Oh My Heart Review

It's somewhat inspiring to see what can be made in the space of a 48 hour game jam. In this case, Oh My Heart. It's a quite frantic and gory (in the pixel sense rather than anything realistic) arcade-style game, where players must protect a monster heart from some pesky imps. See? The title makes sense now!

At first, Oh My Heart seems a little too easy, especially while playing the first Stage. The imps trundle their way up the screen and it's all too easy to take them out. This is done through a few different methods. The regular imps can be knocked down with a tap, provoking a bolt of lightning, before holding another finger down in order to unleash a bomb. It's pretty simple to do and it's possible to create some extensive combos, providing the player knocks the imps down in the same area. The other method of killing them is to slice them with a swipe of the finger. This is only possible with purple imps, who are also resistant to lightning.

It's simple stuff, which is handy given that later stages get pretty frantic. A screen full of pixelated gore isn't uncommon, as the waves get faster and stronger. It's possible to let a few imps through without any problems, but it's not long before things get out of hand. The slow trickle of power-ups go some way to counteracting this, as well as mixing things up a little. This is also where Oh My Heart proves to be much more enjoyable. It's fun to last as long as possible, all with the determination to get a new high score. Although, bear in mind, Hardcore mode is quite ridiculously fast and rightfully deserves its name.

The only significant problem with Oh My Heart is that it is a little on the shallow side. There's a varied bunch of achievements to collect up and leader boards to check, but Oh My Heart is really solely about passing the time and being challenged. That's fine, but some might wish for a slightly more structured approach to their crazy imp killing.