Haven is a love story roleplaying adventure game made by The Game Bakers, makers of 2016 Furi, and is currently available on Nintendo Switch, PC, and both generations of Playstation and Xbox. It is also in the Gamepass for Xbox.

Haven places the player in the roles of Yu and Kay, a couple on the run from their past, and they have stranded themselves on a small planet hoping nothing catches up with them. Aside from the two lovers, there is native wildlife that is on the planet, which is so cute that you’ll want to belly scratch everything, and you can!

The game starts a bit on the slower side, with their ship, The Nest, getting heavily damaged due to a powerful earthquake. Exploring the planet and gathering parts to repair it, things start to get more interesting, and once repaired, I found it started getting really good and I was enjoying myself much more.

As the story progresses, you’ll find new bridges unlocking other parts of the world, allowing you to find other resources for crafting meals. During the adventure, Yu and Kay find a weird substance on the surface of the planet that they call Rust, which they decide they need to clean up, realizing it affects the wildlife, and taking away the desire for belly scratches and replacing it with significantly more aggression.

Haven offers a bright and vibrant world, from grassy meadows to clear blue skies and crystal clear water. It offers great visuals that help you to relax and unwind while playing. I wish there was a mini-map while exploring and a means of tracking points of interest, as being able to do so would help when you pass some helpful resources, but with how nice the world is to look at it, it is easy to get lost.

The controls are very easy to pick up and learn, with no complicated button combinations to stump players, and I found it was much more suited to using a controller due to a unique combat system. Playing as both Yu and Kay, left and right thumbsticks are used for combat, and they both have a radial wheel over the characters, but as it isn’t turned based you need to time things well to smash out the combos. While combat felt easy, sorting out your wounds after a fight was not as obvious. I assumed I could have just gone into my inventory to use a first aid kit, but it isn’t the case – you have to find certain spots to set up camp, or return to The Nest to heal up and recover.

The audio of Haven is a highpoint for sure, with the music in the game helping to keep a relaxing theme that is offered by the whole experience. While there is a lot of dialogue, the voice acting for Yu and Kay is fantastic. Janine Harouni voices of Yu and Chris Lew Kum Hoi is the voice for Kay.

While researching who did the voice work, I discovered both Janine and Chris spent time in the Side London studio during 2019 and 2020, reenacting the 80,000 words of dialogue together to achieve as much authenticity as possible, and it shows. The voice acting is flawless and helps drive the game home.

While it can feel very repetitive with its resource gathering and there is a lot of dialogue to follow, Haven is a beautifully crafted game that offers players a relaxing way to unwind. Simple gameplay in a beautifully crafted world, with calming music and authentic voice acting, will have you enjoying the simple things in life.

Written by: Shane Walsh