I enjoyed this game a lot, it's very cute but it also has an engaging story and likeable characters. There's even an impressive amount of post-game content that has a lot of new areas and genuine effort put into it. The world genuinely feels alive and i couldn't get enough of exploring it.
It's like a modern GBA game, but somehow with even more soul put into it. The combat is turn based and your party members have field abilities which allow you to solve some simple puzzles.
The music is very good but i could swear i heard bits of it in other amateur games, so some must be sourced from a free music library.

It's a mixed bag.
The characters and story are really nice, but it does take a lot of time to get to interesting part.

The gameplay, sometimes is whatever, sometimes bad-ish. Puzzles are probably the worst part. Many of them are just "follow only available path to get to the switch that opens new only available path".
The ones where you need to use Chip's dash are the worst, it requires not difficult, but specific and very non-obvious way of doing it and even then sometimes fails. It was a big waste of time.
Also fighting long marathon of bosses (close to the end of the game) got tiring pretty fast and it's not only part where having less of something would be helpful.

edit: Just learned about transphobia. It is easily -2 stars level of bad, so -2 stars it is.

I would recommend avoiding discussions concerning controversies surrounding the developer. No matter what your opinion is, this game does not discuss any of those politics. Many of the characters themselves are gender non-conforming in some way, but that's about it.

A standout in the RPG Maker "genre." Catchy music, vibrant pixel art style, and a touching story. The game was life-changing for me for personal reasons, and I can confidently recommend this as a must-play for those looking to see some of what RPG Maker can do. Can't get enough of the characters either. Very charming all around.

Very pleasant solid RPG. Heartbeat has a lot of likable characters and a very comfortable atmosphere aside from when it gets serious at the end. The writing, while nothing extraordinary, is entertaining enough and doesn't fall into the expected indie trap of characters trying to be quirky and make sarcastic jokes every other line. I was also pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of well-done character designs throughout the game, a lot of which belonging to characters that didn't even get much more than a couple scenes to talk. The artsyle is very nice and I like how it's clearly anime-inspired but with enough of a western touch that feels different without going into tumblr territory, kind of like crosscode. The music is good though the sound effect for clicking on options can get kind of annoying. The battle system is a solid iteration of JRPG-like turn-based combat and it does a good job of making you want to use status effects and buffs/de-buffs though enemy HP can be a bit too high sometimes, especially in the early game. While the combat is good, I do feel there's a bit too much of it, particularly in the finale. The story is decent but I wasn't emotionally invested. I was also greatly annoyed by missing the requirement for the true ending and having to be set back by a decent amount of progression to get it. Aside from that, I don't have many complaints about the game besides not getting to choose your party members throughout the game, or at least one of them and only making you use Eve, Klein and whoever is relevant in the story. I'm also kind of disappointed there's hardly any feminine characters in a game where nearly every major character is a girl. Pretty much every party member besides Io and Stolas have the appearance of a standard anime boy.