Heartworm Review - Retrovertigo

Ironically, humanity’s eternal fascination with the end of their lives always has them living outside of the moment. Memory’s the mission, of course, but this worry about whether there’s a reception after the end of everything is, rightfully, a massive roadblock, one which can be considered one of those final hurdles before you can comfortably exist. It’s a conundrum which Heartworm tackles head-on.

This is the debut commercial title spearheaded by Vincent Adinolfi: a survival horror tribute which initially received warm hype when it debuted alongside other titles in the first Haunted PS1 Demo Disc in 2020. Since then, Heartworm has become a labor of love which has seen resistance in the form of delays and, most unfortunately, a publisher drop-out in 2023. Thankfully, DreadXP are here to save the day, hot on the heels after the runaway success of White Knuckle.

You play as Sam, a young woman who is suffering from the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after her grandfather passes away. Unable to cope with the grief, Sam comes across a message board composed of users who’ve heard of a house in the backcountry which has a connection to the void beyond the void. Desperate and with seemingly no other options, Sam enters the house to find out for herself.

One thing that’s going to be immediately obvious about Heartworm – maybe even potentially off-putting – is how unapologetic it is about what came before it. Stylistically and mechanically, it’s punching towards the PS1’s entries of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Narratively, it seeks to execute the same environmental storytelling depth of something like Half-Life, but in Adinolfi’s own words, a more personal touch has been embossed across the entire package.

Gameplay in Heartworm will consist of the usual type of survival horror shenanigans, that being logistically fantastical puzzles, fixed camera angles which sway between artistic, obstructing, or both, and very, very light combat. A lot of the puzzles can be considered “milquetoast” in a capacity: you find a sequence, memorize the sequence, use the sequence to continue, and this will be Heartworm’s main brain tester.

How it presents those sequences does vary, and Heartworm encourages making your own notes, but I was never challenged enough to go that far. There are never enough pieces or wrong answers to mentally take into account, and the answers are never far enough away from the question to be considered a burden. At the very least, they stay consistent, which is necessary for a story aiming to contort the space around you.

Still, it fares a hell of a lot better than what the combat offers over time. It’s described as “limited”, but contextually, it’s because there’s only one option, and that’s using your camera to stun them into oblivion, Fatal Frame-style. Pop a few candid shots of your own inner fears, and watch them disappear before your eyes. 

In this case, enemy variety is important, and how you interact with them in the heat of battle. Heartworm responds firmly with a fat handful of enemies, each of them unique in their lethality, the highlight of which will be your most common encounter: a walking spectre made of TV static. With its glitchy screams and wails calling for help, your first couple of encounters with them will be nail-biting, but this is where the intensity starts and ends.

As time goes on, combat doesn’t just become an intrusion, but it’s entirely recommended you avoid it entirely, and that’s not in Heartworm’s advice or favor. Enemies become less of a statement on the horror's intuition, but obstacles that speak to be nothing more than such, especially in the latter half of the game, where Heartworm is extremely stingy with ammo for your camera.

Does this feed into the sensibilities of survival horror? Intrinsically, yes, but at the same time, Heartworm is terrified of the player finding frustration in its mechanics of old – no checkpoints, spread-out save room locations, etc – that health items practically rain from the sky. Enemies will only ever deal physical damage to you over time, so don't worry about poison, crippling effects, so on and so forth.

As for the boss fights, you’ll find yourself in tricky situations, but the fights themselves suffer from a terrible case of waiting. There’s never much fortitude on display from the offerings of a giant spider, regardless of whatever game possesses them, but here, the giant spiders and the other looming bookends of each individual act will play similar roles of "they attack, you stun, they run, repeat".

Still, going to a horror game for the bosses is like going to a pizza place for a salad, and Heartworm’s aesthetic is the meal you're looking for. Where Heartworm picks and chooses to let its visual design and art direction fly free are when the game peaks, shimmering depictions of surrealist architecture and stress-inducing set pieces. How it envisions Sam in these environments does become a bit of an issue, especially when it zooms out and shows the full scale of the twisted psyche on display, and Sam becomes a black speck on the horizon -- this can happen even when you have the retro filters turned off.

I played through Heartworm twice, once for the gameplay, and once for the narrative, finding myself at the same conclusion both times in that Sam isn’t even the main character of her own story. Fairly quickly, her context, her reasoning, her history and presence, get snubbed in favor of a larger collective, one that also isn’t given the breathing room to justify considering how much time has been spent, and consecutively wasted on her.

When Sam’s story does return to the spotlight, it's done with such violent strokes of theming and messaging that it's painted in harsh juxtaposition with everything else. Every revelation and turn of the page is set up in implications, never a set statement that wants to mean something, or make you feel something. This is saved for the ending, which, without spoiling, sets up an entirely new implication which throws the entire message out of the water.

It’s a far cry from the previous demo’s of Heartworm, which establish her as more of a team player in terms of how she co-exists with the world presented, and those decisions are muted, but still present. In the full game however, she’s become a tourist to her own turmoils, her trials and tribulations seemingly ineffectual to the alarmingly blurry precedent on display. What messages exist in Heartworm are steeped in sympathy, but it’s hard not to feel apathetic towards a protagonist who, now, has had her resolution dismantled in the name of something I’m still not sure of.

Heartworm Review | Final Verdict

Heartworm is gorgeous. It’s so easy to fall in love with how it ticks and trickles its intricacies towards the player, but when the stakes ramp up, so much of its promise is dropped for too many ideas, that none of them get their proper chance to shine. It fades before you even get a chance to drink it in, and the memories it leaves behind are only able to become mere footnotes.

Heartworm was reviewed on PC using a copy provided by the publisher over the course of 10 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of preview.

Disclaimer: Our reviews editor, Sam Guglielmo, works at publisher DreadXP but did not edit or view this piece prior to publication.