Know by heart

Know by heart is a narrative adventure about accepting loss. Its plot, music, mini-games and intuitive gameplay work together to conjure the feeling of briefly returning to childhood and then, inevitably, growing up, the sense of time slipping through your fingers.

The game is set in the quiet life of a provincial Russian town at the turn of the century, where traces of the Soviet era are still visible and audible. The protagonist, Misha, is stuck in a monotonous, dead-end job until his school crush returns to town and rekindles his hope of escaping the routine. A brief but turbulent episode in the town's life is woven together with the reunion of a gang of childhood friends, who set out to revisit old memories even as those memories, and the bonds between them, come under threat.

The roughly five-hour story carries non-linear elements and several endings, with game mechanics that represent the protagonist's thoughts and memories, a collection of evocative mini-games, and a piano soundtrack written in a modern neoclassical style.