or here.The player assumes the role of an unnamed woman who visits her friend's new house—the new house he happened to build on the same plot of land her brother, his wife, and a slew of other people were murdered at. From here, you must evade a mysterious killer who appears at your every turn.
It is not related to the other Homesick game, which is a commercial 3D Environmental Narrative Game released in 2015.
Homesick contains examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: While you only ever catch brief glimpses of The Killer, his skin is very clearly blue. This may imply that he's undead. The ending seems to confirm it, as he remains at the front porch of the house after the woman finally unlocks the front door and runs away, seemingly unable to step even a foot outside of its bounds.
- Blackout Basement: There's no power in the house, and so literally everything is pitch black if your flashlight is not on.
- Implacable Man: The Killer. There's absolutely nothing you can do to stop him.
- Thankfully, he'll always be passive for a couple of seconds whenever he shows up, so that you can run past him to the exit, if necessary.
- Infinite Flashlight: Played straight with the player's flashlight. Justified, since there's not enough in-game time for it to run out.
- Jump Scare: Good God. The killer can randomly show up pretty much everywhere; the only condition appears to be that you must have your flashlight on for him to show up. However, if you think you can just walk most of the time with no light and be safe, there's specifically a chance of him showing up out of nowhere right as you turn your flashlight back on.
- Worse, he can pop up right out of the very cupboard/bed you are checking for items.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The game's "Look" command text when inspecting the only interactable object in the bathroom. "A medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Interesting. Why is that interesting? Why am I talking to myself?"
- Locked Door: There are three locked doors inside the house, with two requiring keys to unlock, and one a code. Once you unlock the final one, you'll get a code for the wall safe. Which contains a key that'll unlock the front door and let you get the hell out. You are utterly screwed if the killer appears, and you happen to run towards the door you cannot unlock yet, as there's no way to avoid him once you missed your brief "grace period" for running past him right as he appears.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It is not clear throughout the game whether the killer is supernatural in any way, or simply a normal human who is very good at showing up right next to you (but really bad at finding you once the lights go out.) The ending confirms that he's of supernatural origin, as he is completely unable to step beyond the threshold of the house's front porch, and is only left watching.
- Multiple Endings: Downplayed. There are two ways to escape the house - you can go through the steps detailed in Locked Door to find a key that unlocks the front door, or you can skip a step and escape through the balcony, but both of them lead to the same ending text. The only meaningful difference is that you wouldn't discover the room in the basement containing the bodies of Stephanie and Ted if you escape through the balcony, but it's not really a major revelation.
- Nameless Narrative: The only characters named are two bodies in the basement, Stephanie and Ted. Even then, you are not actually told who they are. Though, you can assume Ted was the friend she mentioned in the opening, and Stephanie his loved one.
- Permadeath: There are no checkpoints in the game, so getting stabbed by The Killer forces you to start all over again. However, the game is very short, so this is manageable.
- Pixel Hunt: Interactable hotspots won't trigger unless you physically walk towards them (no clicking somewhere to automatically walk there, like in most such adventure games) and are just a bit too small for comfort. The staircase is a particular offender, requiring you to precisely place down your cursor somewhere in the middle (the exact spot differs depending on the floor you are trying to move up/down from, as well) even if you are standing right next to it.
- Random Event: The killer's appearances are random, though the frequency is high enough to ensure you'll be chased a lot regardless. The exact locations of the keys and safe codes are random as well.
- Retraux: Of old-style point and click horror games, ala Clock Tower.
- Scare Chord: One is heard every time the killer appears, and another is heard when he stabs the player character.
- Shout-Out: The description when looking at wooden boxes."A wooden box. At least it's not a barrel. Fucking barrels."
