Hey everyone, For a long time, I thought I can find a way to finish this game. But Heart. Papers. Border. is just too difficult for me to continue. Not just because I am alone in developing this, but because this project holds too much of my painful past. I simply cannot look at it in a way that gives me any hope of a good finish line. Whenever I open the work files, I remember all the hopes and dreams I once had for this game, and how they all dissipated into thin air. Heart. Papers. Border. was supposed to be a simple game. I wanted to make a nice little puzzle that poses some interesting questions while delighting you with some neat retro futuristic art. But for reasons I would rather forget, it ended up close to becoming a grand strategy game, where you must balance complex logistics in order to be able to experience everything the world of Heart has to offer. What was once supposed to be a tiny exercise in creativity for me, ended up with 26 countries, countless objectives, events, discoveries and more. This project as it is right now, is the dream of someone else. I do not want to continue that dream, as it is not mine. I tried for a good few years, and despite experiencing very painful life events indeed, but I can't. It took me this long to understand that Heart. Papers. Border. cannot be finished. To those of you that remained with me despite all odds, thank you. And please forgive me - I know this is no good excuse, but I really did try. I think Heart. Papers. Border. will remain in your library, but it will be removed from Steam's ecosystem. With much love! Laura

Hey everyone! I want to give you all an update about this project, which is, it is not abandoned. Currently, this IP is transferred to my new company. I will eventually be able to fund its development. But until that is possible, I must focus on other projects, specifically Lost Sunday Comics, Treasures, Thoughts & Trinkets and Zestrea. I am very grateful to everyone who still hangs around and sometimes asks about an update. This is a project very close to my heart and really full of personal history, which is why the development is both extremely difficult and also crucial for me to finish. While I now have solid plans to continue the development for Heart. Papers. Border., I strongly advise against buying this game now. Thank you for your understanding! Laura

The puzzle thing is becoming reality!
Its not exactly pretty right now, but It Works! Help us out - we find making this puzzle quite soothing. Is it just us? Are we suffering from creative blindness? Or is this new puzzle mechanic a little bit soothing for realz? You can try this right now if you access the dev branch - its not password protected:

• right click Heart. Papers. Border. in your library, and then go to Properties
• in Properties, go to the tab called BETAS
• here, you can select in_dev - Development Branch

Game development is quite dramatic. It ebbs and flows and breaks your heart a million times a day... sometimes. But the problem is - all the drama is in your head. To an outsider, it looks like this:
On occasion, it may look like this:
but in reality, it's usually like this:
...and it feels way too often like this:
Now, we can't share memes all the time (or... can we?!...) but we CAN share some of the drama. Worry not, it will make little sense to most of you! :D

The HBP Backlog

The HPB Dev Branch

• right click Heart. Papers. Border. in your library, and then go to Properties
• in Properties, go to the tab called BETAS
• here, you can select in_dev - Development Branch

Some of you have been buying this lill monster even though we warned you not to. We hope you won't get scared of it but instead join forces with us to turn it into a beautiful.... ehm. Butterfly?! Meanwhile - THANK YOU! It would help us a ton to know why you recently bought this little monster called Heart. Papers. Border. Was it the price tag, or was it more? Hold nothing back, tell us everything (no asterisk!) HERE.

Learning how to KISS

• a travel planner that lets you schedule your travels for up to a point in the future and then hit Play to make these plans happen
• a commission system where you'll know if important events are happening in a certain place, so you can setup your travels to catch them (or not) - as a photojournalist would
• a puzzle collector where you collect all the puzzles in a country, and some puzzles require you to be there at certain, specific times

Once upon a time, I wanted to Change The World (tm) with a game. This game. I was younger, [strike]stupid[/strike] definitely more naive and a ton less experienced. This is why Heart. Papers. Border. mutated very fast from a cute little travel game As One Should Do For Her First Commercial Indie into a Grand Strategy horror fuficulator* with confusing SJW elements and a terrifying amount of systems and complexities.

Warning! Here's a bunch of disturbing and really terrifying Unity screenshots:

• a visa that must be bought, has a processing time and expires;
• a flag and a passport stamp;
• a cost of living - later, depending on the objective you were at, cause it wasn't enough;
• travel costs TO the country and IN the country;
• a deportation, of course, with a country specific fine;
• country specific UBI;
• starting money;
• network connection quality!!! I mean how plausible is to Just Blog in a Retro futuristic imagined planet;
• chance encounters that may happen more or less;
• ideal visit duration Per Objective;
• oh right. Hashtags!!!! Per each objective!!!! and in 5. FIVE! Separate. Categories.

Bonus!

• "HPB_marketing_final_hashtag_famous_last_words"
• "HPB_marketing_final_hashtag_famous_last_words_except_they_wernt" (they really weren't, nor were they these ones, actually)
• ... and my favourite:
• "HPB_map_its_starting_too_look_cool_and_all_with_all_that_ui_stuff_going_on_but_im_gonna_stop_now_cause_we_dont_like_novells_in_file_names"

In Heart. Papers. Border., you are a traveller set to experience everything planet Heart has to offer. As you travel from country to country and from landmark to landmark, you gather hashtags that you can use to write a blog about your travels.
When I started designing Heart. Papers. Border., I wanted to make a cute little game that conveys the idea of travel and discovery. I do believe there is a correlation between the number of countries one takes the time to visit and understand at a more profound level, and that person's tolerance and love towards another. And this is a feeling I capture whenever I read or watch travel logs. No wonder digital nomadism is so popular nowadays. That's what I tried to capture with the blog feature - but its something very hard to design in fun abstract ways, and - fast forward to now - I thing the blog system is the worst gameplay feature in HPB. It has to change. If the blog is fun, the entire game becomes fun, because the blog is the reason you travel in the world of Heart.
So here's what's on my mind.... Instead of having quests and earning hashtags, you are now a Photojournalist on a Quest to "complete the picture". In practical terms, this means we are creating one puzzle image per country, and your task is to discover all the puzzle pieces, put them together and publish photos.

From this puzzle view, you can Take Pictures, and the Publish them. This essentially becomes the Blog and I will illustrate how it looks in the next Design Sesh. What do you think?

It's been a while. If you are reading this, we owe you a great deal of gratitude. You held on to a tiny promise that we did not yet keep. We said "life happened" and you trusted us that we won't bury Heart. Papers. Border. That we'll eventually turn the lights back on. The life that happened involved the transformation of a twenty year old relationship. Heart. Papers. Border. is a game made by two people who used to be married when this project started. To a tiny extent, Heart. Papers. Border. played a part in a beautiful, peaceful, painful divorce. It took a while for us to heal. We're back as friends and creators. We think this healing might have led to the healing of Heart. Papers. Border., too. But you will be the judge of that! Here's what you're judging....

Some antidotes to a severe Heart. Papers. Border. feature creep

FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING!

What is new

• All the countries for which we have graphics done are now available and can be visited once you finish the last quest in Sputnik City. They DO NOT have any quests, encounters or hashtags yet, however
• We added a day/night cycle which needs *A LOT* of tweaking but I think it adds to the game
• You can now see how much time you spend in every objective and in every country, in the SpacePad Location app
• We added the so called Birthday Mechanic which means you get a Space Cake when you grow older :) For now this is just aesthetics but this plays a crucial role for the end game
• We added more portraits you can play with, all of them inspired by fantastic real life people to whom we owe a great deal of thanks <3
• When you start a new game, we randomize the selection of portrait and gender
• We started to work on Influence. This is by far ready, but you can see how influential you are in each country from the SpacePad Location app
• The Blog has been optimized to support double click. So just double click on the hashtags you want to use
• We have done countless minor updates which should make the game play smoother
• We probably added more stuff that we forgot to keep track of. Note to self - keep track of what you add!

Hey awesome people! We are still working on HPB. Slowly, because life happened in pretty extreme ways, but we have no intention to abandon this project. Those of you who have beta access might have noticed that we unlocked all countries. We do not have quests and encounters yet, but we plan to unlock whatever we do have and go from there. There are some fixes we need to do until we push this update to public. We appreciate your commitment very very much <3 Please hang on with us! Best! L

As we prepare to publish all the content that is graphically done in Heart. Papers. Border., we started to write the stories that inspired and motivated us to make this game. The first post is about planet Heart and its real life source of inspiration, Proxima Centauri b. Warning! These stories are major spoiler alerts!
Here is The World of Heart If you want to be the first to read these stories, please subscribe to our newsletter HERE

As we prepare to publish all the content that is graphically done in Heart. Papers. Border., we started to write the stories that inspired and motivated us to make this game. The first post is about planet Heart and its real life source of inspiration, Proxima Centauri b. Warning! These stories are major spoiler alerts!
Here is The World of Heart If you want to be the first to read these stories, please subscribe to our newsletter HERE

Hey awesome people! We finally managed to push a new update, which we call Update 2.2! I am sorry it took so long - we are both working and struggling to pay all our dues.

What is in the update?

• A consistent bunch of bug fixes and painfully mandatory refactoring that's always boring to read about. Suffice to say the game should move much better and faster now, so tell us if you do notice a difference
• New time control buttons and functionality which should be sleeker and prettier. Play and Play Faster are now combined
• Finally, filters for hashtags in the blog, which I hope are a good step towards a better blog UI. Filters explain what hashtags are, and they can also be used for sorting. This is just the beginning though, we will improve the blog much more!
• Finally, you can now easily remove used hashtags cause they have the requested X button now. If you remove a title, all tags are removed as well
• You can now see how much time you spent in each objective and in each country, in the info popup that you get when you click on the objective and also in the Location app in the SpacePad
• We tweaked how encounters and quests are given, so you get some on Day 1 of your visit

What's up next?

Also...

Hey awesome people! We finally managed to push a new update, which we call Update 2.2! I am sorry it took so long - we are both working and struggling to pay all our dues.

What is in the update?

• A consistent bunch of bug fixes and painfully mandatory refactoring that's always boring to read about. Suffice to say the game should move much better and faster now, so tell us if you do notice a difference
• New time control buttons and functionality which should be sleeker and prettier. Play and Play Faster are now combined
• Finally, filters for hashtags in the blog, which I hope are a good step towards a better blog UI. Filters explain what hashtags are, and they can also be used for sorting. This is just the beginning though, we will improve the blog much more!
• Finally, you can now easily remove used hashtags cause they have the requested X button now. If you remove a title, all tags are removed as well
• You can now see how much time you spent in each objective and in each country, in the info popup that you get when you click on the objective and also in the Location app in the SpacePad
• We tweaked how encounters and quests are given, so you get some on Day 1 of your visit

What's up next?

Also...

Hello awesome people! Those of you with access to the dev branch might have noticed some new stuff:

• Time control buttons have a new face and new condensed functionality. We combined Play with Fast forward. They are not final yet, cause I need to reexport new backgrounds.
• You can now see how much time you spent on every objective, both in the info popup and in the SpacePad. This includes the travel hub as well
• You can even see how much time you spent in a country in total. This is in the Location app in the SpacePad
• In the Blog, all hashtags now have a handy X (remove) button so you can remove them from your post
• Removing the title hashtag automatically removes all other hashtags
• Of course, a bunch of bugs have been squashed. They are all virtual so no real bug was actually harmed during this development ^^

Hello awesome people! Those of you with access to the dev branch might have noticed some new stuff:

• Time control buttons have a new face and new condensed functionality. We combined Play with Fast forward. They are not final yet, cause I need to reexport new backgrounds.
• You can now see how much time you spent on every objective, both in the info popup and in the SpacePad. This includes the travel hub as well
• You can even see how much time you spent in a country in total. This is in the Location app in the SpacePad
• In the Blog, all hashtags now have a handy X (remove) button so you can remove them from your post
• Removing the title hashtag automatically removes all other hashtags
• Of course, a bunch of bugs have been squashed. They are all virtual so no real bug was actually harmed during this development ^^

Hello awesome people! We had a very difficult time in our personal lives which slowed down the development of Heart. Papers. Border. dramatically. We know this is no excuse and we are very sorry for this long period of silence. We are however as committed as ever to this project and we are now able to pick up more speed with development. So we are planning 2 updates, a minor one and a major one as follows: MINOR UPDATE

• new, proper and pretty time control buttons as well as combined Play/ Pause functionality
• some important quests will now be awarded as soon as you reach the needed destination
• hashtags used in a blog post will now have CLOSE buttons so you can easily remove them
• a bunch of bugs will be fixed

• we aim to import all the graphical content we have ready in the game. This means about 10 more countries with cca 50 new objectives to visit. This is not all the content we plan for the game but it is what is done now art wise.
• we will introduce a Creative mode that will allow everyone to add new Encounters fro any objective.

Hello awesome people! We had a very difficult time in our personal lives which slowed down the development of Heart. Papers. Border. dramatically. We know this is no excuse and we are very sorry for this long period of silence. We are however as committed as ever to this project and we are now able to pick up more speed with development. So we are planning 2 updates, a minor one and a major one as follows: MINOR UPDATE

• new, proper and pretty time control buttons as well as combined Play/ Pause functionality
• some important quests will now be awarded as soon as you reach the needed destination
• hashtags used in a blog post will now have CLOSE buttons so you can easily remove them
• a bunch of bugs will be fixed

• we aim to import all the graphical content we have ready in the game. This means about 10 more countries with cca 50 new objectives to visit. This is not all the content we plan for the game but it is what is done now art wise.
• we will introduce a Creative mode that will allow everyone to add new Encounters fro any objective.

Hello awesome people! You might have noticed that we pushed a major update on Friday. It contains a completely refactored time and travel system, and it also reintroduces the Pause and Fast Forward controls. We also sped up the duration of a day, and we hope this will make the gameplay much better - what do you think? Updates:

• Overhaul of the travelling system - now you can travel from objective to objective
• Travel Hub - each country has a travel hub that acts as a normal objective, however it is the only place that allows you to travel abroad. This is something we need to somehow show in the UI and it is not obvious right now - On It!
• Pause/ Fast Forward/ Normal time buttons are back You can use now buttons to stop/normalize/accelerate time
• Visiting Objectives no longer has a set visit duration. You can spend as much time as you want in an objective and the more time you spend, the more valuable encounters and hashtags you will find
• Cost of Living is no longer per country, but per objective
• The SpacePad Location app is now generated using dynamic data. Before, all the country brochures were made by hand (don't tell anyone^^ but you know how they say - fake it till you make it!)
• The usual pbug fixes and performance optimizations that every dev team likes to brag with :D

Hello awesome people! You might have noticed that we pushed a major update on Friday. It contains a completely refactored time and travel system, and it also reintroduces the Pause and Fast Forward controls. We also sped up the duration of a day, and we hope this will make the gameplay much better - what do you think? Updates:

• Overhaul of the travelling system - now you can travel from objective to objective
• Travel Hub - each country has a travel hub that acts as a normal objective, however it is the only place that allows you to travel abroad. This is something we need to somehow show in the UI and it is not obvious right now - On It!
• Pause/ Fast Forward/ Normal time buttons are back You can use now buttons to stop/normalize/accelerate time
• Visiting Objectives no longer has a set visit duration. You can spend as much time as you want in an objective and the more time you spend, the more valuable encounters and hashtags you will find
• Cost of Living is no longer per country, but per objective
• The SpacePad Location app is now generated using dynamic data. Before, all the country brochures were made by hand (don't tell anyone^^ but you know how they say - fake it till you make it!)
• The usual pbug fixes and performance optimizations that every dev team likes to brag with :D

Hey awesome people! The Heart. Papers. Border. official soundtrack is now available on Spotify as well, courtesy of the brilliant Retro Brothers! 18 tracks are now available, giving some hints to the content that is to come! Listen HERE Looking forward for your feedback! L

Hey awesome people! The Heart. Papers. Border. official soundtrack is now available on Spotify as well, courtesy of the brilliant Retro Brothers! 18 tracks are now available, giving some hints to the content that is to come! Listen HERE Looking forward for your feedback! L

The awesome Retro Brothers just launched the official Heart. Papers. Border. soundtrack on iTunes and Apple Music! Get it HERE The Heart. Papers. Border. soundtrack will also soon be available on Spotify and Steam!

The awesome Retro Brothers just launched the official Heart. Papers. Border. soundtrack on iTunes and Apple Music! Get it HERE The Heart. Papers. Border. soundtrack will also soon be available on Spotify and Steam!

Hey awesome people! We have been quiet since SGC because we have been working on a major time mechanic update. The work in progress is available to those of you who have in_dev branch keys. Its buggy as hell though :D The major time mechanic is like this:

• We added Play, Pause, and Play Fast buttons.
• There is no longer a set time to visit each objective. You can stay as long as you want
• You can now move from one objective to another directly, no more back to the Travel Center
• The Travel Center is now an objective itself but with special perks. You gotta go there if you wanna travel abroad (duh!)

• No longer define and limit the visit to an objective
• Remove the constant going back to Travel Center once an objective is visited. That was.... illogical.

Hey awesome people! We have been quiet since SGC because we have been working on a major time mechanic update. The work in progress is available to those of you who have in_dev branch keys. Its buggy as hell though :D The major time mechanic is like this:

• We added Play, Pause, and Play Fast buttons.
• There is no longer a set time to visit each objective. You can stay as long as you want
• You can now move from one objective to another directly, no more back to the Travel Center
• The Travel Center is now an objective itself but with special perks. You gotta go there if you wanna travel abroad (duh!)

• No longer define and limit the visit to an objective
• Remove the constant going back to Travel Center once an objective is visited. That was.... illogical.

Hello awesome people! I finally managed to write a little bit of an update regarding the progress of Heart. Papers. Border. here: http://www.laurabularca.com/2017/09/meercating-meows-feed-bach-heart-papers-border-long-overdue-update/ This is a response to the feedback we received, and just for the commodity of not visiting my blog, here is the bit regarding the development: FEEDBACK That we have very little content. It is true. We know this. We have a lot of very very very shiny graphical assets that I can’t wait to release, but we do not have the content surrounding them: the quests, the stories, the dialogue, the culturally flavored situations, the rewards, the hashtags – everything. It is A LOT of work to do, and we are seriously considering Steam Workshop support. Meanwhile, though, it is still work that needs doing. That we do not have any Help or Tutorial. I aimed to guide the player through a story mode/ campaign that doubles down as a tutorial, but I failed, or at the very least I barely just started it. I know I have been ambiguous with the announcements, quests and encounters that I aimed as guidelines, but I wanted to provide a Tutorial that’s in line with Heart’s universe. This is a work in progress that is missing a huge element: the Help application in the SpacePad. We aim to make it contextual and to add shortcuts so you can click and get a good explanation of each mechanic, button, action. That your actions have no clear consequence. The player travels, writes and gains money and/ or influence, but to what end? The goal of the game is to let the player gain fame and influence the countries she travels to. As her fame grow, she has a visible impact in determining countries to become more progressive and open, until no more borders are needed. But the influence system is not implemented at all. In truth, it is not even designed yet. That the blogging system is too abstract. Oh man, that is so true. To begin with, we will add more explanations regarding the value of the tags which are color coded. We also really want to design a better mechanic to build the blog post itself, and the dream is to have actual paragraphs that fit. However, this is longer down the road, as I think the influence, location, help and a bit more content need to come first. Oh, right clicking on a hashtag thats used puts it back in the tag cloud but no one figured that out. UX kills us

Hello awesome people! Sweden Game Conference is rapidly approaching and as an organiser, I have way too little free time left. But Heart. Papers. Border. development continues and we expect to push a few new features soon. I would say this coming weekend, but I said it before and I could not keep my promise so I'll stay quiet this time :) We are currently implementing the Location app for the SpacePad. We aim for this: http://uzihead.servegame.org:8090/display/HPB/LOCATION We will progressively this in various stages as we also need to add content for all the countries. We also look into adding new countries and landmarks but we would love to hear from you! Where do you come from and what is it about your country that you would like expressed? We seek these kind of stories! Best! Lara

Hello awesome people! You might have noticed an update, and we promised it - even though it was a bit delayed! The most important thing the new update contains is that the game now runs on Linux. We hope this will make some of you happy <3 And of course, we are eager for feedback since we did not test the Linux version so much. But we have some new stuff, too. Besides a bunch of fixes, like:

• smooth zoom and cam transitions independent of framerate
• ability to buy a visa while visiting an objective
• several encounter fixes
• and a few more tweaks here and there

Hey awesome people! Heart. Papers. Border. progress is slow due to the new systems we are adding which are complex. But we aim for an update this weekend, which will bring a bunch of bug fixes, several improvements and - we hope - a stable Linux build We really, really welcome your feedback! We know the HPB experience is limited now, but we would really want to know what you think, what you like and dislike, and what you wish for next. We mentioned briefly what is on our backlog, but here is a bigger feature list, each and every one of them requiring complex work. All this work will progressively become available in later, more substantial updates. We are very very eager to finish and release them!

• Time Revamp System: You choose how much time you spend in a landmark. The more time you spend, the more valuable hashtags you gain
• Travel Revamp System: You no longer get back to the airport once you finished visiting an objective, but instead move to the next objective. The airport will be treated like a special objective with the perk that you can travel to other countries from it.
• Influence System: as you travel you influence the countries you are visiting. You need to know the impact of your visits clearly. Your influence is determined by the blogs you write
• SpacePad Travel App: You need a way to see where you have traveled, and what you have visited. This log will be available in the Journal
• SpacePad Expenses App: You need a way to see where your cash went. This log will be available in the Journal
• SpacePad Country Info App: You need to get more information about the countries you can visit, the objectives they host, their openness, and of course how to travel and visa information. We call this the Location app
• SpacePad Help App: Obviously, we need a Help app that explains all game features and mechanics.
• Birthday Mechanic: You will receive a thought provoking greeting every time your in game birthday comes. We want to urge you to change the world :) Well, just a viortual one, but still ^^

Hey awesome people! We are back from GamesCom - what an experience! I would like to share a little bit of our plans with you. We will push many small updates as soon as we have new features or fixes. We aim to have about one small update every 2 weeks, and one bigger update every two months maximum (but we do aim for monthly bigger updates). We plan to release 4 countries every 2 months. Since all but one are inspired by real life countries, we really really hope for your feedback and amazing ideas about backstories, quests and encounters. I will post later on the list of countries we aim to develop and their real life inspiration. Feature wise, the big big features we are working on are the influence system and also rewriting the time and travel mechanics. We must refactor time and travel first, and we want to make it as follows:

• You choose how much time you spend in a landmark. The more time you spend, the more valuable hashtags you gain
• You no longer get back to the airport once you finished visiting an objective, but instead move to the next objective. The airport will be treated like a special objective with the perk that you can travel to other countries from it.

Good Morning amazing people! We are on our way to GamesCom in Cologne, Germany, where we will be hanging around the Sweden Game Arena booth in Hall 4.1 stand E18. Come say hi! <3 In our spare moments, we will be keeping an eye here so please let us know if you find any bugs! Best! Lara

Awesome folks, we did our best to test the game but the truth is, we had no cash to do proper QA. So if the game crashes, or if you find any bugs, or Anything, really - Please Please Please Tell Us! It helps to know as many details as possible ie what hardware config you have and what os you are using. Thank you so very much! <3 L

Hey awesome people! A few minutes ago we did what I didn't even dare to dream doing some years ago: We Launched Heart. Papers. Border. in Early Access!!! Y'all can give us your moneyz now <3 Please be warned that this is a Very Early Alpha Build and we KNOW the game needs a lot of work to become what we dream of. We also know we are committed to Heart. Papers. Border. and all we did now is to allow anyone with an interest for optimistic strategy games about travelling, freedom and changing the world to join us in this amazing creative journey. We welcome your feedback and your ideas! <3 <3 <3 Over & Out (prosecco time ^^) Lara

Heart. Papers. Border. is Now Available on Steam Early Access!

Heart. Papers. Border. is an optimistic strategy game about travelling, freedom and changing the world!

Hey awesome people! Yesterday when Steamworks went back online, we noticed we did not have the option to publish Heart. Papers. Border. as an Early Access title but only as a regular release. SO we contacted Valve and now we wait for their response and help. Stay Tuned <3 Best! L

Hello amazing people! Tomorrow we are launching Heart. Papers. Border. in Early Access. Its a pretty bold and scary move; we know the game is far from being ready, but we also feel that we need to release this idea so that it becomes what we always hoped for: a game that can actually change perspectives, tell hopeful stories and make people think. We need your help. Heart. Papers. Border. in early access is a very early alpha build. It does not contain all the features we are aiming to develop, and tomorrow we will only unlock two countries and allow the Campaign mode that doubles down as a tutorial. But we have a development plan that stretches a little over one year. The final game will have 26 countries and a lot of features that are currently being developed, to the very least. We hope the final game will impress us as well, because starting tomorrow, if you play this game, you are a game developer. Help us understand how you see our game through your eyes. We welcome your feedback and your ideas. We want to implement them in game. Thank you for being with us in this journey!

Hello awesome people! You might have noticed several updates lately. That is because we want to push Heart. Papers. Border. in Early Access in about 9 days and ... well, we are [strike]panicking[/strike] [strike]crunching[/strike] preparing for that =) The new updates contain a lot of UI tweaks, your usual bug fixes but also Sweet Sweet New Sounds that bring a whole new kind of life and depth to the game. Now, almost anything has a sound, and we also have new music tracks, too. We also made some tweaks to the Quests and Encounters, so that it is easier to understand what needs a choice and what is just a list of things one needs to do. You like? Your feedback is, as always, most welcomed! Best! L

Hey! We added yet another small update, which is a work in progress graphical update for the Blog. What do you think - does it look nicer? We also of course added some fixes and we are focusing on repairing the save system now. Have the awesomest of Mondays!! L

Hey you awesome people! There is a new Heart. Papers. Border. update that brings a lot more life to the game! We added sound effects for a lot of actions, such as typing, clicking on buttons, turning pages, using the SpacePad, publishing blog posts, travelling and more! Of course everything is work in progress but - what do you think? We also added a few more fixes, the most notable being that now you actually are notified when you post a blog. Please also note a BIG BUG with the save system which is broken. Right now if you try to Continue, you should get a crash or at the very least some very strange behaviour. Over & Out! Lara

Hey awesome people! We were finally able to get a stable first draft of the new BLOG feature, which outs all your hashtags in one place and allows you to drag and drop them in your blog post. So the new BLOG stuff goes like this:

• All new UI for the BLOG feature
• All hashtags are displayed in the left side column and they are scrollable
• Drag&Drop hashtag to Title and Extra Hashtags space
• Right click used tags to put them back in hashtag cloud
• New Hashtag values! Some hashtags give you units, some give you reach (influence), some give you both

• Adding tooltips and guides. We do not explain at all that you need at least one hashtag for the Blog Title, and that you can combine the extra tags in powerful ways
• Filters don't work, they are just there to remind us to do them
• Posting a blog should be done with a lot more bang. We will make it so you get a little report to understand the impact of your blog post
• Overall color scheme and fonts needs a lot of love
• Would be real cool to have some hashtag cloud animations and dynamism, also to drag and drop a tag back, there is a lot of finesse we hope to add

Hey awesome people! We were finally able to get a stable first draft of the new BLOG feature, which outs all your hashtags in one place and allows you to drag and drop them in your blog post. So the new BLOG stuff goes like this:

• All new UI for the BLOG feature
• All hashtags are displayed in the left side column and they are scrollable
• Drag&Drop hashtag to Title and Extra Hashtags space
• Right click used tags to put them back in hashtag cloud
• New Hashtag values! Some hashtags give you units, some give you reach (influence), some give you both

• Adding tooltips and guides. We do not explain at all that you need at least one hashtag for the Blog Title, and that you can combine the extra tags in powerful ways
• Filters don't work, they are just there to remind us to do them
• Posting a blog should be done with a lot more bang. We will make it so you get a little report to understand the impact of your blog post
• Overall color scheme and fonts needs a lot of love
• Would be real cool to have some hashtag cloud animations and dynamism, also to drag and drop a tag back, there is a lot of finesse we hope to add

Fellow travelers, dreamers, explorers! Planet Heart is still under development, and we are slowly creeping towards fixing up all the problems that come with a feature as trivial as a Drag & Drop seems. We wrote about our ordeals HERE What is next is - hopefully - a bunch of updates to test the new Blog system. I'll keep you all up to date as soon as we are able to push something for you to play with. And then, we have the Country Influence system to develop, rewrite the Time mechanics a little bit, implement the Birthday feature, and to tweak the Travel system because it makes no sense to keep on returning to the airport if you don't plan to leave the country. We aim to push Heart. Papers. Border. in Early Access as soon as this is done. We welcome your thoughts about our plans! Best! L

Hey hey dear friends of Heart, Papers Border.! As we told you, we are Still Alive (tm) and working on new features for the game. In the latest update, we bring you:

• Universal Basic Income: this is a true story on planet Hearth <3 However, the monthly Units sum you receive does depend on the country you are born in, so may you spawn in a Good Country, friend!
• Income and Tax Return report: you get one at the end of each month! The tax you need to pay might be painful, we know. But! Spoiler alert: its FAKE (for now :D)
• Demo finally became Tutorial level. It was bound to happen - and you knew it!

Spring is always an intense month for game developers, due to game trade shows. Travelling can be extremely fulfilling, but the downside is, that’s time not spent developing. For those curious to know what we did at Creative Coast and Nordic Games Conference, there’s photo coverage HERE, HERE and my recorded talk HERE. But we are Back! And we are Still Alive ™. Here is what is on our Heart. Papers. Border. backlog (breathe, Lara, it only SEEMS impossible, but slowly, surely, we will make it!): HPB BACKLOG – June 2017 Universal Basic Income In HPB you currently earn money per day, but if you travel or visit any objectives, you are not earning anything. You also have connectivity which influences your earnings. The idea behind this mechanic was that you are a freelance worker and you have a few guaranteed clients. But this complicates the Unit mechanic tremendously and it is also not quite in line with our optimistic take. Which is why we are introducing Universal Basic Income – a guaranteed monthly wage that you get regardless of what you do, and that depends on the country you are born in. Revamped Time Mechanic Ain’t no one having fun to watch time passing. We will instead treat time as currency and so you can choose to spend as much time as you wish when visiting an objective, for example. The more time you spend, the more shiny things you’ll learn. You will also discover valuable hashtags to blog about. Revamped Unit Earnings Universal Basic Income is a minimum wage but you will be able to supplement your income by writing certain types of blog posts and by running certain errands. In addition, if you start to accumulate debt, you will be forced to get a temporary job that will temporarily lock you in a location. Revamped Transportation It makes no sense to keep on returning to the airport after visiting an objective, as it happens now. So we will allow you to move from objective to objective and we will convert the airport into a special kind of destination, the only one that allows you to travel to another country. Revamped Visiting Objectives Currently, each objective has a set duration that you need to spend there no matter what. We will make it so you choose how many days you wish to spend, but each day will have a cost and, of course, benefits. The more time you spend in a location, the more you will get to know it. Influence System A core component of HPB is that, as you travel, you influence the countries you visit to become more and more open. This is an essential system but it depends on all the other systems to do right. You’ll have a way to see how you influenced each country and some indication on what you can do. Revamped Blog We already redesigned the blog to show all your tags and to drag& drop then in a post. Here is how it will look: NEW BLOG Blog Stats We need a way to show you the impact of every blog post you make. This is actually a pretty serious feature as we think we’ll let you write blog posts that bring you Units OR Influence, so you’ll have to choose wisely. Dynamic Country Info App If you ever browsed our Country Info app inthe Space Pad and liked it, know this: IT IS A LIE. All you see is jpegs for every country, and obviously we need to generate that info dynamically. But at least I am good at making nice dummy pages

Hey friends! We are finally back from Creative Coast Festival and Nordic Game Conference where we showcased Heart. Papers. Border. and we also had lectures about feature creep. We recorded everything and posted it on YouTube here: Mastering Feature Creep in Heart. Papers. Border. - A philosophical approach to releasing games and changing the world <3 L

Hello friends! There is a new update for Heart. Papers. Border. that contains a lot of tweaks and optimisations for the demo/ tutorial experience. We realised people did not notice where to click, so we added a lot more helper elements.What do you think? We also overhauled the UI and moved pretty much all elements in the upper side of the screen. We also improved the way notifications look. Finally there is a cool new feature in the upper right side of the screen that allows you to fast zoom out and also to fast zoom in and center on player's position. We are a few hours away from driving to Creative Coast Festival in Karlshamn and then from there straight to Nordic Game Conference in Malmö. If you are at any of these shows, come say hi - we'll be hanging by the Sweden Game Arena booth! Best! L

Hey everyone! We have been a little quiet because we have just returned from Reboot Develop, where we showcased Heart. Papers. Border. The reason we attended this show was to get live feedback on how people play the game. Trade shows are always quite revealing and we realized we need to provide you with substantially better UI and gameplay. We are on it! So stay tuned for updates and new builds. We deeply appreciate any feedback, especially if there are parts of the game that annoy you. So please feel free to tell us what you think! Best! L

Hey y'all! You might notice there is a new update. We are getting ready to go to Reboot Develop and this is the build for that show. That is why we disabled the CONTINUE button. Sorry about that - it'll be back! The build also has some new stuff, including a new task, some fixes, player location icon moved, and also a new End Of Demo kind of announcement. For now, the current build does not unlock all the other countries after Demo. Fixing now.... .... .... ^^ Therefore, you might also get some new updates since we continue to tweak and improve the build. Even though we shouldn't. We should instead rest and relax before a show, but hey. Yolo :D Hugs & Love! Lara

The current Heart. Papers. Border. build is in Early Access because it is an Early Alpha build featuring enough core mechanics and content to let you, awesome players, help us develop the best possible game from this concept!

Concept

Visuals

Gameplay

So how will you play?

• Create your Multipass and choose your Citizenship (Easy, Med, High, Random); this determines your starting conditions
  
• Take a look at your native country, look at the Top Bar to see your situation and starting conditions
  
• Click on touristic objectives to visit them, click on countries to apply for Visas and then visit them
  
• Gather hashtags from visiting objectives and write blog posts in your SpacePad
  
• Gain followers, become influential, and notice how planet Heart responds to your actions
  

A few Development Details

• This is a Pre Alpha game, and we have many features in the pipeline which are Work in Progress now. If you wish to keep track of our progress, we shared our live game design wiki so check our presence on the web. Please keep in mind:
  
• We aim to launch the first version of Heart. Papers. Border. somewhere this summer
  
• This is an evolving game, we aim to progressively update it until we or our community is out of ideas (which we hope is for years to come)
  
• We practice Open Game Design and welcome any feedback

Team

• OS: Ubuntu 12++
• Processor: Intel Core 2. 2 GHzMemory: 4 GB RAM
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 5th Generation
• Storage: 4 GB available space