Feral Heart

Man, I played the heck out of this game from 2011 to 2014. I was so disappointed when the plug was pulled on IT because I never got to play it and thought nothing could possibly fill the void in my heart that yearned for the Customizable Animal Avatar 3D Graphical Chatroom experience. Can you imagine how nuts 13 year old me went when the creator announced he was developing a successor? I still remember the WIP videos he posted on YouTube before the game was released.

Now then... and I apologize if this topic is still frowned upon - I promise I'm not here to dredge up old drama for drama's sake - but it seemed to me that the game started to slowly fizzle out following the removal of General chat and the subsequent schism that formed between the moderators and some of the players. Not that I'm trying to attribute the current state of things solely to that, or place blame on the mods, but I've seen what can happen to a game when its userbase feels it's being treated unfairly by those at the helm. Skimming through the forum for the past three years, I've noticed:

• Users expressing a lack of confidence in some mods/admins,
• Calls for greater transparency, and
• Talk of rumors

Seeing as the forums are still operating, I imagine nothing too serious could've gone down, but it looks like you've all gone through a rough patch or two.

For me, the disabling of General chat was not the final nail in the coffin, but did mark a turning point. Perhaps it just coincided with other events, or perhaps it was just the first of many changes to later come. I think the reason I eventually stopped playing was twofold. Firstly, a growing preoccupation with school, and secondly, a shift in the game's atmosphere. Sometime in 2017 or 2018 though I re-installed FH to check out the big map update. Sad to say it, but that pretty much obliterated any desire I had to reconnect with the community. I missed the old maps, even if they were small and barren by comparison. While the new maps would have been welcome additions, I think as replacements they sort of disrupted the "ecosystem" of the game.

Ficho Tunnel's layout was cumbersome to navigate, and the other maps felt too similar to one another. I see it as a missed opportunity that a wider range of biomes were not represented (no desert? no jungle? no swamp? just the same rolling mishmash grassland with minor differences in the terrain and palm tree to acacia ratio?) and a shame that more thought wasn't put into making the maps feel both varied and cohesive. As they were when I last looked at them, they suffered from the usual pitfalls that many open world style games do: huge areas with few points of interest, haphazard terraforming, and poor flow. Quantity over quality. The original maps were nothing stellar, but at least each one felt reasonably distinct, and for an overhaul I guess I expected more.

Of course, I understand that the people behind the scenes have their own artistic vision that doesn't need to align with mine, and there are limitations to how much you can do before encountering performance issues (especially for players on older machines) - if you're reading this, I'm sorry for knocking your work! It's an honest critique and in all fairness, one probably marred by the rose-tinted glasses permanently glued to my face. I appreciate the improved attention to certain details, particularly the greater rock and foliage density, as well as better terrain variation. The new maps look more realistic and fleshed out, I just have a lot of little gripes over what I see as unrealized potential.

There were also not many users on, and nearly all of them were concentrated in the default map around the tunnel entrance. Whether or not the number of active users was already plummeting before the map update, I do not know, but it had definitely fallen by the time I re-installed the game. I gave it at least three more tries, but couldn't get back into it. I haven't really played since, and have no intention to play now.

Which brings me to my two questions:

1) What on earth has transpired in the time I've been absent? I get the feeling there's been a falling out of sorts. If so, how has it impacted things? What is the future of FH?

2) I presume FHU is "FeralHeart Unleashed," but what is it? Is it a FH server using FH's source code? Or is it meant to be a totally separate game, just using assets from FH? I know that for years people have been inquiring about the source code to no avail, as no one was able to contact KovuLKD. Has this changed?

Anyways, sorry for the long post! It's been ages since I was a participant here (over six years), and while I'm not planning on sticking around after I gain more insight into the situation, the game still has a special place in my heart and I'd like to know more about its fate.

The way I look at it, this game is dying, but if you believe it will see a resurgence (or will at least manage to keep itself propped up on its last legs), I'd still like to hear your perspective.

Thanks.