-quality writing this time around when I find its world intriguing and its characters far more resonant.

This is partly thanks to the choices in the game this time around often having more clear repercussions. There are still certainly moments where the responses you’re given don’t really indicate what it is exactly that your character will say or do, but more often than not this time around there will be some significant distinctions – are you more spiritual or thoughtful? Are you more likely to intimidate through anger or use some of your limited willpower to hold back more primal instincts? Do you go along with the weird stuff you encounter, call it out, or buy into it?

This greater clarity in choice is in part due to the way this game reworks the stats that played a role in their prior game. In Wanderlust, you had to worry about things like money, energy and exhaustion, but Werewolf takes a page from the live action role play system that already exists for Werewolf by giving players health, willpower, and rage meters. Having a low supply of these isn’t necessarily a terrible thing either – some options are only open to you if you have full rage, for example, while others are only available if your rage is empty, and neither option is necessarily wrong, just different.

The game goes beyond this by tracking a variety of secondary stats based on your choices, such as how brave, cunning, or spiritual you are, along with your rapport with the various characters you come across (as well as the forest itself). You’re clearly told when your choices have affected one of these, and you’re also clearly told when one of these statistics has affected the story or given you an additional choice you can make, which is a really nice touch.

The game’s presentation is largely simple text and still images, but the high-contrast images are striking, and the atmospheric soundtrack and environmental noises do a great job of setting the mood, which ranges from serene and peaceful to creepy, to a tone bordering on horror. The combination of great writing, unsettling imagery, and creepy sounds and music can make for a really effective way of setting the mood here.

In terms of complaints, my main one I’ve already mentioned – that it’s occasionally unclear what you’ll do with some of the choices you’re given. However, there are a few other things that nagged me a bit. Firstly, the Nintendo Switch version of the game doesn’t have touch controls, and while the standard gamepad controls work just fine, this still seems like it would have benefited the game to have them. Also, given the role-playing roots of this franchise, it would have been nice to have a bit more control over the main character’s name and background. Yes, a large part of this game’s story is helping Maia to uncover her background, but it still would have been nice to have some direct say in who this character is from the get-go.

Still, these aren’t major complaints, and I feel like those looking for a great, moody, atmospheric Visual Novel about werewolves will be thrilled with Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest. The writing and presentation here is excellent, the choices clearly matter, and while there’s still room for improvement in places, overall I think this game is a huge improvement over the developer’s prior effort.

tl;dr – Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest is a Visual Novel based on the World of Darkness universe, with players partaking in an original, self-contained story that features solid writing and an excellent presentation that does a wonderful job creating an unsettling mood. There are still a few places where this game could do with improvement, but overall this is a fine addition to the genre well worth playing for genre fans.

Grade: B

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