Heartfall - A Tale in Three Lives: Route Start Guide

To start a specific Heartfall: A Tale in Three Lives route, follow the listed choices and optional objectives below; several routes begin from the standard canon sequence, while others require an early conversation, quest, or exploration choice. The route is considered started when the guide’s final listed action is complete.

Before choosing a route

These instructions contain minor spoilers for the opening sections. The source lists content warnings for individual routes, including fantasy violence, blood, character death, horror, body horror, immolation, drowning, grief, starvation, unreality, depersonalization, derealization, scopophobia, and trypophobia. Review the warnings relevant to your intended route before playing.

Routes based on the canon opening

Route 0: Have We Been Here Before?

1. Follow the canon events.
2. Search the house in the village.
3. Accept Scar’s quest to cause mischief.
4. Enter the caves, collect the flint and steel, and meet BigB and Martyn.
5. Give the flint and steel to Scar, then seek Monopoly with him.
6. Lead the creeper to the group. Either response produces the same result, but repeatedly choosing the second response gives more dialogue.
7. When Martyn asks how Scar is treating you, reassure him.

Route 2: Dog-Eat-Dog World

Follow the Route 0 sequence, but complain when Martyn asks how Scar is treating you.

Route 5: Should’ve Aimed for the Hand

1. Follow the Route 0 sequence.
2. Tell Martyn that Scar’s treatment is “not the best, but it’s fine.”
3. When collecting driftwood for the base, speak with Ren and BigB on the beach.
4. After the travelling magic act, accept Martyn’s request to cause chaos with him.

Route 6: The Cow Heist

Follow the canon sequence. When Scott and Jimmy plan a cow heist, join them.

Route 7: Welcome Home, Ally

1. After leaving the village for the first time, speak to Jimmy and help with his cow-wrangling quest.
2. Continue with the canon sequence.
3. When you go to sleep and receive a prompt, choose remember.

Route 9: The Court of Last Chances

1. Follow the canon sequence.
2. On day three, after leaving the desert and finding the cow, go to the flower valley.
3. Find the goose in the bottom-left area and follow it when it runs.
4. Sabotage the grove.

Routes requiring an early deviation

Route 1: The Dark Forest

1. After visiting the village for the first time, build your house.
2. Decline Jimmy and Scott’s alliance invitation.
3. Continue along the Route 0/canon path.
4. When you and Scar pass your house, insist that you live there.

Route 3: Live, Laugh, Divorce

1. After first visiting the village, build your house.
2. Accept the alliance offered by Jimmy and Scott.

Route 4: Ashes and Alliances

1. After first visiting the village, help Joel tame wolves.
2. Agree when Joel asks you to ally with him.

Route 8: Music is Magic

1. When visiting the village, accept and complete Impulse’s request.
2. When Impulse asks you to show him the secret room in the village, show it to him.

Route 10: Any-fin is possible!

1. After your first village visit, take the fishing rod near the lake.
2. Fish until you obtain a book.
3. Read the book and accept the quest.

Route 11: Wolf in Sheep’s Wool

1. At the very start, interact with the statue beside the lake until it offers a staring contest, or until it can no longer be interacted with.
2. Interact with the altar on the beach and accept its quest.
3. Collect the remaining orb pieces from the other altars: one in the middle of the map, one inside the cave, and one inside the village’s secret room.