The Heroes Around Me Reviews

A very pretty, very artistic, very cute game that struggles only because it's so heartfelt. This game is effectively a slice-of-life family drama about a father and daughter. They begin estranged, bond, and then hopefully through trials and tribulations, both grow together. It's set in Southern China and is meant to evoke strong feelings of nostalgia for that rural, rustic, small-town Chinese vibe. The art on display is gorgeous! It's all 2D, well animated, and a treat to look at. The rural town is lavishly created, and there's plenty to see and do. You're mostly given various tasks, such as go meet some people for a conversation or find a lost key. Outside of these exploration moment are the narrative focused scenes, using the background as set-dressing for the brooding story they tell. And the story is incredibly charming. At first, many of the characters almost seem unlikeable. But as the narrative explores their various struggles, it really humanizes them in a big way. The father-daughter dynamic is the core here, and you're really rooting for your little girl after the first few chapters, and glad to see these two bond so well. There are various subplots such as a dragon-boat race, or helping the daughter be more social, among other things. But it always returns to that core story of a dad taking care of his kid. The problems are in the unrestricted nature of this story. Holy crap is this a yapping simulator. If you enjoy slice-of-life stories, you're generally quite tolerant of character yammering a bit; the stakes are low, and you know that, so there is joy in seeing the characters talk about their life. But the writers here didn't know when to shut up. EVERYONE here yaps, CONSTANTLY. If the goal was to evoke that feeling of chatty adults with too much time on their hands, they captured it perfectly. If the gibbering conversations were consequential, it'd be fine. But they rarely are, someone yammering about chores or personal issues of characters you don't know who aren't relevant. This would be fine if it were isolated, but it happens throughout, making the screenplay seem padded. It also happens during critical story beats, where something very dramatic might have just happened, and meanwhile you have to go through a needless conversation about the weather. It's like finding grit in your food; the food itself is delicious, but ew, why is there dirt in it? This is compounded by the story really dragging its heels. It feels like either the devs were worried their story would be too short, or otherwise, wanted to pump so much love into their story that they felt the need to cram as much stuff as possible into it. The story really builds up to that big boat-race, where a fantastic and emotional scene happens. Ah, what a nice ending and... oh, we've got more to go. But now it's building up to a potential illness, and... wait, a new subplot within the illness arc? Okay but after that... wait there's a flashback? All of these scenes are individually lovely and touching, but it felt like the game kept plodding along, and would have been greatly enhanced by cutting out like an hour of gameplay. This isn't aided by the harsh reality that this is an indie game, so it comes with familiar indie game jank. Some animations take INSANELY long for no reason; cuts between scenes sometimes take eons to transition; exploration is mostly holding down an arrow key, which isn't exactly riveting. And while some scenes let you spam through the dialogue, others are meant to be dramatically timed with the music, but because the writers aren't particularly good at dramatic timing, you're left staring at the screen until the game decides its ready to move on. I'm harsh on this game, but only because I really enjoyed it and wish it could have been even better! It's not that this game doesn't have potential - it's legitimately a good game that people should play. But I can't discount the issues that did inevitably grate on me and brought me out of the experience. This is great if you want something emotional, cozy, and charming!

I can't understand Chinese, so I only played the English version. While the story is still understandable, there's still quite a lot of typos (mostly spacing, misspelling lonely into "lonly", etc.), grammatical mistakes (e.g. A lot of people refer to each other as "they" when it should've been clearly her or him. There are no enby characters), bits of untranslated parts (there are two kids in the game console store that still speak Mandarin), and translation that goes too long that it goes beyond the text box on some mini-games. It takes you out of the story a little bit. That said, the story is pretty touching. It's pretty much what it's said on the tin -- a single father raising his daughter and dealing with loss and grief. It's not overly depressing, just bittersweet, and has some good moments. Not much in the gameplay standpoint, since it's pretty much a linear game; it's more like a walking simulator where you can bask pixellated rural Chinese town in the '90's, which isn't bad for this game. The soundtrack is also pretty good. However, I wish the story is longer. It ends pretty abruptly in my opinion; just when things are starting to get interesting and I was starting to get invested with the villagers and the dad's backstory, it ends. Which is a BIG shame. Also, the fishing minigame felt incredibly useless since you can't do anything with it -- I thought I can sell the fish I catch or cook something with it, but nope. Not even a list to check if I've collected everything or not. Small nitpick, but feel very wasteful since there's a couple fishing spots in the game. All in all, it's a pretty straightforward, heartwarming and bittersweet narrative game that ends too soon. If you like a walking simulator with a decent story, you'll like it.

for a visual novel lover, this is a MUST HAVE!! you will have your heart tossed around from side to side, up to bottom.. and you'll shed tears just for hearing the songs. i LOVE this game! finished the game, but missed the characters already.. dunno if i could find another heart warming game like this again in the future. for now, i'm so glad i bought this. so worth the price!!