Benjamin Rivers’s Home has no right to be scary. More interactive novel than a traditional game, it tells its story through simple narrative choices accompanied by side-scrolling 8-bit graphics straight out of the NES era. Nonetheless, it held me in an aggravated state of nervous tension for the entirety of its sixty-minute playing time, serving up creepy atmospherics alongside a couple of genuine jump scares. Even better, it left me eager to play it again so I can unlock the hidden secrets I missed the first time.
The game’s protagonist awakens covered in blood in an abandoned house with no memory of how he came to be there, and quickly stumbles over the corpse of the murdered home-owner. From there, your mission is to get him home safely, collecting items and solving puzzles on the way. Most importantly, as you progress you will make decisions about the choices he takes.
The real gameplay is in answering these fourth wall-breaking questions about the protagonist’s actions, questions such as: “I didn’t want to snoop, but… did I open the drawer?” At first it seems off that the narrator is so confused – unsure of his own activities and motivations and not completely in control of himself – but these choices perfectly fit his amnesiac state and complement the game’s ideas about the unreliability of memory. The answers you give subtly affect the course of the game, and the nature of the choices you must make changes as the game nears its climax, adding a fantastic, innovative twist to the interactive storytelling genre.
In spite of its simple presentation and lack of complex mechanics, Home is incredibly successful at creating a tense, oppressive mood. On loading, the game suggests that you turn the lights off, the sound up, and set aside ninety minutes to play through in one sitting – I wholeheartedly agree. It only took me an hour in the end but I was rushing, mostly because I wanted to press on before the tension became too much for me.
One of the biggest factors in creating this oppressive mood is the amazing sound design: sparse and haunting music combining with genuinely creepy atmospheric sound effects. Twice I literally jumped in my seat as I was playing, a great achievement for a narrative-based game. When I started playing for a second time I jumped again, at a completely different section. Home is masterful in its creation of ambience.
An hour to play through might not seem like long, but due to Home‘s clever structuring and branching choices I immediately wanted to start playing again once I was finished. The final third packs in several twists that cast the game’s opening in a whole new light, meaning that once I got my breath back I immediately started a new game. This replayability, coupled with a bunch of trophies I didn’t manage to unlock the first time, gives Home great value for your money; it cost me a measly £2 on PS4 ($2.99 on Steam), less than the energy drink and biscuits I consumed while playing it (because my heart evidently wasn’t racing enough).
As an exercise in mood-building and story-telling, I cannot recommend Home enough. The story packs emotional punch and deftly explores modern-day issues related to relationships and the current economic meltdown. To tell you more would be to spoil its story, so your best bet is to just download it on your PC or PS4 and get stuck into this dark and creepy undiscovered gem.
