Ice-Pick Lounge, the developer behind the Pathologic series, has announced Know By Heart, a game that is about accepting loss. Apparently the plot, music, and the gameplay, along with the "atmospheric mini-games" will work to weave an illusion about growing up and how time slips through our fingers as we get older. The game will take place in a quiet Russian town, where the Soviet-era "can still be seen or heard."
The player is Misha, the protagonist, who at the start of the game is stuck working in a boring job. However, the monotony is broken when his old school crush returns to town. For the first time in years, Misha thinks he can escape his boring life, and this story is interwoven with a gang of childhood friends coming back together and reconnect. However, as they try to rekindle their friendships, old memories and the growing bonds between them are threatened by... something. Nothing too dramatic, as this looks like a slice-of-life story, but that's literally how the blurb cuts off. Hopefully, it won't go as grim as Pathologic 2's story goes, but knowing Ice-Pick Lodge who knows?
The game will take about 5 hours and will try to have the atmosphere of a post-Soviet town at the turn of the century. There will be non-linear elements and several different endings for the player to uncover, with game mechanics that represent the thoughts and memories of the protagonist. The piano soundtrack will be "composed in a modern neoclassical style", which will probably be a turn off to a lot of people but sounds great to me.
Know By Heart is available to wishlist on Steam and will be released sometime in Q2 2021. If you are interested in Ice-Pick Lodge's Pathologic 2, it's available on Steam for 58% off at $14.69 (nice) American dollarydoos.
What do you think of this announcement? Have you played Pathologic 1 or 2? If you have, are you interested in this new title? Let us know in the comments!