Heartland

Heartland
Title screen of the game
Game No.	546
Voting	6.67 points, 6 votes
Developer	Keith Robinson, Colin Grunes
Company	Odin Computer Graphics
Publisher	Odin Computer Graphics, Firebird, Pubblirome/Game 2000
Musician	Keith Tinman
HVSC-File	/MUSICIANS/T/Tinman_Keith/Heartland.sid
Release	1986
Platform	Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum
Genre	Adventure
Gamemode	Single player
Operation
Media
Language
Information	also known as Maghetto

Description

"Heartland" is an action adventure game spanning 5 levels with a total of 254 screens. There is no scrolling; the screens are displayed using a flip-screen method. As the wizard Eldritch, the player traverses the mythical realm of Heartland, oppressed by the evil Midan, collecting the last four pages of a spellbook to give the story of this land a happy ending, and destroying four other dark pages that Midan created to cause harm. Once the player has completed this task, Heartland is redeemed.

Backstory

Eldritch the Wizard

While rummaging in his grandmother's attic, the player stumbles upon a damaged book that tells the story of the magical Heartland — a tale filled with magic, roaming monsters, and damsels in need of rescue. However, the book's final pages, containing the story's happy ending, are missing, as the evil Midan has torn them out and scattered them to the four winds. The player then steps into the shoes of the good wizard Eldritch to take on Midan, his minions, and his spells, and to redeem the magical Heartland.

At the start of the game, Eldritch is unarmed and unable to defend himself against Midan's minions; he also lacks the book, whose last four pages must be retrieved. Fortunately, weapons can be found in numerous locations throughout Heartland, magically floating by and easily snatched up by Eldritch in mid-air.

Collecting and using a weapon

The ubiquitous gates lead to adjacent rooms

Individual areas of a level are connected by elevators

In the same way, our wizard arrives in a nearby room and acquires the damaged spellbook. Now he can begin searching for its missing pages, as the book will indicate the presence of a page in the current room by flashing – and Eldritch can pause at the right moment until the page appears.

At the start of the game, Eldritch must first capture the spellbook

The spellbook indicates the presence of pages in the current room by flashing

Design

The rooms of the individual levels are arranged in three dimensions. Adjacent rooms to the left and right can be entered by stepping off the sides of the screen; higher and lower levels of a level are connected by elevators. Furthermore, Eldritch can move between rooms arranged sequentially from the player's perspective by passing through gates that lead into or out of the screen plane.

Within each room, the player moves along a horizontal plane. At certain points, this plane has gaps that Eldritch must jump over (see the middle animation in the gallery above); otherwise, falling into such a gap will result in the game ending with the terse message "OUT OF LUCK".

Terse ending: The author...

...was no friend...

...of powerful words.

Graphics

The graphics are rendered in monochrome bitmap mode, using only a 256x144 pixel section for the Heartland scenes. The game periodically switches between two screens (at addresses $2000 and $6000, with corresponding color information stored in the screen memory starting at addresses $0400 and $4400, respectively). Therefore, the screen display only goes black for approximately 150 milliseconds during the transition from one screen to the next.

Eldritch the wizard is represented by two multicolor sprites overlaid by two black monochrome sprites. This makes the character appear multicolored yet high-resolution. Most enemies, on the other hand, consist of four overlapping monochrome sprites, two of which are white and two of which are black. This makes the enemies easily visible against both the black background and the white pillars.

Sound

The title screen is accompanied by a short, repeating melody. During gameplay, only simple sound effects are heard, underscoring individual events (shots, spells, contact with enemies).

Hints

Controls

"Heartland" can be controlled either with a joystick in port 2 or with the keyboard. The game can be started by pressing the fire button or the spacebar. As Eldritch moves left or right through the rooms, the following key bindings apply:

• or Z : Eldritch moves left
• or X : Eldritch moves right
• or K : Eldritch jumps
• or SPACE : Fires the current weapon in the direction facing

Ready for gates, elevators, and the bed

To pass through gates, use elevators, or change levels using the bed, Eldritch must first stand in the center in front of the corresponding object and face the player. The following actions are then possible:

• or K : Eldritch moves into a room behind the object (goes "into the screen") or enters the elevator to move to another level of the current level.
• or M : Eldritch moves into a room in front of the object (comes "out of the screen").
• or SPACE : Eldritch uses the bed to move to the next level. This is only possible if Eldritch has collected at least one light or dark book page in the current level — either during this or a previous visit.

Screen Layout

The following illustration shows the screen layout during gameplay. It consists of the scene in the mythical realm of Heartland and a series of status indicators at the top of the screen.

Screen layout during gameplay

Tips

• Since the floating book pages don't reveal their color, it's necessary to capture all of them indiscriminately. However, Eldritch can only carry four pages at a time, and when a fifth page is picked up, the first page falls back into play, causing it to float again. This can be exploited by repeatedly collecting the floating pages until Eldritch loses a dark page (the number of white pages in the status indicator increases by 1). Eldritch can then shoot the dark page floating around and destroy it.
• The time limit indicated by the hourglass on the right side of the status bar is quite tight at 6 minutes per level. However, Eldritch only needs to capture one book page in each level, then he can move on to the next level and return later (with a restarted hourglass) by circling through all the levels. In this way, he has approximately 6 minutes to find each individual book page.

Enemies

Midan's minions patrol numerous rooms, draining Eldritch's energy upon contact. Eldritch can jump over these enemies or destroy them with shots, but the enemy pictured on the far left in the following gallery will revive after a short time.

Waffen

To defend himself against Midan's minions and destroy the dark book pages, Eldritch needs a weapon. The hat pictured on the left in the following gallery only needs to be collected once and is then permanently available, but it requires three shots to defeat an enemy. More powerful, but only usable against a limited number of enemies, are the sword and the fireball (middle and right images): They destroy an enemy with just two throws or one shot, respectively, but each is only effective against a maximum of 10 enemies (20 throws or 10 shots) before Eldritch reverts to the hat as his weapon.

Hat, unlimited use

Sword, usable for 20 throws

Fireball, usable for 10 shots

Zaubersprüche

In some rooms, the following spells float in the sky above Eldritch in rotation and can be touched and activated by jumping. Contact with Midan's evil spell pictured on the left should be strictly avoided; the other two spells support Eldritch in his mission.

Evil spell cast by Midan, steals Eldritch's energy

Shield, makes Eldritch temporarily immune to Midan's minions

Energy, replenishes Eldritch's power reserves

Solution

To redeem the magical realm of Heartland, the player must first collect all the book pages scattered throughout the levels and then sort out and destroy the dark pages. A change to the next level is possible as soon as at least one book page has been collected in the current level; level 5 then returns to level 1. Once Eldritch's task is completed — regardless of the level or room — the game is successfully finished.

The entire kingdom is redeemed, and as a reward, the player doesn't even get half the princess as his wife? Ingratitude is the world's reward...

Map

The following illustrations depict the layout of the five levels of "Heartland" in succession. Rooms connected by gates are drawn one above the other and linked by an orange-red bar. Levels between which an elevator operates appear side by side at the same height and are separated by a white space; the two entrances of each elevator are connected by a turquoise line.

Note that Eldritch can cross the left or right edge of the map at certain points and then re-enter the level at the same level on the opposite edge. A similar behavior can be observed in the fifth level when crossing the top and bottom edges.

First level (59 rooms); the bed is located on the far left edge of the third-to-top floor. The starting room and the location of the spellbook are marked for orientation.

Second level (56 rooms); here, the bed is in the left area on the top level.

Third level (55 rooms), with the bed on the far right of the second-to-top level.

Fourth level (43 rooms); the bed can be found by moving one room to the right and one room up from the center of the map.

Fifth level (41 rooms); the bed is located in the middle of the third-to-bottom level.

Cheats

In the CSDb there are Cracks with Trainer functions:

Trainer of Atheist with three options

Trainer of Direbreaks

Votes

Voting of the C64-Wiki users (10=the best vote):
6.67 points at 6 votes (rank 618). You need to be logged in to cast a vote.
C64Games	6	October 5, 2022 - "gut" - 19806 downs
ZZAP64	85% (Presentation 84%, Graphics 95%, Sound 64%, Hookability 86%, Lastability 80%, Value 82%)	Ausgabe 22 (February 1987), S. 124
Crash	92% (Use of computer 91%, Graphics 93%, Playability 92%, Getting started 90%, Addictive qualities 93%, Value for money 89%)	Ausgabe 31 (August 1986), S. 26
ASM	Grafik 8/10, Sound 6/10, Spielwert 7/10, Handhabung 8/10	Ausgabe 8 (Oktober/November 1986), S. 36
Happy Computer	Grafik 77%, Sound & Musik 68%, Happy-Wertung 75%	Ausgabe 11 (November 1986), S. 92, und Sonderheft 17, S. 44
Amtix	93% (Presentation 92%, Graphics 94%, Playability 92%, Addictive qualities 92%, Value for money 90%)	Ausgabe 15 (January 1987), S. 22
Your Sinclair	8/10 (Graphics 6/10, Playability 8/10, Value for Money 9/10, Addictiveness 9/10)	Ausgabe 10 (October 1986), S. 28
Computer and Video Games	Graphics 8/10, Sound 9/10, Value 8/10, Playability 7/10	Ausgabe 63 (January 1987), S. 63
Your Commodore	Originality 7/10, Graphics 9/10, Playability 7/10, Value 8/10	Ausgabe 31 (April 1987), S. 35
Commodore User	8/10 (Graphics 8/10, Sound 5/10, Toughness 8/10, Endurance 8/10, Value 8/10)	Ausgabe 41 (February 1987), S. 40
Sinclair User	5/5	Ausgabe 53 (August 1986), S. 24
Lemon64	7,3	September 12, 2022 - 24 votes
Universal Videogame List	3.8/5	18. Februar 2023

Critics

Stephan64: "Even though the mysterious story of a fable realm and spellbook, of monsters and maidens, initially distracts from it, and the detailed graphics are pleasing to the eye, Heartland is one of the usual search-and-collect games and, accordingly, becomes rather boring quite quickly. The three-dimensional arrangement of the rooms and the endlessly repeating graphic elements of the labyrinth also make orientation difficult, and the wild mix of characters and motifs (knights and astronauts, unicorn statues and drainpipes) fails to create an atmosphere befitting a fable realm. May the evil Midan be allowed to rule this desolate realm... 5 points from me."

Miscellaneous

Cover

Cassette cover for the game "Heartland"

Inlay

Outside of the inlay for the game "Heartland"

Inside of the inlay for the game "Heartland"

Instructions

Instructions for the game "Heartland" in Dutch and Danish

Instructions for the game "Heartland" in French, German, Spanish, and Italian

Cassette

Cassette for the game "Heartland"

Theme

The following image shows the theme song in standard musical notation. For creative use, the sheet music is also available as a PDF document (File:Heartland Theme PDF.pdf) and in ABC musical notation (File:Heartland Theme.abc.txt).

Musical notation of the title theme, reconstructed by logging all write accesses to the SID

Fastloader

The cassette version of "Heartland" uses the fast loader Novaload. During the loading process, a visually appealing loading screen is displayed (right image in the gallery below), accompanied only by sounds based on the data bytes being loaded.

Start screen of the fast loader Novaload

Loading screen of "Heartland"

Video Recording

Longplay of the game "Heartland"

Bugs

Contrary to what is described in the game's manual and in some computer magazines, only 4 white and 4 dark book pages need to be collected or destroyed, not 6.

Highscore

In this game, a high score is not useful. Although the number of white pages collected can be used as a measure of player success, this is overwritten by a message at the end of the game and cannot then be documented with a screenshot. Furthermore, all of Eldritch's other achievements — the number of defeated enemies, the percentage of rooms entered, or the number of destroyed dark book pages — are nowhere visible.

Links

• C64Games.de - Game No. 5177
• Lemon64 - Game No. 1163
• Gamebase64.com - Game No. 3462
• Gamebase64.com - Game No. 20905 Maghetto
• C64.com - Game No. 444
• ready64 - Game No. 2756
• CSDb - Release No. 120787
• CSDb
• Heartland at MobyGames

• Test Report No. 2886 on Kultboy.com
• ZZap64 test report (S. 124)
• Universal Videogame List

Magazine

• ZZap64 map (S. 58)
• Crash test report (p. 26)
• Sinclair User test report (p. 24), advertisement (S. 11)
• Your Sinclair test report (p. 22)
• Amtix test report (p. 27)
• Amstrad Computer User test report (p. 54)
• Computer and Video Games test report (p. 63)
• Aktueller Software Markt test report (p. 36)
• Happy Computer test report (p. 92)
• Happy Computer Spiele-Sonderheft test report (p. 44)
• Your Commodore test report (p. 35)
• Commodore User test report (p. 40)

Videos

• Video at YouTube (Short presentation of the game)
• Video at YouTube (Short presentation of the game)