Homesick

I've only finished this game two or three times in the years I've owned it, but I think about it all the time. It's a beautiful, melancholic, contemplative experience that commits to a very bittersweet atmosphere and delivers on it. If you're into thoughtful walking sims and puzzles, and the inherent joy of wandering around crumbling long-abandoned architecture, then this is a good one!

Wonderfull game.

I first played Homesick over 10 years ago when it was new, and since then I somehow still thought of it every once in a while, so I finally replayed it now in 2026. This game may be very indie and obvious that it's Kickstarter-backed (there are parts later on where you can see this), and it has some of the problems that walking sim-type games tend to have, but it does what it sets out to do very well. If it could be summed up in one word, it's "atmosphere". Or maybe "melancholy"? Anyway, the melancholic atmosphere is just so good. The environments are beautiful and perfectly convey the main themes of the story, and the nightmare sections look cool and unsettling but fit the narrative as well. There's also some excellent sad piano (and cello) for a soundtrack, which is a big part of the feel of the game. Gameplay-wise, the puzzles are well designed and satisfying to do. It might get frustrating for some players but there are plenty of environmental hints if you explore and they make logical sense, so I don't think they're too hard though the solutions are not immediately obvious. And once you understand what's going on in the story, it also makes sense why the puzzles are the …

less than 2 hours, like 5 puzzles of how to fill a water bucket, ending of "that's it?", the only relevant text once decoded is the elevator instruction, game just aint worth the full price.

While the game would have otherwise COULD HAVE been good, there are two major issues with it. One plagues the vast majority of the "walking simulator" genre, and it's the snail waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalking speed. The other multiplies it a hundred times. Once you get the very first nightmare and read the sign on the door ("keep the hall lights on"), reading every letter becomes really trivial, but rather time consuming. So you are just forced to waste time walking, and waste time reading... I dunno if at some point you get them auto-decoded, I dropped the game after going through about 15 full-size pages. ... Maybe it would have been worthwhile if they weren't smalltalk about nothing ...

I got exactly what I paid for