The Black Heart

This article is about the horror-themed full game. For the Marvel Comics character, see Blackheart (Marvel).

The Black Heart
Cover Art of the game from Main website
Creator	Andrés Borghi
Download	Official website* Steam
Version	1.2.1

The Black Heart is a game made with the M.U.G.E.N engine by Andrés Borghi. It is a horror-themed fighting game with its own intro, characters, stages, screenpack and credits, as well as its own storyline which you can play in Story Mode. The game is considerably dark and gory, featuring Fatal Moves that are not unlike Mortal Kombat's Fatalities, in that the recipient of the attack is killed in an overly bloody fashion.

The game was released on Steam on October 24th, 2021 in celebration of the game's tenth anniversary, making it the first M.U.G.E.N full game to be released on the platform, albeit using the I.K.E.M.E.N GO engine due to its license (MIT) permitting commercial redistribution.

Prequel story

"There is another world apart from ours. A world that was once beautiful but now is a hostile place ruined by war and hate. A blood stained world...

Humans have ignored the existence of this other world because their destinies have never been bound to it...

But that is about to change since the king and creator of the other world has been murdered. His strength and will had disappeared as the time passed, turning him into and old and defenseless being.

However, that didn't change the fact that within him the incredible power that allowed him to create that other world still existed. Because of that he was attacked by an entity called Final: A powerful creature that emerged from the infinite chaos that exists in the space between both worlds. In a single attack he ripped the king's heart and ran away with it to the depths of chaos.

It is said that the one that succeeds at freeing the power within the heart will be given an extraordinary strength; a power that could end all that exists if it falls into the wrong hands."

Sub Menu

Unlike normal M.U.G.E.N games, when you click on the main icon it takes you to a sub menu. On this sub-menu you have a few options before you enter the game, these choices are:

• Difficulty - Choose how hard your opponents are in Story mode, it also effects the final result you get at the end of each chapter
• Language - Choose whenever the game is in English or Spanish
• View Movelist - Bring up an HTML of all the characters' move lists
• Unlock - Allows you to enter a special code you receive in Story Mode
• Play - Start the game

Main menu

The main menu has the following choices:

• Story
• Versus
• Team Story
• Team versus
• Team Co-op
• Survival
• Survival Co-op
• Training
• Options
• Exit

Story

Story mode follows 6 chapters in which can be done in any order you like, however if you want to play the story mode in the correct order then you must play these characters in this order...

• Chapter 1 - The wooden man (Hashi)
• Chapter 2 - Cry from a soul (Noroko)
• Chapter 3 - The red dream (Peketo)
• Chapter 4 - Chaos and death (Animus)
• Chapter 5 - The daughter of the prince (Ananzi)
• Chapter 6 - Lust for power (Shar-Makai)

Each chapter is fundamentally the same for all characters, where the player is shown their character's side of the story and why they are after The Black Heart and/or the one who took it. The player fights opponents in an arcade ladder-type fashion, with each opponent having tougher A.I. than the last. The final battle is always against the aptly-named Final in his home stage, Chaos. When he has been defeated, the player is shown their character's end story and then the credits will play.

Also after beating the boss with each character, you will get a piece of the code required to unlock bonuses in the Unlock menu of the Sub-menu. The code however will vary depending on what difficulty you are on, completing all characters stories on Normal will give you a code to the Gallery while completing story mode on Hard mode will give you the code to unlock Final as a playable character.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Black Heart is quite unique when comparing to normal M.U.G.E.N games. For example, when the enemy is below a certain health point, they will start to bleed. By default, each game will last for 99 seconds per round, the first person or team to either K.O. their opponents or have a higher amount of life than their opponent will win that round; best two out of three wins.

Each character except Final has 5 abilities, these are:

• Normal moves
• Special moves
• Super moves
• Fatal move
• Killer mode

Normal moves are what every character normally does, these are done with A,B for kick and X,Y for punches. Every character also has a unique grab attack when they are close enough to the character such as Peketo's teleport slam.

Special moves are unique attacks that each character can perform during the battle, these attacks do not cost any power to perform and are the weak version of the Super moves. An example of a Special move is Hashi's Natural fan move.

Super moves are the upgraded version of special moves so as a result they will do more damage, this however comes with the cost of 1 power bar. These moves can be used in combos and done at any time, also if the super move is the killing blow, then they may do a unique ending to the move, such as Peketo's Scarlet Delight move where he will stab the heart of the character he is attacking if the move K.O. them.

Fatal move is the one unique attack each character has, move will execute the opposing character in the fashion relating to the character you are playing as. The requirements however to perform this move requires you to have a full power bar and the energy, and your enemy must have a quarter or less of their overall health left, if its any higher then it will not work.

The last move is the Killer mode which is activated when the player has a power bar above two. When activated, they will change and have a unique fighting style until the bar runs out changing them back to their normal form. Each character has their own unique Killer move which gives them their own advantages and disadvantages, such as Noroko who will change into her doll form, shooting ancient Japanese ghost faces at your opponent and becoming harder to hit due to her size. The killer mode can be deactivated at any time by pressing the same buttons to activate the mode again.

Final's moves differently from the main characters, due to him having a unique battling style. More detail about his moves are shown in his section.

Gallery

Main Menu Screen

Select Screen Menu

Team Battle in Hospital

Shar-Makai performing his Fatal Move on Peketo

Noroko vs Ananzi

Animus in Killer mode

Videos

The black heart - videogame trailer