5/5 ★ – as_aabstract's review of No Longer Home.

No Longer Home is a semi-autobiographical game by the Humble grove team. The game is about two recent graduates Ao and Bo saying goodbye to the home they shared throughout their studies. Felt I could relate to a lot of the themes explored from being a recent graduate myself and also nonbinary, having difficulty finding a place in the world. It’s one of those stories that you need to hear, to be reminded that you are not alone in your experiences or situation. The art style uses a lot of geometric shapes, scenes tend to unravel then disperse with many shapes to make up the building blocks of the world. We are given an aerial view of the house, as if it were a doll house and we the player are moving the characters around, looking through the house from different perspectives. Despite there being a lot of motion in the way the player can rotate the house, move the two characters and interact with objects or other characters. There is a stillness to the game, this sensation that time stops when you are alone as the character, moving through each room and discovering secrets in the house. And time only starts moving again when you interact with other characters or move onto the next sequence. It reminds me of what it is like to dissociate and to lose perception of time. You get so caught up in your own isolation that you forget about your environment and the world around you. We don’t really see the world outside of the house apart from a brief section of the street. The only instance is the sequence where the characters are playing a choose-your-own-adventure game and it takes them through a forest. I guess to create this impression that this place is the most familiar to them and what feels like home out of the rest of this world. It feels more like a memory in a sense to capture that autobiographical image, that this location is the scope of the memory and we are unable to leave it as we will be met with an endless void that exists outside the house. The music as recommended goes in par with the game, it is very dreamy and suits the atmosphere created. It can feel both soothing and isolating, lurking in the background while you explore. Instead of voice acting, there is a sort of “du-du” sound, to mimic the typing sound when pressing keys on a keyboard. As if someone is typing up a journal entry while reflecting back on these memories, you can notice this in how the text in the speech bubbles gradually appears with “du-du” sound for every section of text. Also there is a click sound every time the player clicks on a particular object to continue this effect. Every time the player rotates the room there is a sort of “sifting through boxes” sound, as if the narrator (or us) is trying to remember specific details in the room. I really enjoyed this game, I played through it in the one sitting after I came back from holiday. It was a nice change of pace from the fast-paced action heavy games I was playing at the time. Definitely would recommend to anyone going through similar experiences with their identity or currently dealing with burnout. It was nice to have nonbinary protagonists for a change, I feel it has been long overdue. I hope to see more games of this genre, you don’t really see too many semi-autobiographical games on the market. You can find No Longer Home on steam for currently £11.39.