A homebody is a person who stays home and does not venture out much, but what if you are forced to not be a homebody and go hang out with friends, at a strange house, with a killer on the loose? Well, then you have Rogue and Game Grumps’ horror-puzzle game Homebody. I want to thank Rogue and Game Grumps for allowing me to check out the game.
Homebody follows Emily, a young woman with severe agoraphobia who is going to a rented house to hang out with her old friends who she has not seen in over a year. While at the house strange events take place where a masked killer attacks Emily and her friends and every time Emily dies, she loops back to after she arrives at the house.
Now onto the game itself! Homebody‘s controls are pretty simple and limited making it easy to get going with the story which seems to drop you right into the action. The game’s sound design could use some tweaking as some sound effects are too loud, even after turning down the master volume (which is the only sound option you work with). The art style of Homebody is trying to mimic the old-school look of PlayStation with some modern animation mixed in, but I’ll admit it’s more reminiscing of some of the old-school DOS games.
Gameplay for Homebody is nothing new but I felt it fell short of the “Death-loop” game craze from a couple of years ago, in short, live, die, repeat. While some games that have done this were more action based, this one is more brainy with all the puzzles you have to try to complete before the events arise and the killer comes. If you’re not a fan of puzzles, you may want to pass on this one.
A bit of a gripe on my part and I apologize, but I don’t see how this game could be called a “horror” game as nothing really spooky goes on. True the killer is creepy, there’s the time-loop thing, and a mystery that must be unraveled, the game to me is more of a thriller/suspense than a horror which is kind of disappointing, You can look at this and say it’s a slasher and that slasher movies are horror but don’t forget that those kinds of films/genre have been at the center of many gladiatorial style fights on film forums for as long as the internet has been around.
Overall, Homebody is a decent callback to the look and feel of the first-generation consoles and is creative with the puzzles, but it’s those puzzles that may scare off some players as they can be quite intricate. The lack of horror for a game being touted as survival horror is kind of nagging. If you’re into psychological games that test your problem-solving skills this is for you, but if you wanted to be scared and have an adventure while doing that, you may want to pass on this.
On my scale of 1-10, Homebody is a 6.
Homebody is out now on PlayStations 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
