This review was originally published on Fuwanovel Forums on February 2nd 2018. The game has since disappeared from Google Play, but should be possible to download from other apps/sites.
Locked Heart is a game I’ve encountered pretty much by chance, while randomly browsing VNs available on Google Play. As a nice-looking, free title it quickly found its way into my wishlist, but belonging to a genre I usually don’t play (and apparently following a very standard otome formula), it was never very high on my to-read list. Only another coincidence, leaving me stranded in a café for multiple hours with nothing but my tablet to accompany me, compelled me to run it and discover that I’ve stumbled upon something rather exceptional – definitely when it goes to Android games, but maybe even in a broader sense.
Developed by Dicesuki, a small studio from Philipines which later created the highly-regarded Cinderella Phenomenon, and published for Android in July 2016, Locked Heart quickly became one of the highest-rated mobile VNs out there, gathering an impressive 4.9/5 score among Google Play users and a decent VNDB rating. Of course, standing out positively on a marketplace full of horrible shovelware and shameless cash-grabs might not be a huge achievement by itself – in the case of this small otome however, this enthusiastic response from the readers seems to indicate a bit more than just contrast from the absolute trash that dominates mobile platforms.
The heavily-stylized introduction sequence and gorgeously designed UI quickly show off game’s aesthetic quality – something really stands out among the OELVNs available on mobile devices
What’s clear from the first moments after launching the game is its great aesthetic – the main menu screen, the UI and opening cutscene are all full of colour and gorgeously designed. While I often prefer simplicity over flashy, ornamental designs in VNs, here I couldn’t find any disharmony or exaggeration in the artstyle – it has an elaborate, feminine feel to it, but should be attractive to pretty much any reader that sees it. Other assets, such as sprites, backgrounds and CGs are of similar quality – the one paradox might be that because of how solid the general aesthetic is, the quite numerous CGs don’t stand out from what you’re normally seeing on the screen, making them a slightly less impactful than you would normally expect. Still, this is a kind of complain I would be happy to give more often.
Locked Heart’s story is definitely somewhat standard, but it’s the kind of simplicity that I also rather appreciate – taking common themes and simply realizing them in a masterful fashion, rather than creating pointless contrivance and forced plot twists. In this case, a young, orphaned woman leaves her home village to pursue a career as a cook and gets lost in the woods. Wondering hopelessly, she encounters a mansion belonging to a noble house d’Lockes, which was said to be cursed several years in the past and disappeared without a trace. In there, she finds the family, among it three young men, turned into toys – trapped in the cursed manor, she must find a way to lift the spell and in the process, obviously, falls in love.
The living toys you meet at the beginning of the story are genuinely cute and there's a lot of fun moments connected to them – to the point it feels like a bit of a shame how quickly they're gone
As cliched as this sounds, the details of the story and the bachelors themselves make it quite enjoyable – while the main “twist” is very much predictable, the stories and secrets of the heroes are interesting and written in a convincing way. While they all appear as clear archetypes at first, it’s easy to realize there’s some actual depth to all three of them – this makes the interactions with them and the (admittedly very timid) romance enjoyable to read. The routes also complement each other well, showing the story of the d'Lockes family from different perspectives and constantly adding new details about all the characters involved in it. The protagonist, Aura, might be slightly less fleshed-out, but still presents enough of girlish silliness and stubbornness, combined with life experience derived from her tragic childhood, to be a compelling character. That’s actually one of the tropes in Western otome games that I very much enjoy – protagonists in them are usually much more than just empty silhouettes that the player can insert him/herself into.
What I might complain about a bit is the structure of the story. After a tiny common route, which decides (in a somewhat unpredictable way) with whom of the three teddy bears/bachelors you’ll be locked in a romance route, the choices only matter by occasionally unlocking hidden CGs or, if you find the “perfect” combination, leading you to the alternative “best ending” with that specific character. In effect, there’s pretty much nothing you can do wrong – literally every path will lead you to a positive, romantic conclusion. This makes a lot of choices, many of which don’t lead to any interesting scenes or pieces of dialogue, very much meaningless, apart from being part of the cryptic, frustrating puzzle of finding that “one true path”. This irritating trope actually plagued another western otome I’ve played in the past, Michaela Laws’s Seduce Me, and I can’t say I was ever motivated to unlock those “true” endings.
Obviously, every guy in an otomege has to be not just handsome, but beautiful. Here, the two heirs and their butler could probably start a k-pop group without even changing their haircuts
I also have to mention that the initial premise, with all the characters being toys and sufferings connected to that curse, is pretty quickly forgone. This is definitely related to the overall length of the game (a single playthrough should take you just a little bit over two hours), but leaves you with a feeling of lost potential – the teddy bears just turns into beautiful princes a bit too fast. This is also a problem with supporting female characters, which seem quite interesting, but we just don’t see much of them during the story. Overall though, Locked Heart is a really sweet experience, perfect to fill a lonely evening or kill time during a few long bus rides. While there are many bigger, more memorable titles of this kind available on PCs and consoles, as a mobile game, and a free one at that, it’s definitely worth your time (although, for those interested, a PC version is also available).
Final Verdict: 3,5/5
Pros:
+ Three distinct, well-written routes
+ Interesting premise
+ Very good visuals
Cons:
- Pretty short, even when combining all the routes
- Could’ve done more with its main ideas
- Overly specific requirements for the “true endings”
VNDB page
Download Locked Heart for free
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