This is a first-person game in a small open world. You lived in a village which is now suffering from a plague. As the only person left to help, you set out to look for a medicine. The game is about exploring the environment, hunting animals and escaping from ghosts. The goal of the game is to collect five medicines that will help the villagers rebuild their small society, or save yourself. Your trust has previously been betrayed, so the choices you make are not black and white. When looking for a medicine you weigh your life, the life of villagers and animals around.

We treated the topic in the context of general issues and the state of affairs in the light of current events. Reconstruction functions as a physical and emotional phenomenon. In Their Hearts, My Hands we try to show the importance of the bond connecting society and how an individual is able to change a lot in it – both positively and negatively. In the game, we have the choice of rebuilding people’s society, seeking treatment, or ignoring it completely for players’ own survival.

Relations with the beings who live next to our heroine were also extremely important to us. They can help you reach your goal – save yourself or rebuild society in the village, as they restore the hunter’s health. But hunting for animals increases the threat that poses the world, and affects the ending, because the game can be passed without killing a single animal. We intentionally put the player in an uncomfortable situation when he has to decide at what price he is ready to win.

A person’s relationship with society is as strong as relationships built outside of it, also with the natural world. In our game, we wanted to give players the opportunity to make decisions as well as a sense of agency, which is why decisions made during the game and their final balance create eight different endings.

For us it was important to create a magical world that does not look sick. A living world thanks to the animals that live in it, which despite this creates a feeling of discomfort and terror. We put the player before the choice and the importance of responsibility for his actions that will help or, on the contrary, destroy the rebuilding of a small society.

Game created by Agata Chodera and Andrei Isakov in part of ZostanWDomuRobGry.pl game-jam.

Link to the game: https://paletizma.itch.io/their-heart-my-hands

Link to the jam page: https://www.zostanwdomurobgry.pl/