Homebody

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

Homebody is a Graphic Adventure-style Horror game released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Homebody follows the story of Emily, a young woman with anxiety and OCD issues who meets up with her old friends a year after leaving their town to live in a big city, with the group gathering together in a rented cabin to view a meteor shower. While her old friends are mostly welcoming, Emily can’t shake the feeling that something ominous is happening. Perhaps it’s the odd daydreams she seems to be having, the unusual machines installed throughout the house, or the mysterious warnings the cabin’s owner made insisting that the group stay out of the cellar and attic

Soon enough, Emily’s premonitions prove to be well-founded, as a power outage strikes the cabin, and shortly afterward the group is attacked by a masked, knife-wielding killer who slaughters the whole group. However, this is only the start of the story, as Emily awakens again, apparently experiencing a Groundhog Day-style time loop, yet one where she is somehow unable to warn her friends of the impending threat.

Homebody was clearly designed as a loving tribute to the “Survival Horror” games from early in the PlayStation era, with this game’s creators citing Clockwork Tower, Alone in the Dark, and the first Resident Evil game as their direct inspiration. That’s not to say that Homebody is a slave to the past though – the Groundhog Day-style time loop is actually a tool players can use to carry information from one play-through to the next, starting them off with any important keycodes they had before. This also brings into play another more modern element, a clock ticking down the minutes of the night, with certain events happening at specific times. And while players can opt to use the old-fashioned “tank-style controls” of old Survival Horror games here, by default the game uses a more modern control scheme that’s far more user-friendly.

That being said, there are still a few relics of the past here that not everyone will appreciate. As mentioned before, the cabin Emily is seeking to escape from has all sorts of odd machines with unusual locking mechanisms, and the methods for using these machines can seem pretty contrived and obtuse. Seriously, in what reality does resetting a breaker box require a password that can only be obtained by playing a game of Minesweeper?

Another issue here is that while the controls are certainly better than the clunky stuff we had to deal with back on the original PlayStation, they’re still not great. Trying to interact with items in a room can be particularly frustrating when you need to position your character just so to interact with one specific thing next to multiple others. And while this game does avoid the clunky combat of games like the original Resident Evil, that’s only because Emily has no means to fight, and what’s more she can get killed in one hit.

There is one element of Homebody where the game strikes a good balance between old and new – the presentation. Homebody makes use of simple 3D visuals rendered with a somewhat low screen resolution, which overall does a good job evoking the classic PlayStation look quite well while actually being far more detailed, with nice touches like real-time lighting and shadows (though said shadows are extremely blocky and low-resolution), and some nice subtle animations in the environments, like the hanging light in the foyer swaying ever so slightly. This is backed by a fitting atmospheric soundtrack, and some really excellent and creepy sound design that does a good job making you listen for every different unsettling noise. Really, the only thing missing here is the PlayStation era’s laughably bad voice acting (characters in Homebody speak only with text joined by a tonal noise to match the character).

Overall, I think Homebody is a great tribute game to the past of the Horror genre, and one that manages to mostly balance new and old elements quite well. That said, I think many of those old elements may be frustrating or off-putting for modern players, meaning this game is likely to be a bit niche, even for fans of the Horror and Graphic Adventure genres. Still, if you are one of those people pining for the good ol’ days of classic PlayStation Horror, Homebody is well worth checking out.

tl;dr – Homebody is a Graphic Adventure-style Horror game about a group of young adults spending a night together in a cabin who find themselves attacked by a blade-wielding killer, setting into motion a Groundhog Day-style time loop. This game is a loving tribute to the past that does a good job adding new and modern elements, though some of the old-fashioned elements won’t be to everyone’s liking. Still, those who fondly remember the PlayStation era of Horror games would do well to seek this game out.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel

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