Oct 20, 2019
Homesick (2015) by Lucky Pause
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seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
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seen from China
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Homesick (2015) by Lucky Pause
Homesick
Overview:
Homesick is an Indie first-person 3D puzzle-adventure title driven by exploratory gameplay, environmental interaction, and an emotionally sensible narrative. The game has a focus on atmospheric surrealism, and is the first game developed by Lucky Pause on the Unreal Engine after a successful Kickstarter campaign. It is a relatively short game, spanning about four hours. The game deals with sensitive themes, and manages to grasp everyday life in a way that is both foreboding yet serene.
Story:
You wake up, and your first and most important clue is half a drawing of a child next to some blue flowers. Homesick lacks anything close to a dialogue, what it doesn’t lack is information sprawled throughout the game’s world (a building), all there for you to decipher so that you can deduce what happened that left the inside of a building in such decay. Any text that you might come across -be it a book or a loose piece of paper- is in something that appears to be code or a foreign language; in the last puzzle you are able to decipher these and turn them all into proper letters. That progression encourages the player to turn back and revisit the previously explored places, and in doing so, revealing the lives of the people that resided in the building along with what catastrophic event left the building in its current shape.
Gameplay:
The gameplay consists of exploring a decaying building and interacting with various aspects of its environment. During the day you can go nearly everywhere you want, but cannot stand too close to the windows because you are hypersensitive to sunlight. When you go to sleep you have nightmares, these consist of darkness seeping and dripping upwards from the floor; you have to try to keep moving so that it doesn’t swallow you and wake you up, which prevents you from further progress. Parts of each puzzle are done during the day and other parts during the night. I will not mention the puzzles as to not spoil any of the story, but I will mention that they are satisfyingly challenging without being frustratingly difficult. To solve each puzzle you will have to explore and search, as well as interact with as many things as you can.
As I mentioned above, a big part of the gameplay is picking up and reading texts laying around the building. There are books, letters, and newspapers from which to acquire information.
Visual:
Okay, this is where the game shines brightest (figuratively AND literally).
This is one of the most photorealistic games I’ve had the pleasure to play. What little animations the game has are done well. All the environments and every object in them are modeled extremely well, but most of all it’s the textures that make this game a truly and strikingly impressive feat, and an absolute joy to look at.
Here are some of the many screenshots I took of the game, the third of which is my personal favourite:
Basketball Court.
Lounge.
Writing Room.
Something I’d like to add about the visuals, the game is relatively customizable for its genre. It has console commands, where you can change your FOV and how fast you move, to name a couple of its features. Another thing that is completely worth mentioning is the built-in camera; if you press ‘F4’ while playing it will save a screenshot that is double the resolution you’re playing at (this is the reason my screenshots are at 4K resolution).
Sound:
Homesick has a soundtrack that goes very well with the atmosphere and ambiance that Lucky Pause is trying to achieve, courtesy of Heather Schmidt. The music has a little bit of a relaxed acoustic style to it, with a hint of classical. Other than the amazing soundtrack the environmental sounds -such as doors opening and closing, keys jingling, or file cabinets opening and closing (and falling over)- are also done very well. The true MVP in sound for this game though, is the soundtrack, hands down.
Final Thoughts:
I saw this game on the Humble Store during its spring sale. I decided to buy it because the game looked particularly appealing, with its great visuals and almost-psychedelic nightmare scenes, it was something I felt I couldn’t pass up. It was a good decision, I absolutely loved this game. The two most enjoyable parts of the game were the graphics and the underlying story behind the game. I felt that Lucky Pause conveyed a story about a man-made natural disaster that resulted in the end of many people’s lives extremely well. Not only that, but the experimentation with other themes such as people and their everyday lives, it moved me; the politically charged contents of the newspapers (which are central to the narrative) are also food for thought. There’s nothing more I could ask of this game, it absolutely blew my expectations out of the water and delivered a wonderfully emotional experience, with great puzzles to boot. Lucky Pause should pat themselves on the back for making such a positively melancholy game, and I give a standing ovation to Barrett Meeker and his dog.
Homefloor/b> Homesick • UE3 Tiledshot Rendering • Debug Commands (DebugCamera, FOV, Playersonly) Big thanks to Lucky Pause for providing me with a early preview code. • Full Resolution • On FlickR<
Homelight Homesick • UE3 Tiledshot Rendering • Debug Commands (DebugCamera, FOV, Playersonly) Big thanks to Lucky Pause for providing me with a early preview code. • Full Resolution • On FlickR<
Home Homesick • UE3 Tiledshot Rendering • Debug Commands (DebugCamera, FOV, Playersonly) Big thanks to Lucky Pause for providing me with a early preview code. • Full Resolution • On FlickR<
Homefan Homesick • UE3 Tiledshot Rendering • Debug Commands (DebugCamera, FOV, Playersonly) Big thanks to Lucky Pause for providing me with a early preview code. • Full Resolution • On FlickR<
Homebalcony Homesick • UE3 Tiledshot Rendering • Debug Commands (DebugCamera, FOV, Playersonly) Big thanks to Lucky Pause for providing me with a early preview code. • Full Resolution • On FlickR<
Homepiano Homesick • UE3 Tiledshot Rendering • Debug Commands (DebugCamera, FOV, Playersonly) Big thanks to Lucky Pause for providing me with a early preview code. • Full Resolution • On FlickR<