Tech-Noirish Visual Novel ‘Heart at Hack’ Hits Kickstarter

The year is 2034 — set in the fictional city of New Paris, Louisiana — and Darius’s relationship with Kimiko has begun to grow stale, leading him to flirt with various women online. While flirting with online user Alaska9 — whom claims to be a professional volleyball player — Darius receives a mysterious e-mail informing him of a programmed call <3@Hack, whose confusing name is pronounced “Heart-at-Hack”). With this software at his side Darius then decides to start checking up on Kimiko’s own online-communications, which embarks him to quickly wondering just whom exactly she’s been talking to extensively behind his back (as if Darius himself was one to talk).

No one ever truly understood why Kimiko — a former singer, now turned bounty hunter — was consistently interested in Darius since high school, seeing as how the now 30-something slacker has managed to accomplish much-of-nothing for largely his entire life. That inactivity and underachieving is about end now — however — as his newfound interest in Kimiko’s personal life is about to keep Darius extremely active, even if perhaps not exactly in the best of ways. His explorations might even led him into the deeper secrets of New Paris itself, a curious city whose existence is a mixture of colonial-architecture — state of the art technology — and endless performances given by brass bands.

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Thus goes the opening premise to Heart at Hack, a Sci-Fi Noir themed Visual Novel from Maboyz (a French-based development studio entirely comprised of former Ubisoft alumni). Already the team has put forward 6948€ of their own personal-savings on the project, an amount roughly equal to $8,000, and yet they quickly discovered the time needed to finish Heart at Hack was likely going to strip their means to stay financially afloat. Not willing to compromise their artistic-vision, just so that they might possibly get Heart at Hack shipped out the door, Maboyz then turned towards Kickstarter with a humble-request for an additional 2000€ in desperately needed development-funds.

Darius must not be the only person suddenly spurred on to dig as deeply as possible, seeing as how Maboyz’s Kickstarter — which still has 17 days remaining on the clock — is currently less than 100€ away from being fully-funded at the time this was written. Should you also happen to count yourself amongst those wanting to learn more about New Paris, you can currently secure your very own launch-day copy of Heart at Hack — expected to arrive this later this September — for a nominal-donation of just 2€. Meanwhile — for those whom donate further — additional rewards include: having your name listed in-game, digital-soundtrack downloads, a full-copy of the game’s script, printed-artwork of various significant-characters, or even the chance to appear in-game!

That said — assuming you now find yourself fully-excited to begin hacking Kimiko’s Minitel for private-conversations — do keep in mind that Maboyz’s Kickstarter is set to close on July 8th, after which this Louisiana-bound boat will be departing forever.