From Press Release:
Romania — July 26, 2026 — Romanian solo developer Life is Hard Games has announced Hearts Gone Black, a single-player top-down survival horror game coming to PC via Steam in Q1 2027. The game is available to wishlist now.
Set years after a failed experiment changed humanity forever, Hearts Gone Black takes place in a brutal post-apocalyptic open world where the dead walk with mysterious black hearts. Players must scavenge abandoned locations, fight infected creatures and hostile survivors, manage a small group of survivors, and defend their base against an increasingly hostile world.
The game’s first official gameplay trailer is now available, offering an extended look at its interconnected survival systems, including scavenging, combat, crafting, farming, research, survivor management, extreme weather, and large-scale horde defense events.
Survive Beyond the Base
Every journey outside the base carries a risk. Players must explore ruined homes and dangerous locations to gather food, water, medical supplies, weapons, ammunition, crafting materials, and other resources required to survive.
Combat includes firearms, melee weapons, explosives, tactical consumables, traps, barricades, and deployable gadgets. Players must choose when to fight, when to avoid danger, and how many resources they can afford to spend before returning home.
Keep Your Survivors Alive
Survival does not end when the player reaches the safety of the base. Players must manage their own condition alongside the needs of the other survivors. Hunger, thirst, health, energy, morale, sanity, injuries, and body temperature can all affect whether the group survives.
Survivors can be assigned to essential stations responsible for:
Scavenging
Crafting
Research
Farming
Cooking
Medical
Every survivor requires food, rest, protection, and a purpose. Losing the people who keep the base functioning can be just as dangerous as losing vital supplies .
Endure a Hostile World
Dynamic weather conditions create additional threats while players explore, fight, and scavenge. Rain, snow, fog, heatwaves, freezing conditions, toxic weather, and violent lightning storms affect visibility, temperature, movement, survival needs, and combat conditions.
Players must prepare suitable supplies and equipment before leaving the base or risk being trapped outside in conditions more dangerous than the infected themselves.
Defend What Remains
As the game progresses, players will face increasingly dangerous attacks and large-scale defense events.
During extraction and horde encounters, infected groups advance from multiple directions toward critical objectives. Players must prepare defenses, deploy barricades and traps, manage ammunition, and prevent the infected from overwhelming the final areas still under human control.
Beyond physical survival, players will also encounter difficult decisions affecting the people around them and what remains of humanity.
Key Features
Single-player top-down survival horror
A bleak post-apocalyptic open world to explore
Scavenging, looting, gathering, mining, and hunting
Firearms, melee combat, explosives, traps, barricades and tactical gadgets
Survivor and base management
Crafting, cooking, research, farming, and medical systems
More than 300 items, resources, weapons, tools, and consumables
Hunger, thirst, health, energy, morale, sanity, and temperature management
Dynamic weather and environmental survival threats
Infected creatures and hostile human survivors
Large-scale horde defense and extraction events
Moral decisions with consequences
Wishlist Hearts Gone Black on Steam
https://store.steampowered.
com/app/4934640/Hearts_Gone_ Black/ About Hearts Gone Black
Hearts Gone Black is a single-player top-down survival horror game in which players explore a devastated world, scavenge for supplies, manage a group of survivors, build a functioning base operation, endure extreme weather, and defend what remains against infected hordes and hostile humans.
The game is currently in development for PC and is planned for release in Q1 2027.
About Life is Hard Games
Life is Hard Games is an independent Romanian solo developer.
Hearts Gone Black is the first title and is being developed using Unreal Engine.
