In Heartspell: Horizon Academy match gems while you match hearts. Date fantastical creatures such as mermaids, werewolves and faeries. Warning…addicting gameplay!


I remember playing and enjoying an earlier build of this game quite a while ago and it has been on my wishlist ever since. I love match-3 games and meshing it with a dating sim full of magical creatures to befriend or romance is the perfect pairing.

You start off choosing your game difficulty. The choices are story mode (removes all puzzles), wizard mode (default experience) or Archmage (super hard puzzles). The game difficulty can be changed at any time during gameplay.

The game is divided into sections (lessons, spells, friends and menu. Lessons are divided up into the elements, mana and time. Spells are pretty self explanatory and there are plenty of them to learn. Friends are the people you meet and possibly romance along the way. Under friends you can also find out what each person likes or dislikes and what spells you learned from them.

You gain experience to upgrade your lessons by playing the match-3 rounds mainly. There are 10 levels per lesson to ultimately upgrade. You gain spells by progressing story arcs with each character as you play through. You do not need to upgrade your spells and you can only have a set number active at one time.

Tips & Tricks

💗Using a spell does NOT take up a turn so spam them if needed near the end of a level to do get some chain reactions
💗To get to level 50 in the arena I found the best one (and easiest) was to battle Miko
💗The level 50 achievement has to be earned battling ONE opponent and not divided up.
💗 If you fail you can replay a level. Maybe not right away but when the character pops up again to engage with you can retry.
💗 If a match is just not doable just change your difficulty settings temporarily to story mode to advance
💗 No timers so take your time between moves and think about your next steps

🌶️ Spice Level - this one can be heavier on the spice but it is all text. And the game will have a heart icon that indicates dialogue choices that will lead to spicier content if you wish to experience it (the darker pink/red heart not the light pink ones).

Settings & extras include; audio settings, font and cursor settings, toggle fullscreen and credits.

This game does not let you set resolution so if you want to play in windowed mode just toggle the fullscreen off and resize your window manually.


Visually the game is gorgeous with a vibrant world and many different colorful characters to meet. I remember in the early build the backgrounds needed a lot of love, well they certainly got them. All the backgrounds are beautifully illustrated and colored and have some animated elements like butterflies or bits of magic in the background. This gives an overall feel of the world being more magical. The UI is also lovingly designed including the cursor!

The voice work for each character is very well done, I really loved all of them. The music is instrumental and has an adventurous vibe to it that really compliments the game.


The artwork, music, different characters and voice work is all so well done in this game. You can romance everyone if you wish and each character has a story arc to complete with a special sexy cg at each end as a reward. (No bits actually showing).

This game may require multiple play-thoughs to get all the achievements and it will take some time. One play-though took me over 15 hours to complete. However you could do replays on story mode to skip combat and make it progress quicker.⭐

💗 One of the cg’s below…I picked a cute one and you only get to see one…the rest you have to play to see. They are all gorgeous!

Scroll over to see image (hidden for spoilers)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3609643444

* The demo has been updated today (Nov 21 2025) if you’d like to try it out before purchasing

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IndieGems wishes to thank Dire Kitten Games for providing a review copy for this game.

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Miko is my fave!! -

I'm really enjoying this game, didn't know what to expect but it's a relaxing game that I 100% recommend if you like fully voiced visual novels, romance and a great story that you can't stop playing for hours!

Bisexual harem simulator with a decent story. I got addicted for a couple days, stayed up all night, and banged everyone. 10/10.

Heartspell: Horizon Academy is a dating sim that blends visual novel storytelling with match-3 gameplay, featuring exceptionally well-crafted narratives and a cast of distinct, endearing characters.

You play as a nameless newcomer arriving at an arcane academy in mild disarray: Headmaster Galdran has mysteriously vanished, leaving the students to manage things in his absence. Each in-game day, you choose one of four available characters to spend time with. There are eleven in total, each with a lengthy, engaging narrative arc. Every session advances their route by one episode, and completing an arc takes ten steps. Heartspell: Horizon Academy contains hundreds of choices that flow smoothly from one branching point to the next, which is an impressive feat considering that the game is made by a small team of just two developers. Some choices unlock romance routes; while there’s no explicit sexual content, there’s plenty of flirtation, and the spicy intimate scenes are described with a narration that uses a slightly more suggestive tone. The game is gender-fluid, body-positive, and all-inclusive.

Dialogue options are highlighted with specific icons that indicate intimate, romantic, friendly, or more antagonistic paths, allowing you to shape relationships however you like. You can simultaneously romance as many characters as you wish—in fact, romancing all of them seems to be a requirement for unlocking the ending sequence. You can also pair characters with each other instead of pursuing them yourself (or do both, which can lead to threesomes). Finishing a character’s main story unlocks a steamy but non-explicit illustration, available at any time afterward, along with ten bonus mini-dates.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3622783295
Each episode of a character’s route includes one match-3 challenge. Your goal in this minigame is to fully charge a score bar within a limited number of moves. One gem type fuels power-ups, another penalizes you by draining score, and the rest represent the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. As expected, matching four or five gems grants bonus points, which you can invest to upgrade elemental income. However, unlike in many other match-3 games, leftover moves don’t grant extra points.


Characters also influence the gameplay through unique constraints for the math-3 segments. Some offer helpful perks (one character even takes turns making matches on the board with you), others introduce moderate challenges (like increasing power-up costs with each use or the requirement to match specific gems in under five moves), and one route is notoriously difficult, awarding points only for matches of four or more.

If match-3 gameplay isn’t your thing, you can disable it entirely in the settings and play in story mode, enjoying the game purely as a visual novel. A higher-difficulty mode of the match-3 minigame is also available for those seeking a greater challenge. The difficulty mode can be changed anytime during your gameplay.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3622783137
As your relationships deepen, each character teaches you two spells. These can be equipped as active power-ups or passive effects that trigger automatically under certain conditions. You can adjust your build at any time (during conversations or just before a match-3 sequence), letting you tailor your loadout to each character’s restrictions. In later stages of their story, the minigame becomes increasingly more difficult, making basic three-matches barely effective and pushing you to rely on fours, fives, and chain reactions.

The writing in Heartspell: Horizon Academy is consistently excellent, and every character’s story feels compelling in its own way. The cast is wonderfully varied, with each character being shaped as a distinct personality. They are all memorable, and you grow attached to them easily. All dialogues, including the narrator’s bits, are fully voiced, and the performances are remarkably strong, with expressive delivery and flavorful accents that enrich their personalities even more.

There aren’t many negatives to the gameplay, and its few weaknesses stem from the fact that the game doesn’t employ any of the standard engines commonly used to create VNs but an in-house developed solution. As a result, there is no chat history or a way to revisit previous lines, no manual save system for exploring alternate choices, and no option to retry failed match-3 stages. There is no shortcut for auto-advancing the text, and the game doesn’t track which dialogue options you’ve already selected—something that would be particularly helpful when replaying bonus scenes.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3622783036
Overall, Heartspell: Horizon Academy is a rare gem, thoughtfully written and delightfully inventive in both narrative and gameplay. Whether you come for the romances, the great writing, or the strategic match-3 challenges, the experience consistently rewards your time and is in total quite substantial, offering around 25 hours for a single playthrough. Its few limitations never overshadow the charm of its cast or the strength of its storytelling. If you enjoy character-driven adventures with humor, heart, and style, consider allowing this game to put a spell on your heart.

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One of the best dating games I've played in a good long time. I love dating games, (and I fear I buy too many and don't play them) as many of the writing is the same formula over and over, but not Heartspell: Horizon Academy.

- The core game play loop is incredibly satisfying with Match 3 to break up any monotony of reading between phases. It's also super satisfying to play, and I genuinely think all the little quirks each character has for their mini-game is very refreshing, especially how it relates to their personality.
- I absolutely loved the voice acting, I felt like each character was unique and brought to life with an exceptional amount of love.
- The writing is fantastic. It's clear a lot of care and love went into the game and I didn't cringe trying to pick between two terrible responses. I felt like I was given a dynamic range of appropriate responses to situations.
- Playing on normal mode gave a reasonable difficulty, with some challenge to characters like Typhon and Amara but not overwhelmingly hard for the average joe.
- I think a lot of the otome styled games can be pretty punishing for failing to do things a certain way, but not in this game. It feels like you genuinely have free will, and the responses aren't all cringe or fawning, which I know will be pretty appealing to some.
- I really enjoyed being able to date multiple characters within one play through. A lot of other games make you start over and read through the same old text to get clear with other characters but you can date everyone all in one go with this game. I also like that if I were to replay for achievements I'm not subjected to pick the same choices and can make the text differ as it seems there are multiple unique paths. (Tragically), I love a good 'being a useless dolt' trope so I can do that to an extent if I want to.
- The game has superb representation, and great allegories to other topics such as mental health.
- I genuinely couldn't find myself disliking any of the characters which is pretty rare. I felt like their individual stories were engaging, and I enjoyed the cross interactions some characters had such as being able to encourage characters to date each other was extremely cute.

My favourite characters were Charlie, Lin, Morgan & Miko, but like I mentioned earlier all the characters had merit and none of them had personalities I could hate.

- I loved that if you fail something you have chances to do over without having to do the whole game over again; which is optional if you want the achievements kind of thing, but you can get almost all of them in just one playthrough.
- I love that there's a story only mode if you don't want to play match 3 at all, and a hard mode for those seeking more - can't wait to give that a shot myself!

Not a gripe, but my only wishes for the game would be some kind of personal customizable avatar would have helped me immerse myself deeper into the world but I understand this is likely quite costly. I also would have liked more unique art of the characters, but I will say I did very much enjoy that they were animated. Characters like Miko really came alive with the movement of her moth antennae to show her emotions more.

I can't think of a single genuine con about the game, I didn't encounter any bugs or anything like that. I have nothing but pure bliss and enjoyment for this game that feels like there was a ton of love poured in. I wholeheartedly highly recommend Heartspell: Horizon Academy.

Bisexual harem simulator. Love the gameplay (though I had to turn on story mode for Amara's puzzle once or twice), story and characters, and how important everyone is to the overall narrative.

Morgan is by faaar my favorite though, that little prick.

Runs great on Steamdeck with trackpad.

The art's pretty, the writing's better than I expected for a dating sim with a gimmick, and I like that each character brought something different to the match 3 minigame instead of just being eye candy. Ever-helpful Riley makes it easier to complete while the extremely advanced Amara's only impressed by matches of four or more tiles instead of the usual three. It made it feel more like a reflection of your time with a character instead of just a way to entertain the player between scenes.

Routes all follow the same loop of scene starts -> minigame's cleared -> story beat's resolved(or, occasionally, set up). You can't fail the minigame and it's largely RNG-based instead of being about hoarding powerups like some match 3 games. If you do "fail", you have infinite chances to come back and replay it so you can progress a character's story, which is player friendly at the cost of killing any narrative stakes. That's not a knock against the game, that design philosophy has its place. I found it nice to just move tiles around and fantasize about hanging out with fae for a bit, no pressure about locking myself out of routes if the RNG didn't work out.

Speaking of the fae in question, let's talk characters. The cast is likable, a very wholesome group overall and fairly reactive to player responses moment-to-moment, but kind of a mixed bag in terms of depth. Routes don't always feel balanced; some characters get whole arcs while others just get a collection of scenes that revolve around one quirk. In particular Dawn's and Typhon's routes are largely focused on fantasy racism, just fairly surface-level observations about how oppression's bad but not all oppressors want to be actively harmful, nothing you haven't seen before. In a game that's making a clear effort to be progressive and inclusive, I found it kind of weird that the player can't mention experiencing racism out in the human world. Not a huge conversation, that'd be a pain to program and uncomfortable if done wrong, but maybe a brief mention and a line or two about having shared experiences.

Most characters do fare better than them. Morgan and Miko are great, lightly touching on themes like abuse and mental illness, respectfully acknowledging those heavier topics without lingering long enough to bring the mood down. Romances are solid, sweet and uplifting and maybe a *little* solipsistic in how eager characters are to make you happy, but isn't that fun sometimes? I never felt like I was missing out by opting for friendship routes, either. Characters are just happy to have you in their lives, by the end of any route you have a new partner or best friend. I like that, but I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. Folks who want the option to make rivals or enemies might be a bit bored by the pervasive sense of camaraderie in this game.

I like the setting more than I thought I would, it doesn't feel derivative the way a lot of modern fantasy stuff can, especially when magic schools get incorporated. You never forget you're at magic college but, at the same time, the idea of being at magic college never detracts from the relationship building aspect. Magic as a narrative device is almost always in service of getting to know characters or to help characterize the player character(what does it feel like to be a siren singing to enthrall someone? When you're told to cast a big, flashy spell, do you conjure a storm or a field of flowers?). I dig that, in a slice of life story like this, you don't need a dense magic system with complex rules.

I do wish routes felt more connected. Because they can be completed in any order, there's no real sense of time. You can go through a character's entire route before spending time with anyone else, leading to some slightly jarring jumps in tone and narrative inconsistencies; a character will be missing in their route but still show up for certain scenes like everything's normal, there were moments where the player character seemed to forget things they learned in other routes. It never ruined the game for me, but it did take me out of some scenes. Forcing the player to complete every character's first scene before letting them move on to any character's second(then making them complete every character's second scene and so on) would've allowed for a more cohesive narrative overall.

This'll sound like a nitpick to most people, but I was a little disappointed when a progressive and trans-friendly game offhandedly boiled down men to people with penises and women to people with vaginas; by that logic, I'm pretty sure Morgan's a man and not a nonbinary person. Or maybe they're just totally smooth down there like a doll. I would've liked to see more canonically trans or nonbinary characters, just another character who exclusively uses they/them pronouns or a character mentioning coming out as trans(and give the player an option to characterize themself as trans, it would be a chance to bond).

Overall though, I think Heartspell's fun. I highly recommend it if you like feel-good visual novels and want a little more from the gameplay loop than just dialogue. It's easy to lose yourself for a while, pinging between (mostly) friendly conversation and an addictively simple minigame(I mean, there's a reason so many match 3 games exist). Go check out the demo if you're unsure, it's a great representation of the full game and it lets you get a feel for the cast.

Incredibly cute and "low pressure" game. All the characters felt distinct and while I only romanced the gals, they were all super fun routes. The Match 3 gameplay is also fun without feeling grindy, and the difficulty options let you make it harder or just skip it entirely should you wish.

The game can also get raunchy but it always sign posts options well so you know what's "romantic" and what's supposed to get steamy.

Miko is the best gal, don't @ me

Dire Kitten Games has outdone their selves in a sea of large budget titles. Heartspell is a reminder of why Indie games are dominating the scene. This game revitalizes a game play mechanic that we are all familiar with but with a fresh new take. That is intuitive and makes for a surprisingly challenging experience. From the moment you enter the title screen it is clear how much heart and soul went into this game. It is nothing short of a visual masterpiece. BUT this games beauty is more than skin deep, beneath the beautiful characters and stunning back drops lies a rich story full of emotional and heartwarming character arcs as well as humor. The commitment to inclusivity within the world feels very organic for both the characters and player, making the experience welcoming to anyone who loves a story driven or "novel" like experience.
5/5 stars from me.

miko knew i would do this