HIIS Review — Russell Troxel

Feb 21

Feb 21 HIIS Review

I suspect one of the least important impacts the COVID-19 outbreak had was the severe disruption of video game development. This fact, combined with the recent release of the newest generation of Sony and Microsoft gaming consoles, has led to fewer games being released in an already slow part of the year. But nature abhors a vacuum, so when AAA games leave a void, indie games fill the gap and shine in their newfound spotlight. This is how I was able to discover HIIS, a fascinating game of deduction and mysticism from newcomer game developer Bottled Fantasy Games.

Players will become intimately familiar with this scene: their cauldron, basket of bulk flask, and a storage shelf to keep wares until shipping them to customers

HIIS is a game about discovering the power of nature and using it to help others. Players take on the role of an island hermit and potion maker who is either new to the job, new to the island, or an amnesiac. In spite of being a trusted authority on elixirs and cures for a wide variety of ailments, the player has no idea what a potion made from any of the plants native to the island will do. This means that players must test their brews to make sure they fulfill customer requests. On top of that, some of the island plants are more difficult to harvest, requiring creative solutions to harvest them. And for the more adventurous alchemists, the island hosts numerous mysteries to puzzle through.

The primary feature and selling point of HIIS is its enigmatic design. Beyond the basic mechanics of interacting with objects, brewing potions, and harvesting and cultivating plants, the player is told next to nothing. The first plant the player makes into a potion is an easier task, a plant that looks like an eye and causes eyes to grow on things, but beyond that there are very few plants whose effects can be guessed at. This leads to the player having to experiment over and over on themselves and their belongings to understand every potion’s application. A great example of this is a tree-like plant I discovered within the two hours of playing but not knowing its effect for the next 10 hours because I had never thought to jump while under its influence. Players will only ever learn as much as their intellect and creativity lead them to discover. And once they have learned something, the game presents a journal to record their findings. However, in keeping with the spirit of the game, these recordings aren’t done automatically or in a streamlined manner. Instead, the journal is essentially a word document inside the game, allowing players to take whatever notes they want.

Look upon my garden and despair. Or maybe instead look upon it and remark on the variety of plants available to be cultivated and brewed into helpful potions.

Players can take whatever notes they like in their journal. This level of personalization reveals how I conduct myself in my personal life, which is to say I swear with unnecessary frequency.

This feature extends beyond the game’s plants and potions as well. There are a number of items and artifacts the player can discover, earn, or purchase as the game goes on that appear to have no purpose on first inspection but hint at a deeper secret. Early on, I purchased a gilded cup because it cost about as much as the incredibly useful compass so I assumed it would be a helpful thing to have. At the very least, I thought it would allow me to mix and consume potions in a more fabulous manner. After 16 hours with the game, I still have no idea what this cup does and now I have two of them, thanks to a customer. There were times I genuinely enjoyed this structure because the only thing that decided between my successes and failures was my own mind. If I couldn’t advance in the game, it wasn’t because I got a bad roll on a loot table, I didn’t have the right gear, or my reflexes weren’t sharp enough, which I don’t see often in video games.

Unsurprisingly, this same reclusive attitude that kept me coming back to this game over and over was also responsible for a good portion of frustrations. While I was initially giddy with curiosity over the gilded cup, at this point all I see when I look at it is wasted money. By the same token, I’m fairly certain I haven’t progressed very far in the game because I fulfilled only a few before being completely stumped by one order. And before that, I only completed a prior order thanks to blind guesswork, frantically submitting one potion of every kind I could brew until one was accepted by the client. Additionally, I’m fairly certain there are parts of the island I haven’t seen thanks to this game’s astonishingly short days and no real way to record where the player has traveled or set up way points, at least so far as I’ve discovered. I think the main factor that will decide whether or not someone has fun with HIIS is how well they can cope with repeated failure. Either that or just being smarter than I am.

Here at the dock you can ship potions to customers with the crate or purchase items from the trader’s raft.

Potions can have a wide variety of effects on the player, including vision problems, enhanced physical abilities, and altered states of being.

If you’re the sort of person who enjoys a challenge enough that you’re still undecided on whether or not to buy HIIS, there are some other issues that plague the game. At about the six hour mark, one of the plants I was cultivating in my garden suffered a glitch that froze it at the stage where it was fully grown but prevented me from actually harvesting it. This meant that my garden was only mostly what it was intended to be, not a debilitating loss but still a point of frustration. Then there were the moments I had to close the game and restart from my last save because I had become trapped on a peculiar edge of the landscape, usually one of the game’s many trees. Lastly, though the game is relatively simple, it made my computer work harder than I’ve heard for far more graphically and mechanically demanding games. I imagine most of these issues can be fixed given time, so don’t make them the sole reason you stay away from HIIS, but it is worth noting.

It seems developer Bottled Fantasy Games was founded specifically to make HIIS, given their name, and I can’t find any information on the developers’ past work, so it seems likely that this is their first project. I think that fact goes a long way to making the game’s shortcomings much easier to stomach, whether it be the polarizing concept or the technical issues. I don’t think this game has the highest highs in gaming but the intriguing mystery of HIIS kept me coming back for more. And at only $10, it’s easy to justify the purchase if you have even the slightest interest in it.