For the sake of transparency, I want to say that I did work on Heartworm, so of course I am going to recommend that you play it! I was a co-writer, and did a tiny bit of early concept art, and voiced Sam. I won't recommend the game based on parts of the game that I worked on lol. First, I think that the team nailed the aesthetic style of the game. Whether you prefer to play with retro filters or not, I think you're in for a visual treat. There is enough variance in environments that every area you enter feels fresh, but nostalgic. Michael and Vincent were able to throw in occasional visual callbacks to the classic RE and SH games that they love so much, but bring something new to them. To go with the aesthetic style of the game, the music really completes the ambiance. Carlos helped Vincent with sound design, and Michael assisted with the end credits song, and the majority of the soundtrack was created by Vincent. While some areas have a dread-inducing score, you will find brevity in places you would not expect with more low-key, dramatic and melancholy tracks. I also really admire how well the puzzles were integrated into the world of the game. When you need to back-track in certain areas to complete a puzzle, you can find shortcuts, and the map is super useful too. The variety of the puzzle types is something I really appreciate. There's plenty of classic puzzle stuff, but I think there are a few really cleverly designed puzzles that will feel like a breath of fresh air to survival horror fans. Combat for me is tough to review, because it is why I generally avoid playing survival horror games. I will say that all the enemies have interesting designs and mechanics, and fit well in the aesthetic of the game, and thank goodness you can run from most of them, because that's what I did while I was playing hahaha. I was tense as heck when playing. Also, in terms of the boss fights, the spider one is my favorite by far. Thank you to everyone who has supported Heartworm over the years. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to work on the game, and I really hope you enjoy your playthroughs.

i hate to be mean about this because there's not that much really wrong with Heartworm but there's not much Right with it either, it's just a bit plain? It looks pretty good, controls pretty good and sounds pretty good but there's just kind of no spice to it. Part of this is that the game is easy to point of being not very engaging and part of it is that the narrative is pretty vague and feels a little listless and thus a bit hard to connect with? I could nitpick small things like how when you are prompted to discard keys after using them the prompt defaults to "No" for some reason which makes it very easy to accidentally retain useless keys, even though many items automatically discard themselves on use with no prompt anyway? The environments are kind of weirdly massive but not very dense resulting in a lot of time spent walking through empty space to get to points of interest. But the petty problems aren't what holds Heartworm back anyway, it's just missing something. Some spice, some unique mechanic, just anything to liven things up a little.

What do you get when you remove all of the survival and all of the horror from a survival horror game? You get Heartworm. A surface level love letter to games leagues better than it could ever hope to be. There is little this game gets right. Honestly, beyond the admittedly stunning art direction and appropriately somber music, there is little enjoyment to be had here. I'm willing to bet that most positive reviews are based entirely on the wow factor of playing a game of this style considering the steep drop off in players who made it to the first area versus players who defeated the first boss. For starters, you are very literally almost never in any danger. You can book it past every enemy you encounter with little to no effort. You are showered with healing items and ammo throughout the entire game. By the end of the game I had an overflowing collection of health items and about 100 extra shots of ammo. There are also not very many enemies and the ones that are there can be permanently killed most of the time. There is never any reason to feel threatened or in danger or like you have to manage your resources. This low difficulty extends all the way to the final boss which, after dodging a single attack, gave me enough of a breather that I was able to check my work emails while I waited for my turn to attack. Story wise, the game is incredibly bare bones. What is there, is laughable. The protagonist, Sam, is breaking into an old abandoned house she heard about on the internet because...? Initially, you're led to believe it's because her grandfather passed. Okay. How did he die? Was it traumatic? I dunno. The game never elaborates. You're just flung further and further into some warped and surreal realm of reality that is somewhat related to Sam's past. These connections are hardly elaborated on. You go from a neighborhood, to a forest to a clock tower and at some point there's a school area where Sam says something along the lines of "ugh...school." Riveting stuff. These environments are also massive for no reason. Not a good thing in a game that has as much back tracking as Heartworm does. Especially when it opts to use oh so nostalgic fixed camera angles. I sure love having the camera swing wildly in strange angles or have the camera place my character so far out of frame I have to guess where the hell I actually am on the screen. The enemies have even less thematic relation to anything. The most explanation we get on any of them is Sam commenting on off-leash dogs. Truly we've reached Silent Hill levels of symbolism! To the game's credit, it ultimately ends up being about the fear of death. Which, would have been a cool story. Only the game decides to pivot in that direction towards the end when someone on the dev team realized Sam had spent the majority of the game pissing about in purgatory. I also have to mention the terrible voice acting. It isn't just unnecessary. It actively brings the game further down. Sam raspily reacts to everything with the emotional range of a bowl of oatmeal. Just awful. To top it all off, I sincerely wonder if this game was play tested at some point or if the devs just couldn't bear to play it any longer. In my short playtime I had Sam phase clean through solid objects in the very first area of the game, got fully stuck on random bits of scenery multiple times, and had the camera get stuck on something I interacted with while I still had full control of Sam off screen. One of the worst offenders contributed to my only in game death which was when an invincible pursuer enemy appears in one specific area of the game and his sheer aura radiated through the walls and somehow managed to kill me off screen. Sick. The best thing about Heartworm is that it is mercifully short. My first and only run ended at 4 hours. Not sure why Steam is saying 7, though perhaps I fell asleep with the game turned on once or twice. Hopefully dreaming of playing a better game.

An easy rec for classic survival horror fans. I played the game with modern controls and it has an over the shoulder aiming option. You can also play with full on tank controls if you enjoy that. It might honestly fit the game better but I had no issues either way. The game is almost cozy tbh, as your character 'Sam' finds herself going through her old home and other places of her life. Some of these are quite colorful, like a pretty forest her grandfather would take her for walks. But overall the game looks beautiful and charming. I often found myself going into aim mode just to look at things up close. Music is also always very fitting and pretty. Although the audio mixing with the game compared to the cutscenes can be a bit weird sometimes, I changed and lowered some of my sound settings for the gameplay, I just think these did not apply to the cutscenes which made them loud. The game is...not really challenging. You find an inventory upgrade pretty early on and I was never out of healing items or ammo. It was very rare when I couldn't pick up more items and this was usually only because my bag was full of healing and I only found more healing lol Most enemies pose no threat at all and usually just get stunlocked for a bit when you flash them with your camera. The puzzles are fun and well designed, they require some logical thinking and I had some "ah-ha" moments while wandering around sometimes. Quite rewarding. Do be prepared to have a notepad around because quite a few puzzles just have you remembering words or placements. I had to take photos of my screen sometimes to know the order of things. This can be good or bad depending on what you are into. I will say there is a sliding block puzzle in 1 of the final areas. I despise these and I wish it wasn't in the game. You go around an area to put certain words to numbers. Like moon = 1 , book = 2 etc. A total of 11. So you need to have your notebook to note these down, then you have to put them in order in a randomized sliding puzzle. I put mine in one of those puzzle solvers and the fastest solution was 88 moves at some point if you did everything perfect. Really????? I just went alt f4 here to come back later and have it generate me a different one. Skill issue perhaps. The writing was good and Sam is a cool character, I enjoyed reading the journals and notes of different people scattered around the place and Sam having thoughts about the areas we found ourselves in. I liked learning more about her. Overall a fun 5-7 hour experience with lots of heart(worm). A little more relaxing than a lot of other survival horror games with combat and enemies not having that much focus. Fantastic atmosphere, interesting story, decent puzzles. Just check it out if you're into the genre.

The game look interesting by far, but not a fan of content creator shills. Overall, the game is fine.

The true dangers of trusting information you find on random internet forums.

It sucks to say, as this game was one i've been looking forward to for a while, but this is barely a positive review. The issue boils down to the difficulty, I can understand and even appreciate devs wanting their games to be on the easier side of things, nothing wrong there. It's another thing to make it so easy that enemies don't feel in any way threatening, missing feels meaningless as the amount of ammo you get is probably about twice what you need to kill everything in the game and you just get way way way way too many health items, especially considering that avoiding attacks is really easy. The issue here is that this easy, this lack of tension, of threat, of needing to put in any effort whatsoever kills the atmosphere and immersion, combat as is feels tedious, you're basically immortal and enemies take a while to kill, as is the game would be better off without combat. I do still want to congratulate the team on creating what could be the basis for an incredible game but it badly requires rebalancing/difficulty options. Having some added complexity to enemy behaviour and the combat as a whole would help as well but I wouldn't except that to be changed in a released game.

In Resident Evil, the limited inventory space and the cramped hallways with enemies mean that whenever you need to go somewhere, you need to decide whether to use your sparse amount of ammo on killing enemies, or to take the chance on running past them. If you run past them, you might get some stray hits and end up using your limited healing, and then what if you took a wrong turn or brought the wrong item and need to run past the same enemies again? On the other hand, what if you waste ammo on weak enemies and softlock yourself against a sudden boss? Inventory management, resource management, and planning are key in old-school survival horrors and it's why the handicap of the small inventory and the mechanics of the item box in RE works so well. In Heartworm they add nothing. You get one type of ammo, one type of healing, and you not only get more of it than you'll ever need, you'll never even risk running out of inventory space because you realistically only ever need to bring your weapon and ammo, leaving 4-6 empty spots for whatever you find. And the enemies are not some imposing and nerve wracking obstacles between you and your goal, they're mostly just trivial nuisances that you can either just run right past or remove permanently to little cost nor danger to yourself. Heartworm does indeed wear its influences on its sleeve, but those influences are only skin deep. At one point you find a stairway taken straight out of RE1, with the same layout and everything, but it doesn't add anything to the design of the level you find it in. And it doesn't take just take underutilised gameplay mechanics from RE; like in Project Zero/Fatal Frame you use a camera as a weapon, but in FF you need to wait for the enemies to come closer before shooting to maxmize your damage. This is incredibly tense not just because of the dangers to your character's health and your own in-game progress this poses, but because the enemies are designed to be terrifying. In Heartworm the enemies are not only not scary, but you never need to let the enemy near enough for them to pose a danger. And the plot, concerning grief, the death of a loved one, and even just uncertainty about how one is wasting ones life in an office, too afraid to do anything, mostly comes across as rather trite. The game's insights into the human condition are relatable, sure; we all experience loss, we all agonise over what path to take in life, etc, but the insights are ultimately shallow, underutilised, and not treated with much subtlety. In games like Silent Hill those themes come out as distorted physical metaphors and dangerous and horrifying enemies, and while you could argue the static screen and wooden doll versions of the MC that you have to fight are metaphors for her own inner turmoil and her lacking feeling of agency, those are the only enemies that seem to have any relation to the plot. And even then they still suffer from the same shallowness I described earlier. In the end, the game does do a good job of catching the artistic and atmospheric vibes of the survival horrors of old, and if it had advertised itself as a sort of 90's nostalgic tank-controlled action-adventure, I'd probably be kinder in my review. But a survival horror game with neither the survival nor the horror inevitably becomes a wholly disappointing experience.

Silent Hill for goth people

Classic survival horror with great vibes AND opossums. Truly a game that's out for my heart.

However you slice it, Heartworm's creators have done their homework. The game nods to Resident Evil 1, Silent Hill 1, etc., and while it has picked up some of the best parts of these PS1 classics, the team has made Heartworm wholly its own thing. It improves upon and leaves its own mark on the survival horror genre, standing strong on its own two feet. With a captivating story, lovable characters and environmental storytelling, along with exciting gameplay (and suitable scares!), I really enjoyed my time with the game. It also retains the emphasis on resource management and exploration that's key to a great survival horror title. Play it, play it, play it.

literally terrible, controls suck, 90% backtracking, clunky/non existent combat, story dosent know what it wants to be, Awful VA, it has nice music and hey the RE door thing!!! dont waste ur time

Shallow, all style no substance

resident evil, silent hill, and fatal frame had a baby and its name is heartworm

cool game nice music but whoever decided that the 10 second door animation needed to be in this game can suck my knob

I like the atmosphere, but I hate the terrible camera angles, bad controls, limited inventory, and the poor checkpoint system. I know it's trying to. be retro, but if that includes repeating all the poor gameplay decisions from early PS2 times, it's just not fun.

Well, this came as a surprise. And not a pleasant one. As an older gamer and a fan of all things PlayStation 1, I jumped head-first into Heartworm with great expectations – especially since I’d enjoyed its playable demo quite a bit, and was hankering for more. The setup seemed perfect: an otherworldly descent into a world of memories, presented with intentionally blocky graphics reminiscent of the original Silent Hill or the very first Resident Evil – it had all the right ingredients to tell an emotional, memorable story that also happens to tickle your nostalgia bones. And while the game does more or less succeed on the visual front, its various elements and mechanics sadly never coalesce into a satisfying whole. To me, it felt like the narrative never really went anywhere. You get a few journal entries about death, lost loved ones and various philosophical musings, accompanied by Sam’s poorly voice-acted inner monologues about her past, but other than that, you almost forget about the story altogether. There’s a painful lack of cohesion and focus – the game tries so hard to recreate set pieces from its primary inspirations (mostly Silent Hill and Resident Evil), that it forgets to have an identity of its own. And then it just ends, and I’m still not sure what the whole point of this entire journey was, or what it was even trying to say other than some really surface-level stuff. It all just felt extremely shallow and underdeveloped to me. A better, more engaging storyline might've convinced me to forgive the bland and overly spacious level design (resulting in entirely too much running around), the one-note combat and the simplistic puzzles: but as it stands now, Heartworm just felt like an immensely shallow and barebones experience, presented with distractingly subpar voice acting. For the full-length version of this review (along with many other honest indie game reviews), check out our Curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6481290-GTOGG/

Take the camera combat mode from Fatal Frame series, Add the atmosphere of the Silent Hill series, (with some neon lights and purple haze instead of rusty fog) Throw in some puzzles like the early Resident Evil games, (keys, clocks, piano puzzles, emblems) Mix it all up and VOILA! you have Heartworm. Heartworm is a love letter to retro PS1 survival horror games. Even though it borrows heavily from the greats as mentioned above, it manages to carve out its own niche due to the fact that the art style and story are 100% original. The developers are adamant they do not use AI in any of their assets, music, or spoken dialog, which is a huge bonus. Heartworm took me 5.5 hours to complete my first playthrough. + First off, the music in this game is incredible. Each area has its own original unique beautiful music. Most of the tracks are hauntingly melancholic, which suits the story perfectly. + The sound effects are also amazing. I especially loved shooting the statues in the second chapter and hearing the screams as they fall apart. The static enemies also let off some hauntingly eerie noises when defeated. There are some great uses of soundstage effects that sound as if they are in the foreground, behind you, or behind other sounds, on the headphones. + The voice actress of the main character nailed her part, some of the best I've heard in awhile. Unforgettable. + The bosses in this game are well designed. The 2nd and 3rd chapter bosses are gorgeous. + The graphics are PS1 style, but they are extra crispy and beautiful if you run the game on 4K without the pixelation on. + The story is original and interesting. There are 3 endings to the game. All of the cutscenes are beautifully artistic and gorgeous. + Crazy outfits and costumes to unlock upon beating the game and finding certain secrets. + Fun Easter Egg references to old school RE games. - There is a sliding puzzle in this game. Everyone hates sliding puzzles and supposedly there is a big movement of people trying to get developers not to put these puzzles in games. Usually super annoying, the puzzle in this game is only mildly annoying... - Due to the fact that that this game is dreamlike, it is very easy to get lost. The landscapes do not make sense at all. Library leads to clock tower leads to garden leads to strange purple walkway leads back to foyer....you get the drift. Add in all the weird camera angles and its a bit headache inducing at times. - The combat in this game is too simple, and the "Modern Mode" of combat is a bit janky while you aim. The enemies are a bit too easy to kill, the game would welcome a hard mode. (I believe the developer mentioned hard mode will be included in the future) This game borrows from the best but holds its own identity high in the spotlight. Artistic and Quality. Prioritizes story and atmosphere over combat. Overall 8.5/10

I give Resident Evil : Heartworm a 4/5 I have had this game on my wishlist for around a year i think, and when it came out, i bought it instantly. I had been very hyped since i first saw it on steam, as the screenshots and the trailer made it look like a classic PS1/VHS style horror game. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We will start with what i enjoyed; After playing the game i will say that it lived up to some of the hype, the graphics were very cool, the music and atmosphere were nice, and the survival horror genre is hard to mess up. My favourite thing about Heartworm is the puzzles, it really is like resident evil, and i felt smart after figuring some of them out, none of them felt too obscure or were too easy, it was well designed. I very much liked the creature designs, especially the bosses, and the animations were decent for a game of this quality, it was very pleasing to watch and look at. The gameplay was solid, i didnt experience many bugs or glitches, and i beat the game without needing a guide, in about 4-5 hours. I like the ability to change from modern controls to tank controls, although you usually end up using tank anyway, because the camera changes make modern movement difficult. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- However, the reason it gets a 4/5 instead of a 5/5 is mainly because the story was unfortunately a weak link, and this is largely because of the character of Sam. I think the story could be polished a little to make a bit more sense, or be a bit more coherent. Without spoiling too much, Sam is not a great mc, she reminds me very much of Bella from twilight, as she comes off as kind of a "Poser" emo girl who says a lot of seemingly cryptic stuff to sound damaged and cool, but when you actually break down what she just said, it makes no sense. She also tends to juxtapose a few times, in the beginning she states that she is fascinated with death, but then later says that she stopped coming to a beloved park because she saw a dead deer there one time. I cant quite tell what type of person she is, especially due to the voice acting being very monotone and emotionless. By the end of the game, i understood that it is a story about grief, and dealing with losing a loved one, but i did not feel like i could relate to Sam at all. There were a few other issues with the game, such as the enemies being too easy as you can stunlock them, and the game itself not doing very much original with its mechanics or gameplay features, but it would be very nitpicky, and it did not effect my experience very much. I hope that this review makes sense, and that maybe the developer sees it, as i am very excited to see what they make in the future. I hope that heartworm is successful and that they can continue to make more games, i am a fan so far. I had a fun time while playing, it is a very relaxing game, and if you sit in a dark room, play it slowly, and feel the atmosphere the game gives off, you will probably have a fun time too, so i recommend this game.

This is difficult. The game has beautiful stylization and location design. ( turn off pixel filter ). Beautiful music. But it's so straightforward that it surprised me. You can't get lost or wander off. Because of that, the levels felt small to me. Rather than an adventure game, it reminded me of a walking simulator, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I love walking simulators, but... The game is also much emptier than I expected. There's no interaction with characters. There are no NPCs. As a player, you don't meet anyone. Not much happens. The puzzles are cute and nicely done, but not particularly memorable or difficult. So I got pretty bored at times. Because of that, the story didn't stick in my head either. I don't think about it. I don't want to compare the game to something like Silent Hill 2 or something, but these types of games need more things happening while you play (characters, dialogues, lots of questions about what's going on). I enjoyed it, but the replay value is zero, so I don't know if I'll ever return to the game. It took me about 5 hours to complete it at a slow pace. Great work btw

The only strengths I could commend this game having are its atmosphere and music. Beyond that it feels very flawed and a majority of gameplay is spent walking. It says I have 4 hours in-game, but my first run was about 2.8 hours and about only 30 minutes was spent doing anything other than walking. It was an unenjoyable game that I would have preferred having no combat or puzzles to begin with. The combat does fortunately have two controls- either over the shoulder (OTS) or tank- but the issue is that if you use OTS then you will be actively fighting the nauseating camera's movements to figure out where you are and where you're moving. The benefit though is that you get a red circle showing when an enemy can be injured by your photos. Tank has no benefits except it's easy to control and you don't fight the camera to know where you are. Bosses are a joke, enemies can all be outrun or you can walk through/around, and there aren't really any "puzzles" that involve the camera either. The story itself was decent. I really appreciate the ending I received and how it added more context and flavor to the main character, the world, and a certain someone in one compact and good cutscene. The allegory and themes of death, grief, and acceptance are well done and are sprinkled throughout the story too and it's more than obvious so it's not a spoiler that you'll be dealing with common topics in comparison to other titles in this field. I can see the Silent Hill and Resident Evil inspiration, but it doesn't feel like it sets itself apart strong enough with its symbolism, puzzles, and powerful imagery. The warning about the game being "graphic" feels tacked on, either as a silly nod to Silent Hill or because of the presence of "strong horror elements" which it lacks. There was one meta puzzle that questions the player/character that I genuinely thought was a good addition and strong because of how it contextualizes the character's inner thoughts, trauma, and grief. That and a certain thing involving candles were the only two puzzles that I felt were memorable. This is a minor, personal, nitpick. When it comes to writing notes in horror games they need to sound convincing, as if they are being written by someone within the world and living out whatever events they are currently in. Heartworm lacks this and a fair amount of notes and journals are written far too meticulously detailed with diction that doesn't fit something that would be written organically. Simply: The notes feel written by a game developer and not a character that exists within the game. It happens, but it takes me out of the game because it's just too jarring of a disconnect. That's kind of it. Very short game, too much walking, and it felt like the gameplay was getting in the middle of me trying to enjoy the art direction and atmosphere. There really was only... one or two good designed puzzles, while everything else was mediocre to as (this is me being nitpicky, I have a vendetta against these) a randomized sliding puzzle. Good luck to speedrunners if they struggle with that. I don't feel interested enough to get the two other endings now that I got the best outcome. I really can't sit and enjoy slamming the character's face against walls as I run around for another two hours or less.

I like the atmosphere, and music for the most part of this game. While I usually enjoy Survival horror games this one I just found asinine with how tedious it was trying to find where I needed to go. The way enemies can't really be dealt with, the few times I got punished for exploring a corner only for these shambling enemies to get behind me and I have to waste film because I don't have a choice. The first real "boss" music and mechanics are just tedious and rather stupid as the amount of film it used to beat. I just can't really in good conscience recommend this game unless you're really a survival horror fan and just want a new game to play in that genre.

This game is straight gas! Word on my mother!

I cannot recommend this game enough. This is THE perfect callback to the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill, mixed with the Fatal Frame technique with a camera as your means of defense. The atmosphere was great, soundtrack was incredible and very fitting, combat was clunky but honestly it wasn't that bad and added to the overall charm of this game. Wonderful voice acting from the main character, Sam, as well. Made her feel relatable or like she was a friend. The story was great as well. Makes you think and I love that. Though the inspiration drawn from retro/PS1 horror is there, Heartworm stands on its own with its uniqueness and stands out. Infinity out of 10 on this one.

Heartworm is a game with loads of cool ideas, but it doesn't build on any of them. Exploring the opening house feels incredibly tense. The beautiful evening atmosphere leaking through the creaking ruins. The evocative notes. The camera flash mechanic to light your way through the dark is genius and the moment you see it in action your brain is abuzz thinking of the tricks the game could pull using it. Will monsters react to the flash and chase you? Will there be hallways filled with creatures that you can silently tiptoe around in the dark so long as you keep the light off? Will certain areas look safe, but the instant you flash your camera creepy silhouettes and figures will slink along the wall? Maybe. The game never does any of those things. Or anything else with the idea of the camera. You get "camera mods" instead of weapons. So instead of a shotgun replacing your pistol, you get a burst shot: Three blasts instead of one. Cool idea! What other mods are there? I have no idea. I only ever found that one in the very first area. Could I have missed every one in the game? I suppose that's *possible*. I never felt under-powered. I never even died. The enemies are so slow and easy to dodge there wasn't a feeling of danger even in hallways filled with a dozen of creatures. The only time I almost died was when two statue enemies stunlocked me into a corner and I couldn't do anything for 35 seconds. But i don't think that was intentional. The theming of the game is incredibly weak. There are no narrative throughlines linking things together other than "death is kind of scary", and that's a problem in a surreal game where past traumas are meant to manifest and inspire the horror. If you have nothing to say with your story, the monsters and area design are going to fall flat no matter how beautiful or scary they look, because there's no emotion or meaning behind them. You go from fighting television static monsters to a giant spider to earthen dogs and statues. Why does your camera hurt this spider? Why are you fighting it? Why do dogs die when you take a picture of them? Come to think of it, what relevance do the static monsters have to Sam or her life or even the magical otherworld house we're exploring? Where is this aesthetic coming from? The answer: Who cares? The creative director had an idea for a thing, so it's in the game now. It is extremely easy to see where the inspiration for this game comes from, and I don't mean that as a compliment. There's "homage" and then there's "Heartworm". The music in the game is beautiful, but that might be because some of the tracks are absolute dead-ringers for famous horror classic tunes. I don't mean "they sound similar". I mean "they sound the same". Like "Hey, this might count as plagiarism" the same. For example, the song "Into the House (Bonus)" on the creator's bandcamp for the game's demo is almost a beat-for-beat recreation of Resident Evil 1's "Mansion 1st Floor" theme. Heartworm's third area is a giant clock tower resembling Resident Evil 1's mansion fused with RE2's police station to the degree there is an EXACT stairwell from said mansion recreated shot for shot, camera angles and enemy placement included. I played the game with two other friends and all three of us recognized it on sight. I'm so disappointed that I don't want to recommend Heartworm to anyone, because I really loved my first hour with it. It had so much potential and so many great ideas to build off of, but it didn't build off of any of them. In the end, this really is just a game where the creator said "...What if *I* made a Resident Evil game?" And then they did. And that's the end of that. There's no story being told. There's no unique ideas being presented or explored (in the writing or the mechanics), so there's just not very much to say about it. If you are a fan of this genre and you want a solid throwback to old PS1-era horror games, I recommend you pick up "Crow Country". That's a game with a cool narrative, an original aesthetic, and it manages to pay homage to the great horror giants of the past without copying their homework outright.