Kernel Hearts Walkthrough — Run Structure and Floor Order

A Kernel Hearts walkthrough is really a walkthrough of one repeating structure: an open arena, a rising Sin Meter, and a guardian boss at the end of the floor. The official store page confirms the frame, describing each level as ending in an intense boss fight against the domain guardian and runs supporting up to four friends. Everything below is drawn from the official listing and from review coverage, with single-source floor details marked as such.

How a Single Expedition Unfolds

The official description sets the fiction: as part of the M.A.H.O.U Unit you climb the Tower of Babel, eliminating angelic creatures, and after each expedition you return to your last memory backup in a laboratory on the outskirts of humanity last holdout. So a run is a bounded excursion with a banking phase afterwards.

Inside that excursion, RPG Fan describes the loop in concrete terms.

• Start in an open arena with semi-randomly placed structures and encounters rather than a room-by-room layout.
• Kill angels for pink Stray Souls and spend them at Moon Shrines to level up.
• Collect blue Lost Wishes, which open coffins granting abilities and passives.
• Find chests with collectibles used for bonding with NPCs, and destroy flowers to unlock special chambers.
• Climb out via the elevator the sky angel points you toward when the Sin Meter gets high.

Because the arena is open, the walkthrough advice is about decision order rather than a fixed route. No Small Games notes that players can always abandon a fight if they take on more than they can handle, which makes disengaging a legitimate tactic rather than a defeat.

Floor Order and What Changes Between Floors

The store page does not publish a floor list, so any order comes from review coverage and should be treated as to confirm. RPG Fan is the most specific source available, and it describes the following progression.

Area	What RPG Fan describes	Source status
Opening area	Grassy meadows called Folktale Fields, a large arena of rolling hills	Single review source, to confirm
Later floors	Areas inspired by Judeo-Christian visions of heaven and hell, each looking very different	Single review source, to confirm
Platforming floor	Climbing a non-randomly generated series of cloudy temples to reach the escape elevator	Single review source, to confirm
Purgatory floor	Falling through a monochromatic purgatory of halls and doors to an elevator at the bottom	Single review source, to confirm
Final main area	Described as the hardest, with heavy enemy density and fast Sin Meter growth	Single review source, to confirm

RPG Fan states there are five main floors to Babel, not including boss and safe room areas between them. That conflicts with third-party guide sites that describe only a couple of floors at launch, so the safest answer for the floor count is that the number is not officially published and review sources disagree.

Boss Fights and the Guardian Pattern

The only first-party statement about bosses is that each level culminates in an intense boss fight against the domain guardian. Review coverage adds context but not a full boss list.

• Expect one guardian boss per floor as the gate to the next area.
• Treat the boss as the reason to bank earlier upgrades, since the official text frames level-up and chip spending as happening between expeditions.
• Do not rely on named boss strategies from third-party sites yet, because the store page documents none and the floor structure itself is still disputed.

A widely shared third-party guide site lists two guardians at launch, which would imply two gated floors rather than five. Because that claim comes from an unofficial site and contradicts review coverage, it should be marked to confirm rather than repeated as fact.

How Runs End and How to Avoid Losing Them

RPG Fan describes two distinct failure modes, and both are avoidable with discipline.

Failure mode	What happens	How to avoid it
Sin Meter maxes out	At 90 per cent an angel appears to warn you to climb; at 100 per cent RPG Fan says it rains fire or drains your life bar	Bank and take the elevator at the warning instead of chasing one more chest
Missed the elevator	Falling away from the exit can end the run, which RPG Fan says can cost roughly half an hour	Treat platforming sections as the priority, since the same review calls platforming the game weaker element

RPG Fan also notes the Sin Meter ramps faster than the enemy scaling at Normal difficulty, which is why the review recommends not expecting the power fantasy to keep pace. The practical walkthrough rule is simple: the meter is the schedule, and the boss is the deadline.