Home Behind

I really wanted to like the game. It's exactly my kind of game. But it's janky as hell. Poor, sometimes even missing transalations. Nothing really explained. Trades are impossible, nobody ever wants want you have. It has a very mobile game look and feel. Most importantly, the combat is truly awful and there's a lot of it. A real disappointment unfortunately.

I don't know what to say. Numerous dumb game conventions to the point of unwarranted cruelty. Killing hundreds of thousands of foxes and wolves with no way to avoid fighting them? Some psyop refugee on the way kills all the locals and non-locals he can meet, the developers are either stupid or total terrorists.

how to survive from NATO sponsor genocide

Home Behind's story sounds semi interesting, but gameplay falls way short and kills it. Repetitive, unbalanced and just plain boring in all aspects. Bad game design, bad translation, and terrible combat system that feels like something you would play in your browser. The animations and mechanics remind me of browser/mobile games. The game has permadeath, so if you die you start from the beginning with the same areas, same enemies, same everything, restarting everything from scratch. Oh controls amount to click click click etc and hope you don't die. AVOID!!!

I don't understand how they made such a good game so cheap! You must have it and experience it. If you like survival games, you should definitely get it. It's almost free if you buy it at a discount. :)

Incredibly repetitive and linear. Dialogue has tons of grammar mistakes. Randomly - things are not even written in English but in another language that has nothing to do with the plot. Not a lot of gameplay variety.

It would be a great casual game, but this is not a game of not so much skill but luck. The game seems 80% luck and 20% skill. It seems like every trade is useless or unbalanced; never items I really need. I seem to lose either I can't upgrade because the items I need never seem to become available or I run out of water because there is never the opportunity to refill. This isn't a casino game so luck should not have such a big aspect to advance. This is a major fundamental problem of the game mechanics.

Jesus Christ. What are you people playing nowadays that you find this game good?

Its a bad written game, made for phones. Its NOT a PC game at all. Gameplay is repetitive. Counter intuitive. Lazy.

HOW ON EARTH there are still chinese words on it, 4 years after its release, is beyond my recognition.

Its boring. Its graphics are poor made. Game isn't finished yet. And the gameplay is repetitive.

Keep it out.

Terrible game, how on earth was the review positive?? Was it spammed? Lets get to the point:
1. This belongs to a phone game. Period
2. There is nothing to do. See point 1.
3. The interface still has chinese left in it, bad translation. And I AM chinese
4. combat is extremely buggy
5. Side scroll, repetitive boring. see point 1
PLEASE DO NOT BUY

This game looked promising for something so inexpensive. The experience was a mixed bag. It's an unsophisticated survival side-scroller about a man separated from his young daughter during a civil war and trying to re-unite with her on a walking journey to Europe taken by other fleeing refugees.

Right out of the gate, the game lacks polish. It's an import from China, but there's still a lot of text without full translations for English-speaking audiences. It doesn't make the game unplayable, but it certainly detracts.

The game mechanics are built around fighting, crafting and resource management on top of keeping hunger, thirst and mood meters high enough to not suffer detrimental effects. You get a single save slot, and you will definitely use it often. The game features a wealth of things you can craft that will be useful, but the cooked items are hilarious. Your upgradable camp stove is sophisticated enough to make McDonalds-like french fries, various forms of drinks and snacks you'd normally order in a restaurant, and my personal favorite: mooncakes that can have added effects like significant boosts to mood.

Oddly enough, water is not common in the game in places you'd normally expect to find it. This is particularly weird in the final chapter where there are regular UN relief tents handing you supplies. If you do find an unlimited water source make as many recipes that require it as you can before moving on. Also disconcerting is getting nonsensical supplies when dismantling objects. You'd expect to get scrap metal from heavy machinery but success yields a child's toy and a stone. Whaaaaaaa?

Another pitfall to watch for: it's easy to be unprepared for a story encounter where the difficulty will spike and your weapon or armor isn't good enough for the fight. If your last save point is close to the encounter you'll have to play it dozens of times to get past it, relying mostly on RNG luck for crit damage rolls because there won't be enough random resource drops for crafting better items between where your save picks up and the encounter begins. Although I managed to make it to the end of my first run, it's easy to see how this could make progress impossible in late game encounters and have no option but to restart from the beginning.

The game is designed for multiple play-throughs at three difficulty levels, but normal is already tough. And I didn't feel that the content was compelling enough to merit another go. The story has some surprisingly poignant things to say about the nature of why countries collapse and why people rebel and take up arms against each other, but against the simple framework of killing nearly every bad person to get to the end, it seems a bit misplaced.

Oh and if you get an achievement for finishing the game on normal when you start it up for the first time... well, they haven't fixed that yet.

Rating: 6.5/10
Definitely a sideways thumb. The game is better than the sum of its parts, but really needs some quality control. Highly repetitive but not overly long unless you make mistakes in character progression for handling some story events. Subsequent play-throughs are probably faster since you know what to expect.

Home Behind Review

A little side scroller based on the struggles of war awaits.

Some key points that this game offers:

1. A unique look at how war can displace people.
2. Several different jobs to choose from for your playthroughs.
3. Basic but efficient levelling system.
4. A variety of items that can be picked up and obtained and an even bigger crafting tree to make use of on your journey.
5. Several different difficulties to test your survival skills.
6. Indie Gem 4/5

Gameplay & Controls:

Starting with the controls; the game makes use of both the mouse and keyboard. The game plays as a 2D side scroller moving from left to right. Moving your character can either be done automatically by pressing the play button on the screen or using the D button to move your character.

You have an option to choose between walking at regular pace or running. The combat is also done via the Left mouse button, as well as the crafting. The controls are pretty simple for the game with no fuss or complication. Don’t get me wrong the controls work perfectly with the gameplay mechanics we have here.

We have a 2D side scroller that moves from left to right.

Conflict broke out and events led to you getting left behind whilst your family were running for their lives. You wake up later to find that you are alone and this is where you take over, with your little wagon you are off searching for your family.

The game has basic elements of exploring; as you move in the only direction you can you will often find buildings you can enter, with permission or by lock picking, which will contain resources and crafting materials you can take or steal. There are numerous NPC’s you will meet on your way; some friendly which will make conversation, offer to trade, and a few other choices for you. Not all NPC’s will be friendly though some will leave the talking for never and instantly try to attack you.

The combat is pretty much very basic. There are a few options you can choose from, such as defensive or agility based attacking, this is determined by how you build your character, whether it is a fighting or agility based character. As for combat itself, you have access to a variety of weapons that can be crafted but they are all melee weapons and the attack functions are tied to the LMB alone, limiting combat and making it repetitive.

The crafting tree is quite massive and as you upgrade your main structures such as your kitchen or wagon, you unlock recipe’s for higher tiered items or food that can be crafted.

The levelling system is unique; every action that is successfully completed such as refilling your water bottle is rewarded not only with completing said action but xp as well for your character.

Graphics:

The graphics for the game are quite beautiful. Each map or level is based on a specific theme and place; they are all uniquely created with tons of detail to give them their own unique look and feel, whether it is the trail and interactable objects or background views you can see. Great attention to detail was invested here.

Each resource that is picked up is visibly unique in appearance, they are all unique with great attention to detail invested into each item; whether it’s one of the many food items you pick up or craft, they all look unique.

Character designs are all decently done with enough attention to give each of them their own unique looks. The same can be said for your own character.

The only and maybe biggest issue I have here is the lack of visual change for example; crafting gear to wear such as a hat or shoes and equipping them does not reflect on your character. He stays the same, the same can be said for when you upgrade your wagon or torch, they do not change in appearance, something I feel is lacking here.

There is so much appeal to visuals here that I don’t understand why they choose to leave this out.

On the settings side of things, we can choose from a number of different resolutions and whether we want to play in Window or Full screen mode.

Sounds:

The game does quite well here with the in game sounds.

The music for the game itself is pretty much the same tune over and over, on full/ normal volume this gets repetitive and boring way too fast. Playing it softer so that it plays as a soft sound in the background makes it more soothing and enhances the gameplay.

As for the in game sounds, There are a variety of sounds that accompany in game actions. These enhances and adds life to the game.

On the settings panel we have full volume control.

Replayability:

The game offers Replayability to a whole new level; Not only is it fun to play, but every playthrough is different with new and unique random events occurring, no new game will ever be the same as the previous one. As you play the game you unlock more characters to play with.

Personally, I’d suggest that the game requires some more polish and even a few QOL to truly enhance and improve over gameplay quality but given what the game costs we really have a great game here.

MGR Gaming’s Conclusions:
Spoilers ahead:

Home behind is a game created to show case how war can displace people and how it can devastate a country! How the scarcity in resources can turn people into wild animals that will kill just so they can live, whether it is for themselves or their families; as you play you have those same choices.

Whether to simply move on, or rob people of what they have, not only can you rob and kill innocent civilians, you can also break into their shelters and steal what little they have. It doesn’t look it but the game delivers quite a powerful message.

Each level that you play comes to an end when you reach the last of four checkpoints and before moving on to the next area a boss fight will occur. Here you have to make use of the best gear you were able to craft; the honest way or by murdering and stealing from people. Once defeated you move on to the next area where enemies get a little tougher and you continue your search.

The game plays very well; for a basic game it is beautifully crafted, it looks great, it tells a decent story, and this is where an issue lies that truly brings the overall joy of the game down.

The translation from Korean to English suffers here and there making the conversations at times hard to understand, and at other times the conversations come across as cheesy and even pointless, which reflects badly on the game itself, and especially the message it is trying to deliver. Besides that, sometimes the conversations are plain, too long or feels dragged out, this is part of the polish I mentioned that the game needs, if they can manage to better this, this little gem would be so much better.

You start out with next to nothing and as your journey continues you slowly build up resources and supplies to help you on your journey. As that journey continues and you make progress you gain xp which levels your character. Levelling makes you that much stronger; that plus the variety of gear options you have to choose from truly make this a fun and unique little 2D RPG game.

Score 8
By: MGRza
Date: 9 June 2016

Additional info:

Platforms: PC: Mac: Android: Apple: Linux
Genre: 2D: RPG: Survival: Indie
Censor Rating: N/A
Age Rating: N/A
Developer: TPP Studio
Publisher: Coconut Island Games
Release Date: 3 June 2016

MGR Gaming Steam Curator:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32364038/

MGR Gaming:
https://www.mgrgaming.co.za

Didn't like this. As other reviewers said, you are basically walking through a landscape, clicking on stuff. Sometimes you can collect things, sometimes you 'fight', basically the same thing happens over and over again and it gets veeery boring.
I got a refund.

Edited to add- The english is also terrible in places.. to the point that someone asks you a question and you can understand neither the question or the answer options you are given... LOL

My character appeared and began to walk through the desert. He could only go forward. He continued on in a straight line, and I clicked to pick up grass and pebbles as he went. This was all I could do, other than make him rest, or choose between having him stop, walk, or run. Then, very quickly, the game began to throw random events into the mix. Something would appear in the path ahead, and it would be unavoidable.

Mostly, "random events" meant encountering aggro, lone wolf cubs. At first, I thought that these encounters were ridiculous and tedious. A baby animal, which was all alone, was attacking a grown man and he couldn't scare it off? He kept missing when he tried to hit it, and did little damage to it, despite the fact that it was a small baby? That was silly. However, it soon became an annoying, frequent occurence. I wanted to skip these silly battles, but there was no option to. (I also think that fighting might have been glitchy for me. His arm stuttered when I clicked for him to strike, but the game's trailer shows clean, simple blows for its animation.)

The other random events didn't enliven the gameplay for me. For example, sometimes a human would show up, and this was the most interactive random event that I got. If she/he wasn't hostile then I could click "talk, trade, beg, rob."

Yet, "talk" was a brief line of dialogue with no importance. Each line was the NPC saying something bland: 'I can tell you're suffering', 'if you're overloaded then you'll need to drop things,' or whatever else. (I can barely remember the lines enough to paraphrase them.) Meanwhile, my own character didn't seem to say anything back to them.

"Trade" meant that they wanted something odd like a snowglobe, and I didn't have it yet.

"Beg" is self-explanatory, but begging for things had a low percentage chance to work. It didn't work each time I tried it. When it didn't work, my character said, 'I couldn't move them', and the word "failed" popped up. It seemed like a robotic, dull interaction.

I didn't bother to rob anybody. I didn't like the battle system, and I didn't want to randomly attack passerby. Besides that, for most of the time, I didn't have a weapon. I had a knife at one point, but it strangely disappeared.

And that was the MOST interactive that the game was in my almost-40-minutes of playtime. Other events did occur, but they were even less interesting.

For example, an oasis would turn up, and I could click "drink, refill bottle, fish/scavenge." "Drink" meant that a slurp sound played, and my character's thirst was quenched; "refill bottle" meant that a sound played, a full bottle sprite popped up, and a bottle got filled in the inventory; "fish" (clean water) meant a single click might get a fish, and "scavenge" (dirty water) meant a single click might get random items.

The game likely gets better when someone's deep into hours of playtime, because then crafting would open up more as more items were found, etc. However, I wasn't enjoying playing. I didn't want to invest hours of time in it to get to a possible, future fun point.

First, a warning to anyone who does get this game: Watch your stat numbers. On more than one occasion, I have noted that they will seemingly drop for no reason. If one invests the starting stat points before the first battle of the game, they seem to disappear immediately after that battle. This is the most common time I have observed this, but I have seen it at other times as well.

This game is horribly unbalanced to a great degree of luck. _If_ a playthrough has a decent balance of materials to continue upgrading equipment, only then can a player make real progress. The combat system is otherwise horribly flawed so that only three or four wolves in a row will automatically be the end. There is no good way to heal unless, again, one is sufficiently lucky to find that the generated map happens to include large numbers of herbs.

I love a challenging game. This game is not challenging. It is pointlessly turned toward 'luck of the draw' so that skill and analysis and careful planning for expenditures of valuable resources mean nothing.

The 'Mood' mechanic is hopelessly broken. For each rare event that increases the character's mood, there are twenty others that drop it near to nothing. Rest barely improves mood or health, and that is assuming the player opts to rest at all - because those rebels are always right behind.

I want to be challenged in a game, not held hostage to the whims of the random number generator that decides if I will happen to find sufficient wood to improve a weapon. Balancing the use of limited wood and forcing me to make a difficult choice is fun; having a useless weapon against the alpha wolf after four regular wolves have already taken my health down to naught and I have no method by which to heal myself is absurd.

I strongly recommend passing on this one.

I haven't even played this game for a total of 2 hours and I'm over it.

I really wanted to like this game. It seemed really interesting and I liked the look and feel of it, but it was just ubearably frustrating.

First of all the background story text in the beginning goes so goddamn fast I stopped trying to read it after the first 2 sentences. I also noticed the random Chinese language bug on a couple of the text blurbs throughout the game - which I just passed off as a game quirk as you don't really know where the game is set - but reading others' reveiws it's obvious that this is just a bug.

The most frustrating part for me was the fighting sequences. It's buggy as all hell in that your character is just flailing around and there's no telling if you're doing any damage or just seizing at the opponent. It also seems like the game randomly picks opponents and gives you incredibly difficult - frankly unbeatable opponents towards the beginning of the game when you haven't even had a chance to upgrade your weaponry or resources.

I also love the colonies of 20 identical characters. Ugh.

Needless to say this game has potential, but until they fix some functionality I will not be playing it again.

A few reviews warned me that this was essentially a mobile game on PC. I am usually a pretty forgiving person when it comes to simple games ... and the unlocks in this game appealed to me quite a bit and won me over enough to give it a shot. This is the first game I have ever refunded on Steam. You walk ... and sometimes hit a button. There's so little gameplay or even interactions that make a whole lot of sense ... there's just not a lot here. Also, yeah, it's not been fully translated. And worse than that, it's been semi-translated in a way that doesn't even make sense. You can have a screen with two options on it and one of them is translated while the other is not.

I feel bad writing this kind of a review, but honestly, save your money. This is not really a 'game.'

Pros:
-Addictive gameplay.

Cons:
-Poorly translated (some sections are STILL in Chinese).
-The replayability from "Randomly Generated" just means you'll encounter the exact. Same. Encounters. But MAYBE a little later or a little sooner.

Meh/Opinions:
-Ending made me not want to play again.
-Resources are inconsistant. If the crate only gave wood or metal, instead of something from every loot-pool...
-Using anything but the auto-fight feature (which can be found in the options/esc menu) is masochistic and degenerate and most of all, confusing.

Overall I think if I could change the ending, and if it weren't so painfully grammatically bad. I'd very much enjoy this game.

In "home behind" you play a father who lost his daughter while their home was attacked by the rebel armies. Promising himself he would find his daughter who has probably escaped together with his brother, the protagonist begins his journey. On the way he has to steal food, have an eye on his water reserves, fight enemies and therefore upgrade his weapon and armor.

To start from the positive, the game has a good crafting system. It is not phenomenal and does not give the crafting subject really new perspective but its a well carried out, modern crafting system. Extremely rewarding and motivation giving part of the game as the deep desire to get the new kitchen or workbench upgrade keeps the player moving forward. The problem in this is that the crafting system is but the only part that gives the player motivation to continue in the game. And in addition to the crafting system it needs to be added that the skill tree and skill points system is ill fitted for the game.

To continue with the graphics I think the decision to choose a 2d graphic is admirable as it is in general the right decision and the right graphic style for the general purpose. What total ruins the whole concept of this graphic are some contradictions in many assets of the game for example the "story" or the bad dialogues.

The dialogues are to long, do not have any depth and give the game rather flat out characters. This is especially bad as this game and its main topic would be living from the dialogues and the emotional connection you would build with the characters. And the main formula is bad dialogues equals bad story. A concept that sadly also applies for this game.

Furthermore the unnecessary boss fights and in general all the fighting is unfavorable for the game. As the fighting in my opinion makes the game more unrealistic which detaches the player even more from the fate of the real refugees. A critic which is also backed up by the fact that the fighting system is also mediocre in quality and game fun.

All together these facts make the game feel like a comic version of (the wanted to be explained) refuge situation. The only time when I really appreciated the game and thought that they made a point, a real statement on the refuge situation is when you finally arrive in a "civilized" region and after some minutes as a player you think "o may god! This is even more difficult to survive in than the war region I fled from".

In general I have to give this game a rather bad review. A fact I am sad about because I really find it admirable from a game developer to try to tackle this difficult themes in a game. As I think games are (if made right and for the right costumer group) a good opportunity to make the players to think about certain subjects and maybe see them in another light.


http://architectonreview.blogspot.com.tr/2017/02/home-behind.html

It's a great survival game and I had fun playing it, there is crafting, eating, and drinking. The design is pretty well great, kinda feels like playing DayZ and FTL at once.

This game was originally written in chinese, but the english translation was actually well made. And Yes, this is actually one of the reason some of you never heard of this game (I only know about this game since yesterday)

But I can't really recommend you this game for some reasons

First of all, the combat is horrible. Instead of a normal turn based, you are forced to mash your mouse within an interval, If you hit it too slow, the enemy will stun you. If you hit it too fast, you will miss your attack

Secondly, you don't get to plan your move, Instead you're given a timer that keeps ticking even when you're just Idle. Means you might just bled to death just because you can't find your bandage

And The worst of all is that there is no skill or learning curves required, you just have to rely on random number generation. Because there is this one resource called metal, which happen to be very essential because you are guranteed to die halfway into the first stage if you didn't get your hand on one of these, And I only got those metals once in my 5 playtrough.

Long story short, This game comes with great storytelling, design, graphic. But the gameplay is just straight up terrible.

A glorified flash game that you would normally find free online. You just walk to the right and click on spots as you walk by like a hidden object game. This generates loot but there is no real feeling of scavenging like with other games like This War of Mine or even Skyhill. NPC interaction is nonexistant, the whole "trade" mechanism is where the NPC offers you a random object for another random object. I was halfway through my first play through before one of them actually offered to trade me something I owned.

Combat is poorly done and although they say there is a rhythm to it it is highly erratic and quickly devolves into a click fest. Feedback is poor (why when I increase my INT does the INT challenge success rate not improve?).

"In Home Behind, you take on the role of a refugee cast out from your homeland by a band of rebels. Your home and the peace you enjoyed has been destroyed, and your family has disappeared. Can you survive the struggle, famine, and sickness to make it to the safety of Europe?"
This is the description used for this game, and you might wonder why I bringing this up.
Because the game doesn't in one single bit feels like things described there are in the game itself.

Yes the game is set up in country despaired by war, and it's crimes ... but sadly you won't see it.
Make no mistake, I wasn't looking for another This War of Mine, where you could see the effects of war, feel emotional impact of every event, and your ability to survive was based on your actions.
Home Behind have nothing from this even slightly. What is even worse it is wrapped up in this happy looking visuals. Why? Sure, not everything have to be black ans white to show desperation, but why would you choose this color palete, why would you choose character design like this? I can't figure this out.
Another mind boggling thing - music. What the actual ####!? After few minutes I was kinda on the ok note with visuals, and was able to look past them. Then I got into the combat, with refugee and the most unfitting music kicks in. Really? You are taking human life, and play some upbeat rock music!? I wasn't even ok to listen to it in combats with wolfs, or bandits. It is just inappropriate (said by the guys who killed refugee in game, because of loot). And music overall isn't any better - it is too happy for game where you play for a character who lost everything.
It doesn't make any lick of sense.
But as I stated previously, you don't even realise this should be a war story from playing game, so technically my rumbling about misuse of theme shouldn't even matter.

Combat in this game, is non existent. Click fest, where you have no idea if you hit or miss, or if you actually doing anything ... so option for auto combat is welcomed addition.
Crafting/Survival element is quite alright. Nothing special or new. There are plenty of games, where I enjoyed this gameplay mechanics more. Also mechanics are in few cases easily exploitable. For example: You find dead body > You take meat of the body, which lowers your happiness by a significant margin > You bury the body after, your happiness is all back again. So no real consequences for being a cannibal
And gameplay overall isn't really compelling - boring is maybe the right word. You just click, click, click, click ... and again I played couple games that I enjoyed this clicking more.

I am really disappointed and little bit angry at Home Behind. It looked really promising from trailer where I had different feeling, opposite to what I received during my playthrough.
In my eyes, heart and mind Home Behind would work better if it was packaged in adventure theme for instance, rather than war theme; and probably if this game was on mobile devices. Then I could see myself enjoying it more, or just be interested to play more, or even finished it. Under current circumstances I would opt for refund, and not even trying anymore get (at least) to first boss.

Grade: D

I was looking forward to this game for quite a while, and waiting on the translation to English.

Alas, either the translation is *terrible*, or the initial "script" was just garbage. Your interaction is limited to objects directly in front of you, so if an NPC wander just a pixel past you, you can't interact with them. I mean, you're stood right beside them, but talk to them? Nope.

The combat is a bit of a click-fest with no real feedback indicating that you're clicking at the right moment to trigger combos, and the skill options are pretty unintuitive. The crafting interface is incredibly clunky.

Bought it on sale, requested a refund less than an hour later........

Well, what can I say - the game follows the events happening in Syria now, you are a dad who's trying to find his kid by going from one side of the map to the other, fighting/chatting/robbing/breaking in/picking up everything and everyone you think worthwhile, killing a boss in the end to go the next map. That's the whole game in a nustshell.

The game is fun at times and quite challenging - you can develop your attributes (mental, physical, agility, etc.) they will influence how likely you are to break into a house or to gather berries from a plant, you drag your trusty cart with you and it serves as your working bench, kitchen, in other words you use it to make new stuff from the resources you find.

Every new game is random so it has a very high replayability value. I can say that I really like that game at first, but I stopped playing it at stage 2 - too much fighting which isn't really interesting (fortunately you can hand it over to the PC), but still I'd prefer a bit more intellectual challenge. It also makes you favor the "kill em all" approach as there's no way to bullshit your way past the bosses.

The story itself is very shallow and generic - at least from the what I've seen so far - but then again, I'm spoilt by what they call "story-rich" games where game developers actually try to make you care and believe in the characters whose lives you supposedly control.

I'd give it a "meh", but it's worth it's salt and maybe I'm just being too hard on this one. A nice game, give it a try.