Video Game / Dot's Home

Dot's Home is the story of Dorothea "Dot" Hawkins, a black woman who, thanks to time travel, witnesses the events that shaped her family through three generations. It's as much a journey of self-discovery as one of exploration of the deep-seated Generational Trauma that pervades her family's history. Racism and housing inequality can force anyone to face difficult decisions and the consequences aren't always nice and the choices are not always fully conscious.

Released on October 22, 2021, it's a Freeware indie Point-and-Click Game developed by Weathered Sweater, Aerial_Knight, and Titan ARX Interactive under publisher Rise-Home Stories Project. It is available on itch.io, Steam, Google Play, and the iOS App Store.

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This Video Game provides examples of:

• Affectionate Nickname: Mavis's husband Karl calls her "Mavie", while Hank calls his wife Evelyn "Ev".
• The Alleged House: Grandma Mavis' house has wallpaper peeling off the walls, stains in the corners of the ceiling, a leaky roof on the second floor, and a dusty basement that's giving Carlos asthma attacks. This is because she was scammed into owning it by Murphy's grandfather when she and Karl made the deal with him in 1959.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Michael H. Murphy III, the sleazy real-estate agent from Hope Equity.
  • Hank Hawkins, Dot's father.
• Arc Words: "Opportunity." As Dot learns in her Field Trip to the Past, her family took many opportunities to give her a better life in the present. Her grandparents got the opportunity to leave South Carolina for Detroit, her parents got the opportunity to raise her and Georgia for a brighter future despite the struggles with discrimination, Georgia wanted the opportunity to live a better life than her parents did, while her wife Alma wanted to give immigrants the opportunity to live in adequate housing. And presently, Grandma Mavis wants to give someone else the opportunity to live in her old house so she can live in a better one. On the other hand, Michael Murphy of Hope Equity believes that an open door is an open invitation for new opportunities, but actually, he wants to take the opportunity to exploit minorities with unfair housing prices.
• Bizarre Dream Rationalization: Dot time travels back to key points in her family's past to learn about the housing discrimination they suffered as Black people. As entering the past involved using a magic key to enter a trippy hallway, Dot swears that she's dreaming all of this. Except that she wasn't because all the advice she gave her relatives in the past ended up influencing the present.
• Call-Forward: Dot time travels back to 1992, when her older sister Georgia was born. Her father Hank is worried about her mother Evelyn moving out of Detroit with her for "better opportunities" because he doesn't want Georgia to be lonely. Dot, hiding that she's his future daughter, tells him that she has a feeling that Georgia won't be alone, to his confusion, but Dot shrugs it off.
  Hank: You know something I don't Miss Dot?
  Dot: Not a thing, Mr. Hawkins.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Dot time travels to key points in her family's past to learn how they survived discrimination against Black people. In order to hide from them that she's from the future, she calls her parents and grandparents "Mr./Mrs. Hawkins" instead of "Mom", "Dad", "Grandma", or "Grandpa".
• Choice-and-Consequence System: The game marks which of your choices will make a big impact in the story by telling you that your choice will be remembered. Other choices give you different responses, but they're not big enough to change the plot's direction. The consequences from the major choices are then revealed to Dot by her Grandma Mavis when the former returns to the present.
• Disappeared Dad: Dot's Grandpa Karl (the father of her father Hank) isn't seen with her Grandma Mavis in the present. It's because he long passed, and since he was the one who did the repairs, the family has struggled with maintaining the house over the years, among other consequences they suffered due to racism.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Dot hates being called by her full first name "Dorothea", and she makes it clear to her nephew Carlos.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Dot freaks out at a mouse after time traveling to her parents' old apartment in 1992.
• Field Trip to the Past: Dot returns to her grandmother's house in Detroit, MI to find that her Grandma Mavis is considering selling it to Murphy's Keys-for-Cash promotion in order to pay the bills, after refusing to do so because she would have nowhere to go after. Dot gets distraught by Mavis' decision, so she goes upstairs to her bed to sleep off her headache. Upon waking up, Dot discovers that she's mysteriously locked her room, and she finds a magic key that beckons her to use it. She unlocks the door and enters a magic hallway, taking her back to key moments of her family's past. Throughout the game, she learns about the historical housing discrimination against Black people firsthand and how her family survived it in order to provide her the home she's living in.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Carlos refuses to leave the basement of his great-grandma's house despite his asthma attacks. He's implied to have been carried by Georgia between her and Alma, and his great-grandma remarks that he's like his grandfather Hank (Georgia's father) when he moved out in '86.
    Dot: I'm pretty sure flair for dramatics is a family trait.
  • Michael Murphy III looks exactly the same as his grandfather. He also tries scamming Grandma Mavis into selling her house for money to pay the bills, just like how his grandfather scammed her and Karl into buying the ill-repaired house back in 1959.
  • Grandma Mavis remarks that Georgia is an opportunist like her mother Evelyn, always taking every chance they can get.
• Generational Trauma: The plot explores how racism affects Black people through generations by shedding light on the housing inequality they suffered in history. It also shows how seemingly inconsequential decisions made by family members impact those who come after them many years later. As Dot learns by time traveling through her family's history, her grandparents had to make a difficult decision to buy or rent what would become her home when settling in Detroit after leaving South Carolina. Their children then had to move out to a public apartment due to the redlining^note being refused a loan or insurance due to one's home being considered financially at risk imposed on their race. Then after having Dot's older sister Georgia, they had to make another difficult decision: to move to a new town for their daughter's sake, or stay and fight the Villainous Gentrification in their neighborhood. This then comes to a head in modern times, when Georgia and Alma argue over whether to sell their old house to Hope Equity, even though they're a Predatory Business, so they can live better off than Georgia's parents in their new one, or let an immigrant family rent the house so they'll feel welcomed in the community. All of this explains why Dot's Grandma Mavis is struggling with having to sell her ancestral home to pay the bills — she believes that everything her family has worked for for generations will be destroyed, and she will have nowhere to go due to the rising housing and retirement costs. Mavis tells Dot everything that led the family here and reveals that she saved the house deed for her for when she's ready to make the decision: to either stay home with Grandma despite it being run-down due to the high maintenance costs, or move out and start a new life for herself and her future family.
• Genre Savvy: After Dot lands in the past, recognizes her own grandmother, and fails to get recognized by her, Dot immediately realizes what time period she's in. So she tries keeping her time traveling a secret and maintaining a Stable Time Loop to prevent a time paradox.
  Dot: Okay, I've seen this happen in the movies. Just gotta play it cool.
• The Klutz: Hank often drops his wallet and, in other times, forgets that it was with him the whole time, to Evelyn's frustration.
• Magic Realism: The game takes place in modern-day Detroit, but Dot wakes up from her nap one day to find a magic key that takes her back in time to various points in her family's life. There's no explanation as to why the key is magic — it's just there to show Dot the suffering her family went through in order to provide her the home she's living in.
• Meaningful Background Event: A factory can be seen in the background of Dot's neighborhood in Detroit, confirming the newspaper headline that the poor housing practices of real estate companies are endangering the community because they're built near environmental hazards.
• Multiple Endings: Depending on your choices, there are three possible endings.
  • The Good Ending: All the major choices must be the best ones to get this ending. Carlos moves in with his great-grandma after Dot moved next door to her, and he still loves it even though he complains about its condition. Dot also teaches at the local school, and she stands up for her neighborhood to make the community land trust. With everyone's support, the neighborhood is able to drive away predatory real estate companies who want to sell out their town, and they continue to fight for equal housing rights for all races.
  • The Neutral Ending: Usually acquired on the first run, where some of your choices are bad while others are good. Alma holds her annual potluck at the Interfaith Community Center, and Dot volunteers for it whenever she returns to the neighborhood after moving out. Dot moves near the charter school she teaches at and plans to start her family there, continuing her family's legacy of making homes of their own. However, she worries if she made the right choice because her grandma lives alone in her house. Carlos rarely visits her because of his new "non-profit" architecture job, hoping to make housing more affordable to many people of all races.
  • The Bad Ending: All the major choices must be the worst ones to get this ending. Dot moves into Woodward Towers while her grandma moves in with Alma and Georgia after selling her house. Georgia then moves into a nursing home due to her ailing health and the rising costs to hire a full-time nurse, while Dot teaches at a charter school and Carlos takes up Georgia's job as a real estate agent. He's implied to be working for Hope Equity, and with his great-grandma's house sold, neither he nor Dot see Mavis that much anymore. Dot herself feels lost in her new home due to its strict rules and regulations and the lack of community among her neighbors. She also can't help but feel overwhelmed by her neighborhood rapidly changing, such as the Interfaith Community Center being bulldozed years ago as part of a "redevelopment project", with the new project being in limbo. While real estate companies buy people out or give them vouchers to move while they "rebuild" the neighborhood for the rich, there are still some people who have hope for it and are fighting for housing equality.
• Newspaper Dating: You can check the time period that Dot traveled to by checking the date on the newspaper.
• No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: When Dot, a Black woman, time travels back to 1959, she tries to get out of what would become her home while her grandparents discuss the housing deal with Mr. Murphy's grandfather, a white man. Murphy I then chases her down the neighborhood, telling her not to go any further because she "doesn't belong" there, to her frustration.
• Older Than They Look: Dot, a millennial woman, time travels back to 2010, when Alma, the wife of Dot's older sister Georgia, is organizing a community event for the Tawfiq Family. Alma is surprised that Dot entered the community center when she was supposedly "too busy with college applications" to attend the meeting.
  Dot [thinking]: Wait, Alma recognized me? And what's this about college applications? Are you telling me I still pass as a teenager?
• The Place: The titular house was obtained by Dot's ancestors under awful and predatory conditions. It's full of Dot's family's highs and lows, their bad decisions, and their joys. Much of the key moments of the family happen there.
• A Plot in Deed: Towards the end of the game, it's revealed that Grandma Mavis has been planning to pass the deed of her old house down to Dot. She would've passed it to Hank or Georgia, but the former moved to Florida while the latter already settled with Alma. Mavis then gives Dot one final decision on what to do with it: either she sells the house and moves out to start a new and better life, or she stays in it despite the rising maintenance costs.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Amos tells Dot that he and Hank are like Abbott and Costello, respectively. Dot asks who they are, and Hank replies, "Abbott and Costello? As in 'Who's on First?'?"
• Predatory Business: Despite its name, Hope Equity is anything but a real estate company that provides housing equality for everyone, especially people of color. It has historically redlined the Blacks by selling inferior houses to them at a high price and lying about their quality, and then adding hidden costs in their monthly payments and maintenance just because of their tenant's race. Hope Equity has also done Villainous Gentrification, where they demolish old houses without the homeowners' consent to build luxury condominiums, not caring if it displaces Detroit's Black-majority population. Even in the modern times, Hope Equity still hasn't changed its practices, for they still discriminate against immigrants and build houses near environmental hazards.
• Protagonist Title: The Protagonist is Dot, the woman whom the house belongs to.
• Separated at Birth: If Dot takes out a photo of her basketball team, she remembers her Old Friends Tia and Tamera, who were identical twins separated at birth.
• Shady Real Estate Agent: Michael Murphy III continues his grandfather's legacy of scamming Black people into buying inferior houses by lying about their quality and then adding hidden maintenance costs to inflate their prices. He also starts the Keys-for-Cash promo to trick them into selling their old, run-down houses for a high price in order to pay the bills.
• Shout-Out:
  • The movie theater is showing The Wizard of Oz for "Throwback Thursdays" at the beginning of the game. When Dot time travels back to 1959 and 2010, the theater is showing Imitation of Life (1959) and The Karate Kid (2010), respectively.
  • One of Carlos's favorite video games his Supreme Bash Bros., which features characters such as "Curbo" and "Iron Knight".
  • If Dot hangs a picture of her lacrosse team on her bedroom wall, she remembers when Phoebe, Rachel, and Monica made fun of her hair.
• Skewed Priorities: Carlos is more upset about failing to save his game than the dusty basement giving him asthma attacks or that it's flooded by the leak from a broken pipe.
• Stable Time Loop:
  • Dot unwittingly time travels to the past when her Grandma Mavis and Grandpa Karl were buying what would become her home. Dot calls out to Mavis, but she doesn't recognize her since she hadn't been born at the time, so to hide that she's her future granddaughter, Dot introduces herself as Dorothea, who was given her name by "[her] grandma". Mavis thinks it's a nice name, implying that Dot's time traveling gave her the idea to name her future granddaughter that.
  • When Hank and Amos describe their plan to make their own radio show to Dot, she tells them that they invented the "podcast", to Amos' confusion. They then get the idea to call it that in 1992 if Hank decides to stay in his apartment.
  • All of the advice Dot gives to her relatives in the past ends up becoming the reason Grandma Mavis is struggling with having to sell the house to pay the bills. When Dot returns to the present, Mavis explains to her the struggles the family went through to give her a better life, and Dot's advice to them ultimately influenced their decisions.
• Schrödinger's Gun: Whether Dot joined her school's lacrosse or basketball team when she was younger and who had moved in next to her grandma's house depends on two crucial choices Dot makes in the past. When she returns to the present, she subconsciously unpacks the MVP trophy she won and the picture of the sports team she joined, but she doesn't think of checking her neighbors through the window until after her third-time travel trip.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Dot time travels back to 1959 when her Grandma Mavis and Grandpa Karl were first buying what would become her home. Murphy's grandfather tells Mavis to think about all the delicious meals she could cook in the kitchen, while he has a "man-to-man" talk with Karl about the housing deal in the living room. Mavis stands up to it, telling Murphy I that her husband's business is her business too, and Murphy I relents and allows her to listen to the deal as well.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Amos describes his dynamic with his friend Hank this way. According to him, he's the "funny guy" while Hank's the Straight Man, and the latter is "the Abbott to [Amos'] Costello". Whenever the two are on third shift, they riff off each other as they drive to work.
• Villainous Gentrification: The game is about the historical discrimination against Black people by displacing them through gentrification, as Dot learns when she time travels to 1992 when her parents struggled with living in their rented apartment after her older sister Georgia was born. Evelyn wishes to move out so she and her daughter can live better lives elsewhere, but Hank wants to stay despite the apartment being ill-maintained by the estate because he believes that everything he and his friend Amos worked hard for to survive in the neighborhood will be wasted.
• War Refugees: In 2010, the Tawfiq Family fled from Iraq to escape the Iraq War, and Alma organized a refugee program to help them move into their Detroit neighborhood. As Dot learns in her time travel to that period, immigrants struggle with housing discrimination, even in modern times.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Migrant mother Esperanza is worried that her daughter Zeze might forget her and her father Rafi's faces because they work long hours away from her.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: An older Dot narrates the game's three endings, explaining what happened to her, her nephew Carlos, her Grandma Mavis, and their neighborhood after Dot's final decision upon returning to the present.

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