Heal: Console Edition

Over the past decade, Jesse Makkonen has made a name for himself as a developer who doesn't shy away from stylish and emotionally devastating stories about the human condition, including a pair of Distraint games and the endlessly trippy Silence of the Sleep. His newest game is Heal: Console Edition, which is a port of a PC game he released last year about an elderly man solving puzzles and trying to collect his memories. It may be a departure from the psychological horror pool he usually wades in, but the thick atmosphere and abstract narrative structure will appeal to anybody who loved his previous titles. Does that make this Jesse's best game yet? Let's grab our walking stick and find out.

Heal is the type of game where the less said about the story, the better. It stars an old man in the twilight years of his life who is struggling to remember the past. He slowly walks around six isolated locations doing everything he can to solve a series of puzzles that vaguely relate to that thing that is on his mind, all while we learn more about his life and condition. Because there's no spoken dialogue, we're left to study the beautifully detailed backgrounds and piece the story together using little more than visual clues.

The real star here are the puzzles, which change and expand as we travel from one location to the next. Each level tends to follow a similar structure, which sees us solving smaller sections in an effort to earn clues that will go towards completing a bigger puzzle. For example, in the first stage, you'll open up a box to reveal the letter "B" and number "35," which will relate to an RGB monitor you'll need to adjust in order to unlock the door and escape the long yet claustrophobic room.

You get a sense early on that these puzzles don't exist in the real world or linear time. This is made perfectly clear when the elderly man finally heads outside, where he's given the ability to change the time of day and weather condition at his whim. There's a feeling that what we're seeing may not be reality and the perspective is from somebody who is an untrustworthy narrator. He'll see his past in unexpected places and seemingly inhabit locations that can't actually exist. This does a great job of putting the player into his shoes and making us feel like we're also losing a grasp on reality.

In that regard, I wish Heal would have leaned even more into that concept. While a lot of the puzzles make sense to the story, a good chunk of them feel random and out-of-place. They aren't necessarily bad puzzles, but they could have been included in just about any game, regardless of the theme. They also aren't particularly difficult to solve. Even the most casual puzzle game fan will fly through the six stages in less than two hours, which is ironic given the old man's slow pace. Instead of getting harder and more involved as the story went on, I found that the final stages were the easiest and least satisfying.

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I also take issue with Heal's subtitle -- "Console Edition." Yes, this is the PC game brought to home consoles, that much is true. However, very little has been done to make this version of the game feel like a proper console edition. Instead of making use of the controller's functionality, the developer has merely turned the analog sticks into a computer mouse. It's a shame that we're never given control over the old man, especially since a lot of the mechanics could have been mapped to the D-pad and face buttons. The point and clicking doesn't work as well when forced to use the analog stick, and there are a few puzzles that are practically broken because of it. There's one especially annoying bit towards the end where you need to rotate an object left and right, which is a nightmare to control with the analog sticks. This is the kind of puzzle that probably worked better in Heal: Pocket Edition, the mobile version that uses a touch screen. As a console experience, I found this port to be lacking.

The good news is that the gorgeous visuals go a long way to make up for a few control issues. I love the look and atmosphere of this game. Every level has something unique to offer and you can really see the attention to detail Jesse put into the backgrounds and puzzles. This is what the developer is best at and one of the big reasons why people look forward to his games. And even now, as somebody who had mixed feelings about Heal, I can't wait to see what Jesse Makkonen comes up with next. I bet it's going to be atmospheric.