return to home

Listen, I appeared in the interactive fiction community a year or so ago, straight out of visual novel community, therefore, I’m used to creating and playing choice-based games. I’m still getting used to parsers and trying to destigmatize them in my head, where they’re still clinging to the association of hours-long, puzzle-filled ordeals (don’t come after me, I’m trying to make a parser myself!). That’s why I was actually kind of happy to see return to home, which advertises itself as a “little IF romp”. Also, today I learned what “romp” means.

I have Lectrote installed but it wouldn’t run the game so I installed Gargoyle as instructed and everything worked as it should. I’ve never heard of GAGS or even Gargoyle for that matter so I’m glad I got to learn. I’m aware that it’s customary to attach transcripts of your parser playthroughs alongside your reviews (on IntFiction forum, where this review was first published) but truth be told, not only I don’t know how to do transcripts with Gargoyle, I also absolutely forgor that I should probably record the playthrough. I’m sorry, it will most likely happen again.

The premise is pretty simple: you’re on your way home but your usual route is blocked. You decide to leave your car by the blockade and just walk to your house instead. Along the way, you can decide to take random detours, take in the views, and encounter a variety of objects you can take with you. Short, neat, very slice of life.

I visited 13/14 locations and gathered 3/4 objects you can find, which translates to 13/14 points. The greatest difficulty I had with this game was trying to enter the house because I simply don’t know how directions work. There’s not a lot I can say because it very much has a vibe of a test project – something you make just to test out a way to make a game, and if I understand correctly, that was essentially what it was meant to be. I’m kind of sad that I couldn’t, for example, examine the house or the car, but that’s understandable within a “test game” scope, I suppose. I won’t comment on the language because the author requested so (European English-As-Foreign-Language solidarity?) but I didn’t have trouble understanding what’s going on, which is great.

Overall, the game has a very calm atmosphere. There’s just something nice about “walking simulators” where your only task is to walk and maybe go on little detours. You know, you need to switch up things from time to time, break the routine, go on a different path. Variety is the spice of life. Did I enjoy playing through it? I actually did. Might even go on a walk today.