Heart Lake

Heart Lake is a first-person, pixel-style role-playing game about Lin Yi and the personalities in her inner world. Through an online virtual pixel museum, you visit small spaces and experience scenes from their relaxed daily lives. The story focuses on everyday life in this inner world rather than Lin Yi’s painful memories; changes there are often connected to experiences in the real world.

The inner world

The game follows a single story line, told through several short scenes, with no puzzles and few minigames. You can interact with all the objects in each space, and important clues and items are marked with special prompts. Conversations can move the story forward. The overall playthrough takes about 30–60 minutes and ends openly.

Lin Yi and her family

Lin Yi is the gentle, introverted main personality, who cherishes each member of her inner family. The other personalities have different roles and histories:

• Lin Qi: The first child personality to emerge and the longest-lived. Lin Qi bears trauma and painful memories in Lin Yi’s place, appearing when Lin Yi experienced domestic violence.
• Lin Sen: The first guardian personality and Lin Yi’s brother. He understands the personality system and arose from Lin Yi’s childhood wish for someone to protect her from her father’s beatings and scolding.
• Mute: A quiet, peaceful and caring personality who cannot speak and communicates through sign language. Mute emerged when Lin Yi’s parents scolded her and told her to be quiet, bearing verbal abuse for her.
• Song Yutang: The second child personality and an inner self-help personality who represents an ideal childhood. He preserves Lin Yi’s happy memories of playing with childhood companions and lives the life she wished for, with the other personalities protecting him.
• Song Xian: The first social personality, who is gentle, self-assured and dislikes being defined by others. She can play piano and work at school in Lin Yi’s place, and emerged after Lin Yi was bullied by classmates and withdrew from school and communication. Song Xian’s mother, Wei Ruqing, noticed her singing talent and arranged for her to study singing and music theory from childhood. At 17, Song Xian raised Mouse, a black-and-white border shepherd puppy.
• Dragonfly: A personality born from Lin Yi’s wish to be as free as a dragonfly, find simple happiness and escape a noisy, troubled family for quiet, warm waters. Dragonfly emerged when Lin Yi was bullied by classmates and no longer wanted to attend school or communicate.
• Pei Qiubai: The second guardian personality, gentle, kind and understanding. Taking the form of a sister and music teacher, she plays piano and protects Lin Yi. She appeared after Lin Yi’s piano teacher resigned, to fill a lack of care.
• Pianoforte: A quiet sub-personality who exists only in the inner world and is devoted to playing piano. Pianoforte was created when Lin Yi’s music box was smashed.
• Wei Ruqing: A child personality who takes the role of a mother and is the mother of Song Xian and Song Yutang. After Lin Yi’s parents divorced, she longed for a mother who would truly love her; Wei Ruqing arose from that wish.
• Yu Feng: The second social personality, tough and direct. Yu Feng emerged when Lin Yi started work and faced colleagues who looked down on her rural background and sometimes pushed their work onto her. When Lin Yi struggles to refuse people, Yu Feng speaks up about their mistakes and turns down their requests.

Controls and saving

Heart Lake saves automatically. You can play with a mouse and keyboard, though keyboard play is recommended. The arrow keys move the character, Z, Enter or Space confirms, X or Esc opens the menu, cancels or returns, and Shift makes the character run.