Haven

Developer and publisher: The Game Bakers

Platform: PC (purchased from Steam)

Total time played: 12.2 hours

100%ed? No

Recommendation: Play this as if you're studying two aliens trapped in a jar with no escape.

I played this game in about four or five sittings, but I thought about it for weeks afterwards because it was so... captivating. In a, like, so-bad-it's-kind-of-good way. It is such a strange experience to play a game that so poorly straddles the line between romantic and unintentionally tragicomedic.

You absolutely can't go in expecting a sweet love story about defying societal roles to be together, because that's not what Haven is. It's a horror story, plain and simple. There is no good ending no matter what choices you make.

Summary

The game is about Yu and Kay—whose genders you can choose as either F/F, M/F, or M/M—who have run away from the oppressive Apiary to live out their lives together on an abandoned planet called Source. The reason they had to do this was because the Matchmaker, an AI that is at least 1000 years old and has been doing this shit forever, matched them with other people, so this is the only way they can safely fuck. Which they do. A lot.

Stuff happens. (More on that later.) Then Yu's matchmade partner finds where Yu and Kay are hiding and declares his intention to bring Yu back home (and Kay too, but that's not the priority). Oh no! The only way to stop him is by severing the energy bridge back to the Apiary. Suspense! Drama! Will they or won't they?

If they do, Yu and Kay are stranded from the Apiary forever and live out the rest of their days together on Source—this is the "good" ending. If they don't, Yu's matchmade partner sends a bunch of scary robots and eventually Yu and Kay are dragged back to the Apiary, brainwashed, and matched with their chosen partners. That's the "bad" ending. Wow!

Game Overview

Haven's gameplay loop is as follows: go outside the home base, a ship called the Nest. Look for food, scrap to fix the Nest with, and rust, which is a type of material crystallized from raw energy (called "flow" in the game). Fight some things, maybe. Then return to the Nest, watch some cutscenes, and craft items for the next outing. Repeat.

This shit is boring as hell unless you like visual novels. Everything inside the Nest is VN and everything outside of it is primarily idle exploration. Combat isn't optional, but it's not hard; it's essentially a rhythm game minigame. There are a bunch of different islands to explore, but mechanically you do the same thing over and over again.

Accessibility

In order to do the main exploration mechanic (hovering above the ground and moving fast), you have to hold a button down the entire time. I wasn't able to make this toggleable. This is true whether you use a keyboard or a controller.

Combat requires the use of two hands: one to control Yu and one to control Kay. There is no easy way around this aside from very creative remapping. You can win just using one character, but some battles have scripted mandatory events that require both characters doing the same action.

Subtitles are available and the background transparency behind them can be adjusted.

Stuff Happens

Remember when I said "More on that later?" Yeah, me neither. Anyway, here's that section.

The visual novel sections is where Haven really shines. Not necessarily in a good way, mind you, but shine it does. There are tons of events between Yu and Kay that illustrate their relationship to each other, the Apiary, and their families, and they generally fall into three categories: exposition, sexy time, or arguments.

There's a lot of world-building the devs had to shove in there using just dialogue between Yu and Kay, so it makes sense that the bulk of the story events fall into exposition. These are generally pretty straightforward: Yu and Kay ask each other how they feel about [insert worldbuilding thing], talk about it a little, ask questions about their backstories and such, and then generally reaffirm that they're in luuuurv. This is done over food, board games, books, cleaning, whatever. If the devs could fit some elements about the characters and who they are and where they're from, they did it.

Honestly, they didn't do too bad on this part. Like I got all the elements from it in a way that felt... kind of natural. Some was definitely more heavy-handed, but overall it didn't feel unnatural for Yu and Kay to talk to each other about this.

Most of the other story sections, if they weren't exposition, fall into sexy time. Yu and Kay are horny literally all the time. The devs don't want you to forget this. After all, having sex means your relationship is good and awesome and stable, so Yu and Kay must have (fade to black) sex as often as possible. Which they do. Power to them!

Lastly, arguments. These were extremely poorly done. Yu and Kay argued about the most pointless shit ever and have no communications chops to back it up. They have a political argument that basically boils down to this:

And then they yell at each other for a while longer and it ends with Yu laughing and saying, "Well, if we didn't have this to argue about, we'd never argue at all!" which, like, okay. If you're in a healthy relationship, you obviously disagree about stuff sometimes, but you communicate and try to understand your partner's viewpoint. You also don't raise your voice at each other, obviously. You also don't just end an argument without reaching an understanding with your partner so you both feel heard, seen, and respected. But haha, nope, we'll just shelve this forever and never talk about it again! It's so cute!

You can probably see where this is going.

Later on, Yu and Kay have a bigger fight about Yu hiding important information from Kay. Oh, wait, no, that's not how the game frames it:

Okay anyway the point here is that Yu lied to Kay and didn't tell Kay really important information before asking Kay to run away with Yu and Yu gets butthurt when Kay is shocked/scared/angry at this. (Pardon the use of Yu and Kay here, I'm avoiding gendered pronouns.) Since they are both mature adults, they sit and talk it out and realize they had misunderstood each other and no of course they don't do that. Yu runs away in the middle of the night to try and call mom and get a ride home (yes, really) and almost dies. Whoops! Once they're reunited after crying about how they'll stay together forever, they never talk about this argument again.

I'm being serious, by the way. This argument is so deeply hurtful that Yu, instead of talking it out, decides to try and go home, and they never talk about this again. ARE YOU SERIOUS? Yes, the game says, I am. And you are asked to take this as a sign of a healthy, mature relationship. OKAY I GUESS!

This is the last argument they have, by the way. At least as far as I found while playing through it. And this, my friends, is why Haven is a horror game: Yu and Kay have no communication skills whatsoever, and the good ending is to strand them together on a foreign planet for the rest of their lives. SURELY THIS WILL END WELL, no one but the game writers say.

Conclusion

This game RULES. The writing so earnestly tries to convince you Yu and Kay are going to make it and be these martyrs of their society. And you, person with critical thinking skills, will not be fooled by this. Think of it as a study of what straight people think is a happy, fulfilling relationship. Approach this game as if observing animals in a zoo. I'm sorry to say this is the only way you'll have fun.

Oh, and as an extra treat? Play with M/M or F/F pairing. It's going to be very obvious very quickly the writer is straight, I promise.

Original Steam review: