#run based

“Gather your allies. Eliminate Angels. Transform into a Magical Girl. Slay God. Kernel Hearts is a multiplayer co-op roguelike action RPG about four magical girls and their attempt to save a world drowning in ashes.” The devs’ own synopsis on Steam gives the broad strokes pretty well but WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT DON’T LEAVE YET!!!

Okay look. I get it, I’m not a huge roguelike fan either. I need a strong sense of progression in my games and so anything endlessly repeatable and/or that relies mostly on an intrinsic sense of high score chasing or time chasing whatever are just not my thing.

BUT!

This game’s got the juice. I promise. Let me give you the hard sell (EXTREMELY FIGURATIVELY – Idon’tknowthesedevsandhavenevercommunicatedwiththemandamnotbeingpaidfortheseopinions), and there is no better place to start with my kinds of people than its non-mechanical elements. Let’s start with the setting as a whole.

Kernel Hearts takes place in a post-apocalyptic future Earth, albeit one transformed by a now long-standing war between humanity and God and His angels. The most harmful of these transformations is the appearance of the “ashfall,” an ever-present deluge of ash that falls from the sky, creating an atmosphere that is toxic for most people as well as causing a creeping supernatural memory loss. To protect themselves, the last remaining people on Earth must wear masks when they go outside.

In the hopes of ending this cursed existence and putting a stop to the war, mankind has been dispatching teams of Magical Girls into the Tower for decades, however this has met with little success. Left with no other options, however, mankind has been forced to continue to endure this struggle against all hope.

At the point in time that we join the story, most of the Earth has already perished from the war and the last remaining bastion of mankind is the town of Babel, which resides near the base of the Tower of Babel, the home of God and His angels. The golden age where Magical Girls and the supplies to support them were plentiful is long-since in the past – these days they are precious, desperately protected commodities. This is also an age where most named NPCs sport visible scars (physical and/or emotional) and cigarettes, testament to a lifetime of battles fought and losses endured. Everybody has more than their fair share of tragic stories, but also a purpose that pushes them to always take one more step forward.

Despite the somber setting and overall tone, it is also far from humourless as you may be able to guess from the piece of promo art that I decided to use at the head of this article. Even the most dower-seeming of these characters are written and drawn skillfully enough that they feel like more than just another Edgy Sad Soldier At The End Of The World™ – they are well-rounded and feel like people who still have something to hold onto and fight for. Despite the long, hard-fought battles, they haven’t yet given up or given into despair, and so they still treasure and nurture connections with each other, goof around, smooch around, and live lives worth living. Admittedly I’m the sort of person who often turns away from post-apocalyptic stories because to me they mostly feel overly edgy and cynical, featuring characters who nearly to a one have essentially already given up on trying to be happy. The sort of take that Kernel Hearts is playing with, on the other hand, is the exact kind that I can easily fall in love with. As a result, despite all, this world still manages to feel very warm and lived-in, even as it also feels desperate and nearly – but not quite – hopeless.

There are many subtle and unsubtle connections that one can make between this game and, specifically, Neon Genesis: Evangelion and NieR: Automata, but I think this idea of the importance of cultivating connection and finding value in the beauty that still remains in the world are ones that will probably end up being the least-discussed. Tragically, I would say, because in all three stories’ cases they are so integral to what make them special, and what set them apart from so many other post-apocalypses.

Now that I have spent 550 words lecturing about the setting (oops), let’s talk characters.

Starting where the game did, the first character worth talking about is a man known simply as The Creator. Despite the grandiose name he is a human, albeit an incredibly important one. The reason why he is the first character that we as the player meet is because our actual first player character, Fernet, starts the game newly awoken from unconsciousness. This is because, due to the now-rare and precious nature of Magical Girls, they must now inhabit cybernetic bodies so that even if they fall in battle within the Tower, their minds can transfer into a new frame. What does this all have to do with the man known as The Creator? He is the one who created this system, and is the only one remaining who continues to maintain and improve it. Personality-wise he is intelligent and professional, and not especially expressive, but there is a nevertheless a warmth underlying that demeanor. He is, ultimately, here to take care of you, and even cracks a smile now and then.

Next up is our first player character: Unit-001 – Fernet, the “Prodigy Tactician.” As you might expect, she is the pink-haired one in all of the promotional material. The game’s personnel file describes her as Argentinian, with a strong personality and, amusingly, a case of “main character syndrome.” Gameplay-wise she is the balanced sword wielder whose magic centers around summoning. She is able to maintain multiple summons at once and so the game advises that mana management is important when playing her to keep her at her full potential. At the beginning of the game she holds an interesting place in the cast because despite being the team leader, she is also the most recent to have died and come back, which means her memories are the most recent to be reset, which in turn means that she needs to rely on the others to re-teach her everything that she needs to know. While Magical Girls don’t lose all of their memories when they die, they do lose a significant chunk of their most recent ones and tend to need to be reminded of various things, including who the rest of her squadmates are.

One extra layer is that she is the first one to be returned into The Creator’s latest version of the Magical Girl frames – a version that notably allows them to retain all of their memories on “death.” This means that going forward, Fernet will not need to worry about losing her memories when she dies. This setup is a very clever narrative device because it explains how these characters can keep dying and returning to fulfill the game’s roguelike format, justifies why Fernet needs to learn about everything fresh to efficiently introduce the player to the world and its big concepts, all while explaining why Fernet would no longer need to keep relearning about these things every time she dies over the course of the game (which would become taxing and irritating to players’ patience before long). Even better, this sets up a cool dynamic where we as Fernet are the one who need to be retaught and taken care of at the beginning of the game, but then as the story progresses the others will no doubt end up dying, and because they’re not yet in the new special frames they should all end up taking their turn in needing us to teach them in a cute little reversal.

The next member of Fernet’s squad and thus next playable character is Unit-002 – Spika, the “Sword of the East.” Described as a child of post-war Japan, she was born alongside her twin Isukiri, both with only one eye each. They were raised with an iron fist and unlike most Magical Girls, were not trained to wield firearms or magic, instead relying solely on a katana. Gameplay-wise Spika is a rushdown character with wide, sweeping attacks. Her stand-in for spells use her vital energies to do cool anime samurai things like launching exploding spirit orbs and blade beams. In the demo she is unlocked after defeating a certain boss (which I did not do personally). She is the most introverted of the team, but is sweet and seems to have a real weakness for cute, fluffy things.

Next up is our third squadmate slash playable character, Unit-003 – Laika, the “Crimson Demon.” Described as a prodigy born in the USSR who has deep knowledge of magic. She wields Damocles, her 100kg greatsword, alongside her hemokinesis which “was the fear of the western block.” The playable character with the maximum complexity rating, she is able to switch between her Damocles-wielding stance and a faster hand-to-hand fighting stance. As you might expect, Damocles does big damage but also leaves Laika more vulnerable than the other characters. Her spells appear to be good for crowd control and logistical support, such as shredding enemy shields. Tragically not playable in the demo. She is practical – a consummate professional. Terminally deadpan but deceptively patient, helpful and has yet to succumb to what seem like deeply set nihilistic tendencies.

Our final squadmate and playable character is Unit-004 – Dolce, the “Deadly Performer.” For her I’m just going to straight-up quote her description straight out of the game because the devs were cooking: “Italians have the gift of beauty, wherever there is science they give birth to art. So, when a charismatic and gorgeous Magical Girl was born, instead of a solider they made a Star.” All of her gameplay data was still kept confidential in the demo, and needless to say she is also unplayable.  )))):   She is easily the most outgoing and expressive of the group, and very kind. The only extravert on the team aside from Fernet herself.

I went into this demo fully expecting Laika to be my favourite, but honestly coming out of it Dolce really surprised me and turned out to be a real contender. I ended up loving the entire squad both individually and as a squad with hints of real chemistry.

Straying further from our playable roster we come to the only other named character in the village, Rhea. Alongside her pet dog Haru, they are the last two remaining members of the Lost and Found guild. She works to retrieve and return people’s lost things. She is abnormally resistant to the memory loss effects of the ashfall and so she decided to, uh… found… the Lost and Found Brigade, because people would commonly forget items, even ones that they cherish, due to the amnesic effects of the ashfall. The brigade eventually turned into the Guild, and they ended up becoming more scavengers and treasure hunters, locating and bringing back outside supplies into Babel. I found this to be a really cool bit of incorporating a character and their motivations directly into the game’s cool world lore! Things like this are what makes cool lore feel truly impactful as opposed to just an interesting entry on a wiki or whatever. I really liked this a lot.

Straying even further now, into the Tower itself, we move on to Tofu & Toke, the proprietors of the Relic shop. I’ll get more into Relics and the shop itself later but for now – Tofu is the one that really runs things here. He is a scarred-up and rugged wolfman who has clearly seen more than his share of action in the past. He is direct but always respectful, and has a streak of dry humour in him as well (continuing this game’s trend of avoiding making even the more rugged characters completely humourless). Toke is the second of the set – a small human child who helps Tofu run the shop and has seemingly become his charge for reasons not given in the demo. He is silly and precocious, and has a good rapport with Tofu even if they get on each others’ nerves.

1,300 words spent on characters later (oops) we reach our final guy – Daiki. A mysterious elevator operator within the Tower that serves as your exit to progress further in. He is very friendly and carefree, almost suspiciously so… (I don’t actually know what his deal is because they don’t explain it in the demo, I’m just side-eyeing him real hard based on pure instinct.)

Much like in Hades, after a couple failed runs the named NPCs will have new dialogue, which does a great job at maintaining a sense of forward progression for me despite the roguelike of it all. As I mentioned before this really is so so important for me as I habitually ignore most roguelikes because I just really can’t stand the idea of not feeling like I’m making any meaningful progress from death to death to death to death to death. If a game is going to force me to replay the same stages over and over again then I do need it to meet me halfway and let me at least have a sense of progression in the story and/or character relationships. (I’ll reiterate that this did only progress once or twice in the demo, however I feel like it is implying that this will continue to happen throughout the full game. Maybe not every single time because they aren’t exactly a Supergiant-sized studio, but at a reasonable clip. This is, of course, pure speculation on my part.)

Next let’s bridge the gap from non-mechanics into mechanics (I KNOW IT’S LONG ALREADY OKAY) smoothly by just quickly mentioning that there is actually a relationship-building mechanic in this game. I don’t know if these can lead to literal romantic relationships, so this is probably best thought of as being somewhat akin to the social links from Personas 3 onward. In this game you can raise named NPCs’ “Bond level” by collecting a certain number of a type of item during your forays into the Tower and handing them in, at which point they will rank up and you’ll be treated to a cutscene where they tell you more about themselves, and in doing so grow closer to you. In the demo I only experienced this once with Rhea, but it was enough to sell me on these devs’ pitch on it. Their writing is quite strong so that naturally goes a long way toward an almost entirely narrative feature like this.

Now finally we come to the actual “action RPG” and “roguelike” parts of this game.

In terms of Fernet’s game-feel I’d say the closest analogue to how she controls would be NieR: Automata. You can double-jump, grab onto platforming ledges, and perform a dash that converts directly into a sprint. If you perfect dodge you can perform a high-damage counter that I think you are invulnerable during. Offensively you have light and heavy attacks that can be mixed into different combinations to perform different combos.

You also have two spell slots that you “fill” by purchasing them at moon shrines, which you find while exploring the Tower’s maps. The currency that you use to buy spells is the most commonly-found and disappears after the end of a run, so there is no reason at all to horde it. Likewise, spells that you purchase disappear after a run ends so you don’t have to be too precious about which ones you choose beyond what sort of build you want to aim for. Also, as I mentioned briefly during the character descriptions, it appears that these spells will be character-specific, with most of Fernet’s options being various summons.

Game-feel aside, the overall flow is more similar to Elden Ring: Nightreign or Risk of Rain. I say this because you have to make the exact same types of judgement calls during a run, namely: how much time do you spend going around gathering resources, equipment and items versus gunning it straight to the exit and risking being underpowered for the boss and following stages? In Nightreign the primary time pressure was of course the deadly closing circle, and in Risk of Rain the game’s difficulty setting itself increased in real-time. In this game you have a Sin meter that gradually fills over time. As it gets close to the final 10%-15% you can start to see signs of change in the sky – namely a giant flying Biblically accurate angel ominously watching you from on-high, well outside of your ability to attack it. Once the Sin meter completely fills all Hell Heaven breaks loose and the angel just rains down an endless supply of exploding energy orbs until you either escape or die. Very probably die. Thankfully, very much unlike Risk of Rain, your Sin meter starts from empty at the beginning of every stage, so you don’t have to worry about your progress carrying over between stages or runs.

(I’ll give a bit of a disclaimer here and say that the one time that my Sin meter completely filled may have been a run when that Biblically accurate angel would have been my boss for that stage..? So it’s hard for me to say for sure based on my own experience whether the specifics of the Sin meter filling are specific to the boss that you’re set to face, or specific to the stage that you’re on, or just always the same each time.)

The maps themselves are quite large so as tempting as it may be, you really don’t want to push your luck too far, especially after the first map. And you will be tempted, because the maps are designed quite well. No matter where you are there are always several points of interest within eyeshot, whether those be environmental features, shops or resources. This is a testament to not just the game’s technical side – I encountered less visibility issues with draw distance in this demo than I did with BOTW back on the Switch – but also a testament to the game’s overall design and layout of its maps, as well as the visual design and VFX on its free-floating currencies and shops. Everything is immediately identifiable from a distance, which is especially important in a game with such an impactful time constraint. It provides you with the information that you would need to make quick judgements on your destinations and priorities in a way that, if it was not done properly, could easily lead to this experience having a lot of frustrating, aimless wandering. The ultimate version of this is the location of the exit, which periodically emits a burst of blue light to broadcast its position like a lighthouse.

Like any self-respecting roguelike this game has many a way to power yourself up during a run. I’ve already touched on spells, but another type are Mementos, which you get by spending blue currency to open Blue Coffins. This attracts waves of regular enemies to you, which you then have to defeat to earn the coffin’s prize. Themed as a lingering ability of the perished Magical Girl within, these offer various types of powerful but conditional passive buffs.

To give you an idea of what to expect here I’ll list some examples that I encountered in the demo:

Nakshatra’s Lust – Your combo finishers apply Divine Searing in a small area, which inflicts a stacking DOT effect that increases in damage with the number of stacks.

Airys Revenge – Summons a fairy familiar that will follow your attacks with its own large, powerful beam attack.

Aegis Last Wish – Killing an enemy grants you a shield stack, each one blocking a single attack.

Teressa’s Envy – Your attacks have a 50% chance to inflict Heavencrawl, which infects enemies such that they will take damage based on their MAX HP after accumulating 100 stacks. Obviously made for taking down the big boys.

Rino’s Punishment – Consuming an item summons a Hellgrasp on an enemy, reaching up from the underworld and damaging it.

Once you obtain a Memento you can also get the option at future coffins to level it up instead of obtaining a new one.

You can also find giant chests which also summon a wave of enemies to defeat in order to open it. These yield Relics, which are weaker passive traits than Mementos but also do not cost any type of currency to trigger. A couple examples of these from the demo are below:

Spellblade Rune – After casting a spell, your next attack deals a lot of extra damage.

Plastic Gems – Picking up an item creates a copy of it if you have the space.

Token of Strength – Gain +5% ATK.

The last way to gain power is to just find consumable items in the environment, like Heart Seeds which provide a powerful one-time heal. You can hold up to four of these at a time.

One last type of helpful thing that you can find in the maps are what I’ll broadly call “helpful environmental features,” which are specific to each map. For example, in the first map there are catapults placed all over that you can climb into to shoot yourself a large distance very quickly. In the second map there are these hidden sandpits that you can walk into that will drop you into an underground layer of the environment. This can be a good or bad thing depending on how strapped for time you are because they do contain helpful things like anywhere else on the map, but the only way to get back up to the surface is to find glowing jump pads. All of these map-specific features really make the prospect of progressing to new maps very exciting beyond the sheer “progress” aspect itself.

The last thing about the maps that I’ll mention is a really unique feature where these momentary hostile events can trigger at random. One example is a curse that darkens your screen around the edges, narrowing your line of sight. Another sets off a rapid series of telegraphed explosions under your feet that force you to keep moving regardless of what you had planned for the next 10 seconds or so. These are great, engaging little ways to add a bit of spice and break up the pace of a run without feeling too annoying or unfair.

Reaching the end of a stage means finding Daiki and his fancy, extradimensional elevator. This will bring you up to the stage’s boss arena which is a separate space from the rest of the map. I actually found the first boss to be a pretty fair difficulty – I was able to beat it on my first try, but not without exhausting all of my healing items or winning with only one or two hits from death. The second boss is significantly harder and actually requires you to have a strong handle on the game’s controls and some sense of a build. I only challenged it once during my time with the demo and got it maybe halfway through its health bar. He certainly felt achievable, just not without more practice or a strategic build, which is what you really want out of this type of game.

Once you defeat the boss you get a results screen showing a bunch of different stats. I imagine once you’ve spent some real time with the game this screen will give you a good gauge of your performance so far and how to plan your time in the next stage, but naturally only having played a couple hours of the demo I wasn’t at that point in my journey yet.

After this screen you get sent to a safe room between stages, the only one in the demo being Camelot, the Relic shop that Tofu and Toke run. Safe rooms also provide an opportunity to chat with your NPC squadmates, as well as Daiki and the proprietor(s) of the safe room itself. Naturally the proprietor(s) have a Bond level, meaning that they are open for the social link mechanic. Leveling up these NPCs’ Bond will also improve the quality of their shop’s offerings.

From here you can also access the Playroom, meant as just a casual space to safely mess around in if you’re playing multiplayer, with silly little mini-games, a tennis court and a jumping puzzle.

In terms of the game’s aesthetics there is a lot to love here. Firstly, its 2D art used in its character portraits and splash screens during cutscenes is a gorgeous anime style with character designs that feel lush without being complicated or ostentatious. Some of them in particular will, let’s say, do a lot for a lot of diverse tastes (though the trailer shows this off much better than the limitations of the demo). Its colour palette of desaturated warm tones really lends this world a warm, nostalgic feeling, like being huddled around a campfire together at night. Because of the anti-ashfall masks that most people in this world need to wear, even the random unnamed NPCs look very cool and distinct.

The 3D models may not be absolute peak quality, but Kernel Hearts definitely proves that sometimes the true strength of a game’s visuals comes from what you choose to do with what you’ve got rather than how hard you can push a GPU. I don’t know if the devs used any pre-built assets in their game (to be clear: not a crime, especially for a small team), but whatever the case may be, everything feels custom-made and cohesive. The skybox in the village of Babel is an especially stunning view of the apocalyptic, swirling mass of clouds and ash, a frozen tidal wave in the sky surrounding the inescapable, twisted form of the Tower that emerges from it like a monster poised to make the final, decisive world-ending blow to mankind.

The music of Kernel Hearts is also wonderful. Between the game’s trailers and the demo itself we are treated to a few genres, including city pop and electronica. Not just catchy, this score has a lot of heart that makes the whole project feel oddly life-affirming. This is in no small part due to the vocal tracks, which play not only during boss battles but also as the second stage’s theme. Cooler still is that across the available songs I noted lyrics in at least three different languages, those being English, Japanese and what I believe was French. I found it very cool that they have so many languages represented, and I’d guess that throughout the full game we may encounter more, too.

Ok people, we’re 4,500 words into this thing and I still haven’t explained everything there is to talk about (did I talk about the game’s permanent upgrades system that works like NieR’s plug-in chips and its UI explicitly references Evangelion? Nope!), but we’re going to have to stop eventually so let’s see if I can land this thing…

An incredible amount of time, skill and love has clearly gone into making this game and it shows at every turn. Its world has so much cool lore and a tragic yet welcoming tone. Every room, every environment is so thoughtfully designed and laid out that you’re immediately able to buy in. The setting is powerfully established right away, drawing you in with the familiar and keeping you immersed with everything that makes it unique. Kernel Hearts has the potential to become a formative piece of media for a lot of people who actually manage to learn about this criminally unknown and underdiscussed game, and I’ll be right there beside them.

The extent of my manic praise might seem very preemptive and overwrought given that I only experienced a very small slice of the full product through a demo, and maybe it will indeed turn out to be that way once the full game releases. In defense of my unbridled excitement, I will say this: not every demo that I’ve played has gotten me this excited, and as of the end of this Next Fest that brings me to over 90 demos in 2.5 years. I believe the fact that this game was able to elicit this reaction from me to begin with is an indication that there is something happening here, and while any speculation naturally holds a certain margin of error, I do think that is enough to at the very least avoid dismissing it outright.

(All this and the demo didn’t even give you access to their full Magical Girl “Devil Trigger” forms!)