Heartwood

Hollow Reach has been silent for nineteen days. Two hundred and twelve colonists.

Halberd Unit 9 is a private military squad on a corporate contract. You are their corporal, sent down to a terraforming colony on a tidally locked moon to bring the colonists home. The colony isn't dead. Something down there is perfectly healthy, and it is growing out of the people you came to rescue.

Heartwood is a sci-fi horror gamebook in the tradition of Fighting Fantasy: numbered sections, dice, and choices that come back to haunt you three acts later.

• Four acts: Descent, The Reef, Holdout and The Heartwood. A run takes about half an hour.
• Six squadmates with their own skills, and any of them can die. Who you trust decides what you learn.
• STAMINA, NERVE, AMMO and NOISE. Every shot is heard. In the reef, SPORE climbs, and at 10 you are Rooted.
• Hold the colony through three waves on the clock, choosing which doors to barricade and whom to post where.
• Seven endings, counting Rooted, and dozens of ways to die, each written out in full. The endings gallery shows the roads you didn't take.
• Pick a background (combat medic, ex-miner or sniper) and a difficulty: Recruit lets you rewind, Ironman deletes your save.
• Synthesised sound and 16-bit pixel art. Best played on a phone, with headphones.
• In English and Brazilian Portuguese.

Your progress is saved in this browser. To play offline, open heartwood-2ffa12a8.surge.sh on your phone and add it to your home screen.