HOMESICKNESS

Best visual style I've seen in a long time. I really hope this game gets the attention it deserves and becomes popular someday. Thank you for making this

Very effective at achieving its intended atmosphere. Genuinely unsettling in parts. Doesn't do a lot of new things, but takes a lot of the experimental concepts indie horror has been going for and produces a very polished experience. The randomization keeps failure from making the gameplay stale. You can't min/max or pathfind based on your previous failures. You simply must get better at the core gameplay loop. Honestly very surprised nobody is talking about this

*mostly small mechanical but still SPOILERS ahead* -Seems strongly inspired by I Saw the TV Glow, and successfully works as a nostalgic amalgamation of late 90s-early 2000s tech and those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pizza place restaurants everyone has been to at least once. -Where Homesickness falters is in the mechanical implementation of its art; surely every audiovisual element of the game contributes to the atmosphere and the themes and all of that good stuff, but mechanically, I don't see any reason why the first two levels needed to consist of finding the exact same items to unlock one door and play one mini game on a computer in order to get a code for a door. -I am not of the opinion that everything MUST contribute to every facet of a game for it to be worthy of inclusion, but the mini-games that repel the monsters are pretty nondescript as it is, so I question why the computer game specifically had to be included twice over. -An exception to the latter point is the lingering enemies, which need to be erased in the notebook. This is a neat trick, but it also suffers from not being properly implemented in any other way, robbing it of significance; were the notebook to be mentioned even in passing in the dialogue, this could've been mitigated. -I think the environments are extremely indistinct, noisy, and properly crunchy (the audio is a perfect VHS throwback, almost painful to listen to in the best way possible), and this should not be taken as a slight against the game; in fact, I consider this to be the single most indelible aspect of Homesickness. The lasting impact of the audiovisual quality that stems from mechanics is something this game has in spades. -For as critical as this review is, I consider Homesickness to be a success. I was not disappointed, and I strongly want to vouch for this game, particularly to anyone interested in a late 90s exploration of childhood and nostalgia through an eccentric maze of confusion and yearning.

this game is SICK

amazing fnaf-like point & click game, but I'm broke so I had to refund it after playing through half of the first floor :( Only problem with the game is the price, which imo is quite high, however it is very unique (I haven't played a fnaf fangame with mechanics exactly like it, I have played maybe one that has the "listen to instructions then follow them" trope, if I correctly recall it was Dormitabis, an enemy says numbers that you have to enter correctly or you die, which isn't super similar but it's the closest I could think of, so yeah definitely unique, I'm just gonna recommend getting it on sale if your short on cash

wow

The game has a great artstyle and a good concept, but I got to the end of chapter 2 and I just couldn't complete it. The game's voice acting is fine for what it is, but I feel like maybe a bit too much exposition starting out. My main issue was that one of the randomly generated codes contained three numbers that looked either like 8s or 9s, with how low-res the game is combined with the font I just couldn't make it out and before I could try all combinations I got killed by the constant onslaught of enemies which can all attack at the same time. I just couldn't be bothered to replay it from the start to look through empty rooms again and again.