The Place I Called Home

Great little indie walking sim with a touching emotional story. Good Visuals and voice acting. A good buy for fans of this genre.

I'm going to give this a "thumbs up" based on the story. Often painful to hear and without a cookie cutter happy ending, it is excellent. My reservations are with some of the game design decisions and mechanics. --I don't understand why the hunger meter even exists. This is a game about a melancholy walk through difficult memories, how does the threat of starvation more effectively tell that story? --Using the left mouse for the axe and "X" for interact is as intuitive as wiping your butt with your off hand. It can be done, it just feels wrong. You only swing the axe nine times. I would much rather click the mouse repeatedly to pick things up and use a random letter key for the axe. --No ability to save progress. I know: Ideally the game should be completed in one sitting. I have never been to an ideal world, and I don't expect to be anytime soon. Life happens. I had to play through 90% of the game twice because I was stuck in the house by a deer and had to start over.

[i] My Experience [/i] Well, I respect what what the game is trying to do. I tend to enjoy these games that involve revisiting an old location to uncover repressed or hidden memories. The game Sagebrush is an excellent example of this genre. While I thought the voice acting was well done and I enjoyed the graphical style and some of the environmental design, I can't say that my impression was altogether positive. [list] [*]When I initially loaded up the game, I clicked on the "How to Play" section, and found it just littered with typos. [*]As another reviewer mentioned, the hunger meter is pretty silly. Why include time pressure in a game about exploration that encourages you to collect everything? With how many I had to eat to keep that meter up, I have no doubt that Sophia would 100% be heaving mushrooms by the end of the game. [*]The game spells out its themes a bit too explicitly. Instead of giving you the facts or just the diary pages, Sophia often (during the "memories" that yo...