Cold at Heart is a RPG Maker VX Ace game that was created for the McBacon Jam. The current state of the game is still a demo and was reviewed on September 21, 2016.

You and your droid buddy have crash landed on some planet. Your wife has crash landed on a different location on the planet. So you go on your way to try to find her. You enter into a colony that has some sort of plague infecting all the robot A.I. So in order to proceed you need destroy infected A.I. and reactivate different parts of the facility.



The graphics look custom made and look very nice. The science feel of the game is really pulled off well with the sprites and the face graphics. I particularly liked the area outside the colony. The snowy area was a very interesting place, and I sort of wish there was more to do there before you went inside.

A lot of the game appears to driven by the exploration of the facility. You need to go to different parts and interact with the environment to find things. You can find data logs, items, and equipment for your characters. Actually exploring to find equipment is paramount since it's the only way you can improve your character's stats.



Now let's go to the part of the game I hate. The combat system is front view and the graphics look amazing. And the step ratio for you to get into battle is handled very nicely. But... Seeing "Miss" and "Evade" too frequently can quickly become very frustrating. In addition at the end of battle all you receive is a couple of credits to spend on the vending machine. And what your given isn't nearly enough to outweigh the combat's biggest issue. You don't receive experience at the end of battle. So say goodbye to any thoughts of level grinding. If the game is too hard for you, well that's just too bad. So your best option is to try to explore to find the equipment and items. And you'll get into battles exploring. And since it's pointless to fight battles you'll end up just wanting to escape. You'll end up failing a couple times before you can actually escape. The game just becomes a circle of frustration when all you want to do is progress through it.

Overall the game has a nice premise. It's a game I would be willing to explore more if the combat system issues were addressed. The combat appears to want to be challenging with the skill sets and abilities, but when the skill misses or the enemy evades it just becomes frustrating. I'm not saying the combat can't be difficult. There just needs to be more in place to balance that difficulty out. At this point I feel the demo has enough content to give a score, so I give it a 2.5 / 5.