Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition Review

The hull groans as your ship, the merchant ship HLV Herald, begins its long journey across the ocean. While the waves may be familiar to many onboard, for player character Devan Rensburg it is a new experience. As a man of mixed heritage, you are not afforded the same courtesies as those above your station. Nevertheless, you must acquaint yourself with the ship and its crew, finding your way in a hostile world, trapped by both circumstance and sea.

Framed as the retelling of events that have already happened within this 19th century alternate history world, Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition (Herald) is a tale of power; a tale of those who have and have not, a tale of those who do and those who do nothing. Outward appearances belie the true feelings or ideas harbored among your crewmates, many of whom are initially cordial or friendly. But this is a world ruled by and for white men, with The Protectorate (think British empire) standing as the only superpower after having conquered much of the lands abroad.

Publisher: Wispfire

Developer: Wispfire

Platform: Played on PC (Steam)

Availability: Released on May 1, 2025 on Steam and GOG.

At its core a point-and-click adventure game, Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition has you move across the screen by selecting points within view, and you can examine objects in the environment to learn more about the ship and the people on it. But this aspect is a much smaller part of the experience than its more visual-novel dialogue and story structure. Not only is the story and text of Herald well written, it is also a game where your choices in those dialogues can change the course of the story and alter the fates of those within it. But as this is ultimately a story about power — or powerlessness — it is more about navigating your relationships with everyone onboard.

As a servant of the empire in low standing, Devin has very little outright say in how things go. Instead, you manage your reaction to the events and asides of the narrative, making choices here and there — often with no clear indication of what the true end will be of each choice. Chastising someone may lead them to rethink their actions, or perhaps it just makes them angry with you, leading to a lost friend; being forgiving to another person may lead to someone’s untimely death. Ultimately, I find this to be quite refreshing. There are no easy answers, no click-to-win buttons. Instead, you must use your knowledge of the characters and the world at large to guide you — how you use that is up to you.

These dialogues are presented using some absolutely stunning character portraits and accentuated by a fittingly beautiful score. The character models and environments outside of the speaking moments are much more simple, but they remain well-crafted. Individual rooms are especially interesting, as the items you can find in each person’s quarters will tell you about who they are and what they think. Even without Devan, or the person themselves, explicitly telling you what each person feels or thinks, you get a sense of the people aboard — and let me tell you: the vibes are way off.

Herald lives up to the "Interactive Drama" part of its name.

Herald does not shy away from dark subject matter, even early on, with the most prominent of these subjects being racism, sexism, and the oppression of any non-white male. And it is pervasive. From off-hand comments to finding a human skull with measurement tools attached lying among phrenology literature — the reality is that Devan and those like him are not equals here. Every injustice and inequality is normalized, bubbling just beneath a veneer of respectability.

Devan doesn’t have to sit idly by. You may speak back or try to change the way things are in the course of the game, but you’re faced with the reality that this is fundamentally a world that does not give a shit about you beyond your usefulness and subservience to the collective aims of the empire. To that end, Herald does manage to pack a wild variety of crewmates for these ideas to be borne by. Characters from the Netherlands, Brazil, India, and beyond all occupy the space, allowing the player to engage with their perspectives and see firsthand the effects of The Protectorate.

There’s also a journal to help you along with the material. In it, you can examine documents you find or get some of the world’s history and comments from Devan on it. It’s a nice refresher tool while also adding some more flavor to both the world and Devan as a character himself. It should be pointed out that there does not seem to be anything you would only see within the journal that is necessary for advancement. You could just power through the game, but I do think it’s worth examining this for the details.

With the story being broken up into four separate acts, the game starts out really strong, bringing both worldbuilding and drama in equal measure. Events at the end of Book I spur things in motion, and the game takes that momentum and runs with it. Herald shuffles you from one scene to the next, with very little in the way of freedom of how you move about the ship, but this helps keep things focused so you’re not spending much time trying to figure out where to go. Each individual room or scene has a lot to examine already, so this prevents the player from becoming overwhelmed with items or tasks.

This basic structure holds true for the first three books, but the fourth book changes things pretty dramatically in every sense of the word. As the resolution to all of those threads laid out earlier, Book IV does away with the interactive elements, functioning mostly as a story delivery sequence. Its execution mostly works but the lack of exploration does make the final book feel much shorter than the other three. While this act serves as the culmination of your choices and the events of the game, on repeated playthroughs it is my least favorite to retread.

Varied camera angles and lighting choices set the scene.

Generally speaking, for a visual novel or for games made on the idea of ‘choice and consequence,’ you would expect more agency or for your actions to have greater effect on the events of the game. Herald doesn’t really do that, but it’s not a mistake. There is a true marriage of the narrative structure and the themes and plot of the game. That lack of agency is key to understanding the messaging within Herald: The Interactive Period Drama, and makes all of those moments throughout the game even more powerful. In this sense, the game leverages both the video game medium and the players’ expectations to drive home its intent.

The journey on the HLV Herald was a perilous one, fraught with danger and mystery. And while the journey loses a bit of the wind in its sails by the end, it was still one worth making. With absolutely stunning artwork and spectacular characterization at the helm, Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition passes muster with ease.

Verdict

The final two books in Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition stay the course, and deliver upon the promising narrative laid out when the first two books were released in 2017. The artwork, characters, and writing got their hooks into me immediately, and kept me on the line through the entire trip. While the lack of clear and distinct agency or choice may throw some overboard, the design serves the broader narrative and drives home many of the underlying themes, crafting a powerful tale about agency and oppression.

Image Credits: Wispfire and Taylor Rioux Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from the publisher.