Heaven’s Vault It’s a puzzle game about translating an ancient, fictional language, but it’s also a rich narrative game. If you want to spend more time in its world, with its story and characters but no puzzles (or space sailing), good news: Heaven’s Vault is available now as a two-story novel episode by Jon Ingold, the original game’s narrative director. .
There are many novels about video games, but few games are written as well as Heaven’s Vault, and rarely are novels written by the same people as games. Ingold has a great track record, but if you need to know more, Katharine has duplicates and will be rewritten soon.
If you haven’t played the game yet, here’s the publisher’s introduction to the book:
When a researcher from the University of Iox goes missing and the only clue is a brooch carved with Ancient script, translator Aliya Elasra and her robot Six are sent to the Nebula to bring him back, only to stumble upon a deeper secret concerning the fall of a once great Empire.
But history in Nebula is a Loop, and everything that happened before will happen again. And what is buried can always be brought back to light…
What will be found? What will be lost? Is the loop real? And what’s in Heaven’s Vault?
If you enjoyed the Ancient language translation in Heaven’s Vault, the novel has a bit of that too, including “two full-page inscriptions for the reader to translate for themselves”.
Inkle is selling books directly for £13 each, and it looks like this is a limited release so the book is only available for a short time.
