8/13/2023 0 Comments No longer home humble groveAny game that allows me to pet a cat gets bonus points. I’m still not sure what difference my dialogue choices made – it didn’t feel like I could make any major changes to the story, and I kind of wish the stakes were higher. This isn’t something the game dwells upon, it’s just kind of matter-of-fact. Sometimes you’ll stumble across a weird, supernatural object (or even a weird, supernatural creature). It feels like you are really moving something solid, with a metallic dragging sound, as though rotating it is a monumental effort. It’s worth rotating every room to make sure you see everything. You can ‘turn’ the flat, giving you a new perspective on each room, uncovering hidden spots. Again, No Longer Home made me think of all the homes I have left behind in my life, and those surreal last nights before saying goodbye. Your main goal is to do what all humans do when they leave a place they once called home – to walk through it one more time, peering into each room, desperately trying to soak it in. It works pretty well on the Switch, although I wish you could play it properly handheld rather than having to disconnect the Joy-Cons and play it that way. You potter around the flat, interacting with items and talking to people, slowly learning more about Bo and Ao. The gameplay is very minimal, with the story taking the spotlight. The sound design is excellent, and the music has a spaced-out, lo-fi kind of vibe. As they try to imagine what it might be to live there, your perspective sinks slowly, through layers of dirt, to the workers busy constructing the housing complex underneath their feet. At one point two characters talk in the glare of a streetlamp as though standing under a spotlight.Ī standout moment for me is during a conversation the friends are having about the development of a new housing complex underground. The walls of the flat occasionally slide away, revealing a different backdrop, and then slide back again, slotting into place like a puzzle. Each room appears to kind of hang against a starry background, giving it a nice existential feel, and preventing it from ever becoming too realistic to be mundane.Ĭertain sections feel like watching a play rather than playing a game. The flat itself is lovingly rendered, with many little details to look at, even if you can’t interact with all of them. To the point where I half-expected one of them to shoo me away for stealing their pumpkins or something. The characters, meanwhile, remind me of the blank-faced, eternally tortured villagers from Untitled Goose Game. The minimal gameplay, slow plodding of the characters, and even the main font reminded me heavily of KRZ, another narrative-based game that I really enjoyed. In fact, I was gobsmacked when I realised that they weren’t made by the same team. The style, in terms of gameplay and design, is pretty reminiscent of Kentucky Route Zero. Inspired By Untitled Goose Game/Kentucky Route Zero Spending a few hours living that out through Ao and Bo brought up feelings I had long forgotten. Not necessarily terror or excitement, just a blank, exhausting feeling of unknowing. What No Longer Home does really well is to capture that feeling of ‘flatness’ that I remember from early adulthood. Both characters walk around the flat and wonder: where did that time go? How did those incredible, formative years disappear so quickly? The startling and sometimes bleak reality of facing responsibilities, of leaving the university bubble, and moving on to whatever is next. It’s not a story with unexpected twists and turns or alternative endings: it’s just a retelling of that last night. You switch perspectives between Ao and Bo, two friends living out their last night in the flat together before leaving their university home (and each other) behind. Release Date: (Switch version) What Actually Happens In No Longer Home? No Longer Home – a Short but Sweet Game About Life on the Cusp of Adulthood
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