So recently I got my hands on a little game called Home. If you look at it on Steam it has a really low price of entry, only about $3 not on sale and under $1 on sale. Looking at it, one might think, "well what can I get out of a game that comes at THAT low of a price? Must not be super good because of how cheap it is." Turns out the price tag is only because the game is VERY short, only about an hour to an hour and a half for a play through. However what it lacks in quantity it definitely makes up in quality.
Now, originally I was going to review this game. However, after playing it I realized you couldn't really review it without MASSIVE spoilers. Also its a bit of a difficult game to review in general since its incredibly unconventional in how it plays out. So I have decided to instead do a discussion post about Home and talk about some things it does well and some things that make it stand out on the gaming scene. So going to say right now you should pick this up and play it, or find someone who has it and play it so you know what I'm going to be talking about. It's cheap and not very long, worth the price of admission in my opinion. Warning label going up regardless:
SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS AHEAD
Alright lets start with the basics. What is Home? Home is a very simple and unconventional little story driven horror game. You play as a guy who wakes up to find himself in a strange house with no idea how he got there. But this is not the setting for the game. Oh no. The game is about this man's journey back home and what he finds along the way.
Now the first question that should be asked of every horror title is what makes it horror? What makes this game scary? Well, I can tell you one thing, it's definitely not a danger factor. It's not about managing supplies and feeling that rush of adrenaline that comes from narrowly escaping death at the hands of a much more powerful opponent. In fact there is no combat in Home at all. All you do is walk around and look at things. No, what makes Home scary is two things: it's atmosphere and the dread of what you'll find next.
Home effectively makes you feel like you're in danger for the beginning of the game. It always feels like there is something out there, something coming and there's nothing you can do about it except keep putting one foot in front of the other. However since you will quickly learn that there is no danger to you as a player the other type of horror that this game does well takes over. Throughout Home you find pieces of things that happened before the start of the game. A dead body, a video tape, your possessions in places they shouldn't be. You slowly put the pieces together to find out what happened before. And each new piece is one more piece you wish you did not know.
Throughout all this the gloomy lighting and your own footsteps help the atmosphere of the game to weigh heavily on your mind as each new piece of evidence comes to light. Why was your wallet at the top of the water tower? Who were those two dead campers and what happened to them? Why is your friend dead? Each new bit brings more questions than answers, leaving the player to interpret what happened for themselves. Which brings us to the most fascinating part of Home: how it tells the story.
See, in many games you're run down a storyline that is predetermined. The set pieces are in place, the ending is going to be a certain way, there is a definitive way this story is going to go. Some games build upon that formula and let the player shape the story by giving them choices. The Mass Effect series is a prime example, giving the player options throughout the whole game as to how they want to approach a situation and giving them control over many major events throughout the game. However Home takes this a step farther. Home lets you decide not only how your character acts, but how he perceives the world around him.
This next part is probably the biggest spoiler so far. So if you really don't want spoilers, now is the time to abandon ship and come back after you've played the game. You have been warned.
The prime example of how this mechanic comes into play is at the very end of the game. You finally arrive at home. It all comes down to this. You explore the house a bit, and make your way into the basement. Down there, you find a body wrapped in rags. Up to this point, you've been making decisions like, did I take this or that item? Did I go down the shaft without anything to help me down or did I use the rope? Etc. But then comes this decision: Was this body my beloved wife?
At this moment when I was playing, I just stopped. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They were going to let me make THIS major of a decision? They were going to let me decide whether my wife was dead or not? But then you realize: they're not letting you decide whether your wife is dead or not, they let you decide how your character is going to perceive this dead body. Is he going to deny that his wife is dead and keep searching for her? Is he going to recognize who this is and try to piece together what could have led to this? Then after that crucial moment comes a sequence where you go through all the bits of evidence you collected throughout the game and make decisions about each. And each is a decision in how your character perceives what this evidence means in the grand scheme of things.
This is what I find the most fascinating about Home. Not only are you affecting the story by your decisions, you're directly affecting your character's psyche by your decisions. And not only your decisions affect this: whether or not you missed an item will affect how the story goes because of what evidence you have. However this does not give it replay value. Quite the opposite in fact. If you were to go back and try to do Home over again, picking up all the items that you missed before, you would be severely disappointed. The whole point of the game is to give players a unique experience that they can interpret and affect how the character interprets it. The game is purposefully vague in what it gives you, and will remain so no matter how much evidence you collect. So going back and redoing all of that just devalues the outcome you received. Those questions that remain unanswered are better than if you had answered them. What was in that room? What was on that video tape?
It's games like Home that show how the gaming industry is so unique as a medium for storytelling. Letting you directly control more than just your characters actions is something you just cannot do in any other medium. My final word here is that this game is brilliant, unique, and is definitely worth the price of admission and the discussion with other players that it leads to.
To wrap up, I am still accepting requests for topics and reviews you would like me to do. Post about your own Home experience in the comments below and post requests in the comments!
Gamer out.
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