While it again boils down to a game of cat and mouse, this variety made me believe that it would be a case of a new “big bad” in each new sequence, but I was sorely mistaken, finding myself on the end of a box cutter again in no time.
While the jumpscares are solid enough (at least early on), it’s the fear of having to redo large sections of stagnant and staggered gameplay that’s the real horror when it comes to Home Sweet Home.Īway from staring at the inside of a locker, Home Sweet Home breaks it up with a sequence featuring a looming monster who’s as big as a skyscraper. Having to retread the same ground continuously due to spotty checkpointing doesn’t help either, especially when the stealth is so slow-paced that it can be minutes of sitting behind a counter and creeping around corners before you are back to where you were.
This is the main loop of the game, which really begins to grate when Home Sweet Home’s trial and error nature becomes more and more apparent. You then have to wait patiently as she takes her sweet time to go away, and then try to not fall asleep during another attempt at the game’s rather basic stealth. She lollops around laboriously with a cone of vision that feels inconsistent, resulting in a quick death unless you are able to dash your way towards a locker. Your assailant for the majority of the game is a languid teenager with a box cutter, who would be terrifying if she weren’t so irritating. Gameplay in Home Sweet Home typically consists of playing hide and seek while finding keys - again, nothing too original to find here - to make progress through a school and your own home in alternating sequences.
Thanks to the likes of Amnesia and Outlast, it’s a form of horror gaming that’s been explored to death in recent years, and despite it being based on Thai folklore and boasting some early tension, Home Sweet Home’s rote and tiring gameplay doesn’t help it stand out from its many peers. Home Sweet Home, only just recently released on PS4 in Europe, is a first-person pacifist horror, which basically translates to you having almost no means with which to defend yourself from whatever’s hunting you down. Oh, and there’s also a portal to some spirit realm or something like it underneath the stairs. That is, of course, unless your spouse has gone missing under supernatural circumstances and there’s weird noises coming from the television.
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