🧟🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ Heaven Dust 2 | Nintendo Switch | Review | 7/10 | "A charming but flawed love letter to Resident Evil" 🧟🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ #IndieGames #IndieGame #GameDev

Over the past twelve months, I’ve played several games that are effectively love letters to Resident Evil, only one really captured the essence of the early survival horror. Heaven Dust 2 does capture some of the spirit and certain aspects do make it stand out, but at its core, it sticks so closely to the Resident Evil formula that it just becomes a facsimile without its own identity.

You play as Steve, a man who awakens deep inside a research facility, a facility crawling with zombies. Steve must make his way through this treacherous hell and as he does, he will learn all the dark secrets the research centre holds. The plot is simple enough and very familiar, you uncover the plot mainly through notes littered around the facility, giving insight into what happened and how you ended up trapped in this nightmare.

The gameplay is interesting, instead of being fixed cameras with tank controls like the traditional survival horror experience, it’s isometric - and this is a nice change, it does give the game a tiny bit of its own identity. This, combined with the chibi characters at least makes it feel slightly different from other classic survival horror games. 

I must say that, at first seeing the cutesy character style, I found it was a bit jarring, seeing these almost cute-looking zombies getting their heads blown off and pumping buckets of blood, does take a while to slightly get used to.

The combat is good, you have a reticule that you hold while targeting a zombie, the longer you hold it the closer it gets to the head. It’s fun and one of the best aspects of the game, being able to turn a full 360 and switch guns quickly makes the combat feel freeing and not at all restrictive - as tank controls tend to be.

The rest of the gameplay is very traditional; explore, solve puzzles, fight a couple of bosses etc. it's a standard affair. I do think that the puzzles are slightly too derivative at times, there are one or two that felt different, but for the most part, moving statues and finding different medallions all felt far too familiar. 

The game does have a nice variety of enemies, as zombies come in several types; ones that explode in close contact, others have a protective ring around the head - so headshots aren’t effective, it’s a nice range of enemy varieties. They are well placed to take you by surprise, but a lot of the time you feel swamped and can very rarely avoid the zombies in the rooms, which means you are always using your ammo supplies. 

Also, with the isometric design - when swamped, I would find that I would have to exit the room I was in and the wall would reappear, so I would just be shooting zombies through a dark doorway. After a while, this felt a little boring, but the rooms are so tight with such little space that there were no other options or tactics available.

The sound design felt a little off, the only room that had any music was of course the save room, as you can't have a save room without some gentle, comforting music. This means that the rest of the game feels very empty as the only sounds you hear are your own footsteps and the moaning of zombies, without any substantial music it just lacks tension and creates a dull experience. The game lasts around eight to ten hours, and that length of time with so little music - it just felt empty.

There are two very different endings and some new items and weapons if you choose to replay, so if you enjoy the experience and are attracted to replayability, this does offer a little something for you.