Herald: An Interactive Period Drama - Book I & II

Herald is a single-player adventure video game, or "interactive period drama", for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. It was the first game released by Wispfire, a Dutch indie studio located in the Dutch Game Garden, Utrecht. The company was founded by creative director Bart Heijltjes, writer Roy van der Schilden, artist Aïda de Ridder, and programmer Remko Haagsma. On March 31, 2017, Wispfire released a Patch that allows Herald to be played with Xbox 360, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 analog stick controllers. As a mix between an adventure game and a visual novel, Herald is a choice-driven adventure game with a branching narrative, where the player can choose how the main protagonist, Devan Rensburg, behaves and interacts with other characters, thus affecting the storyline. Herald is episodic, with Books I and II being released on February 22, 2017, for Steam, GOG, Humble, and itch.io Stores. After years of hiatus, Wispfire released Book III and IV in a bundle with the first two books on May 1, 2025. On February 6, 2015, while still in development, Herald won the "Indie Prize Showcase for Best Narrative" and was nominated for "Best Art" at Casual Connect, Amsterdam. Due to its theme on colonialism and other social and political issues, VALUE, a research group that studies the intersections of archaeology and video games, includes a chapter written by Roy van der Schilden and Bart Heijltjes about Herald and how Wispfire used history to create the game in their original book The Interactive Past.