Honorable Mention at Ideame++ 2012

UPDATE: Fly to the all-new heartbeats homepage for latest info and downloads!
http://dotheartbeats.wordpress.com/about/

Man... I can't believe it!

.heartbeats earned a Honorable Mention at Ideame++! I was given a cute Toki Tori pendrive as a "special prize" for developing a "game that has something... (unique)".

.heartbeats
.heartbeats is an experimental game focusing on interactive narrative and dynamic music. The game tells the story of four people in four different moments in life (a teenager facing depression, a young man regretting his actions, an adult woman looking back on her life choices and a young girl enjoying life).

Gaming Experience
The game tells an emotional story with plenty of different branches, a "try to learn" approach, and an interactive help system which tells you tidbits of information about each individual's story. In the game, you read how the story unfolds and make decisions in certain points of it. Each decision will affect every character's life inminently, as everybody is connected (by their hearts beating in unison).

The whole experience plays like an interactive book, focusing on activating the player's imagination by showing minimal graphics, yet playing music and sound effects in order to tell the story and better describe the characters. The characters' heartbeats play an interesting role in the game as well: if they beat too fast, it means they will trigger the death of another character; if they beat too slow, it means he or she will die.



Making this game
Making this game has been an interesting (and crazy) experience, as I alone was able to develop a complete small demo, create the music, look for the sound effects and create an interesting gaming experience (available in English and in Spanish). I didn't sleep for a week, but... who cares! It was fun as hell.




Downloads
Link to the Game's Downloads Section:
http://dotheartbeats.wordpress.com/downloads/

Please, send back feedback! Every comment is appreciated. Thank you, everyone.

Four people living in this world. Four hearts beating in unison.