Home for the Heart (PC)

Source: Screen Capture from Game

Home for the Heart is a Visual Novel(VN) style game created by Ran. You play as Celine (the name is default, but you can change it), who is in trouble. Celine recently lost her scholarship after failing to keep her grades up due to her family problems. Not only that, but she’s gotten kicked out of the dormitory because she’s been unable to pay her rent! 

Celine’s parents were also both recently put out of work, leaving Celine out of ideas, and preparing to be homeless. Luckily, Celine’s best friend Lyle has connections, and manages to get her a place to stay with an acquaintance of hers named Joshua, and his cousin Philippe. Reluctantly, Celine accepts. 

Joshua and Philippe are like sibling rivals, but meaner. Phillipe has always been treated like a son by Josh’s parents, and Joshua resents that Philippe is seen as more of desirable child. They fight, a lot. In fact, they really seem to genuinely hate each other at times.  With all this fighting, and poor Celine stuck in the middle… how will she survive?

 Source: Screen Capture from Game

We help Celine go through her school life and home life, trying to stay sane. The game plays in typical VN style, and the pacing is good. I rather like both of the male characters, Josh and Phil. The sprite art is adorable and the backgrounds and beautiful and detailed. 

After everything, I ended up with Joshua… even though I kind of liked Philippe more. I don’t know if it’s possible to get another ending or not. I’m not saying that Joshua’s story wasn’t enjoyable—because it was. I enjoyed the story to the end. There are/were grammatical errors in the game, and in my typical fashion, I sent them off to the developers in hope that they can be corrected. I hate to see games be docked for poor grammar or spelling, so I try to help when I can. 

Source: Screen Capture from Game

The only really problem I had with the game was the text color. It made it difficult to read at times, having such light text on light background. It wasn’t impossible to read, but it certainly caused a strain on my eyes after a while. 

Overall, I liked the experience of the game. The game has its flaws (as we all do) but I felt the flaws weren’t glaring enough to keep me from enjoying the game.  Please feel free to try the game for yourself, free from Itch.io *here*!

Thanks for sharing your time with me, and Happy Gaming!

Bell

Free Itch.io Games #5

Hello Friends! Welcome back to the 5th installment of free games that you can download and play from Itch.io! I need to get these written up faster. I have such a huge list of games just waiting for me to play. There needs to be more hours in the day! Without further ado, here are 4 more free games from Itch.io!

1. Date Almost Anything

Source: Itch.io Page

Date Almost Anything is hilarious mock of dating sims, parading as a dating sim itself. DAA was created by Skye Q. I really can’t say too much, because I don’t want to spoil the game or the ending. The game is in a visual novel style, as most dating sims are, but had a more interactive interface as you are required to prepare drinks for customers. I liked the added activity.

The character art is nice, very well styled and attractive. The backgrounds are just pictures, which is alright, it could be worse. The music is nice also. A single play through of any path takes about 15 minutes. Besides the 3 main characters you see there in the picture, there are plenty of other dating options... But I'll leave you to find those out for yourself... ;)

 Although this game wasn’t really what I expected, I was also pleasantly surprised. You can play the game for yourself and see what you think. The game is free to download and play from Itch.io *here*.

2. Doctor Dancefloor

Source: Itch.io Page

Doctor Dance floor is a rhythm based game created by Sintel, where you have to press the space bar in time to a beat to give pills to the dancing creatures. Seems… questionable, to say the least. In any case, this game is rather fun. Although it is short—only 3 different songs to play through. Each song is only a few minutes long as well(they are decent songs, though), so there isn’t a long play time, or much replay value. But it is cute, and it was fun to kill a bit of time with. You can try it for yourself for free from Itch.io *here*.

3. Hope Abandoned

Source: Art Station

Hope Abandoned is a short horror puzzle title created by Josh “Faelim” Grand during PegJam 2016. You play as a young girl who is trapped in her neighbor’s house. These particular neighbors are under a lot of suspicion in the neighborhood. Since these neighbors came, pets have gone missing, children stopped playing outside, and people have been moving away as fast as they can. As the little girl, explore the house and solve the mystery of what happened. Will you be able to escape…?

This game was so well made. I do not play horror games often, and man did this game make my stomach do flip flops. The creepy atmosphere, the ambient sound effects, and a jumpscare or 2, made this game a horror to behold.  The puzzles for the safe combination and the toggle switches took me some time to figure out, but it was worth it. The biggest issue was that I played this game late at night before I planned to go to bed. You can imagine how that worked.

If you want to play a suspenseful game with a great atmosphere, then Hope Abandoned is right up your alley. I was a little unsatisfied that at the end, we still don’t know why the adult neighbor did what he did—whether he just went crazy or something possessed him or something else. But that’s just my need to know everything. You can play this game for yourself for free by downloading from Itch.io *here*.

4. Empty

Source: Itch.io Page

Empty is a zen puzzle game created by the two brother team of Dustyroom. The goal is to clear the room of objects—including furniture, light fixtures, plants, etc.—by lining the objects up with the corresponding wall colors to make them disappear. You do this using your mouse to click and pan the camera, or by using touch on a touch screen. As the levels progress, you’ll have to take care to clear some objects in a certain order, to allow other objects to be removed. It became a bit of a challenge and I really enjoyed it.

The colors are nice, and the music is also very relaxing. The controls are smooth, at least the mouse controls are. I did not test the touch controls. I don’t feel this is a game that you could spend consecutive hours in, but it was a nice, relaxing break. You can download the game from Itch.io *here*. This game is also up on Steam Greenlight currently, so be sure to vote *here*!

As always, be sure to leave your comments on the Itch.io page to give the developers some encouragement, or some helpful criticism, to help them improve their skills and content!

Happy Gaming, Friends!

Bell

See the Gaming in Pajamas Compendium *HERE*

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