HOMEBOUND

THIS IS NOT A GAME! ( #refund )

There are hardly any opportunities for interaction and the controls are so awful that you experience motion sickness right from the beginning. And I can say that I endure a lot before I feel nauseous. But this piece of software is just not enjoyable! Although I got this game on sale for less than 3.- Bucks, I'm refunding it because I still feel tricked into buying a game that isn't even worth to be called a demo. Besides the fact that this "game" has a runtime of less than 15 Minutes, implied the controls would not be broken and you don't experience glitches or get stuck in the walls, the sound is a mess as well. It is just loud and not mixed properly. And let's be honest here: pretty graphics do not deceive over missing content and lack of quality!

Do not even bother thinking about buying this...

At 75% off, curiosity got the better of me... Short version, don't bother.

I was already aware of the play through time for this, so that wasn't a problem - the stupid thing is that the issues I had are so glaringly obvious, and they weren't taken care of before launch, or even in a patch.

Hands seem to rotate somewhere around your fingers instead of your wrist, and objects when grabbed attach somewhere to your hands local vicinity. Level of detail and texture pop-in in places is blantant (even when set at ultra), and in one place, if you go too near to an airlock door, the entire thing disappears to reveal a blank wall behind it.

When you're in the escape pod, my head was rotated so that it was pointing at my legs, and when the pod turned, my point of view didn't - apparently I had the neck of an owl.

The floppy disks are flat polygons instead of being properly modelled, and while that might seem like I'm being picky, since they're the only objects that you actually need to collect, they really needed detail put into them.

Check out Mission ISS (Oculus Home) or Adr1ft instead.

I managed to stick around for 11 minutes before I started to feel really nauseous.
Dev, please do fix this. This is unplayable especially when I kept glitching out while trying to move the camera.

The graphics are nice, the concept is neat but the motion was awful.

Until this is fixed, I will have to say no, I don't recommend this at all.

Hands are at wrong place (at IRL wrist) on oculus making it very awkward to play.
I could move only by thumbstick on controller instead of propelling myself using handles or pushing off walls. This makes if quite uncomfortable to play.
Audio balance is bit off too, I could hardly hear "the computer" over alarm.

Otherwise it is quite nice looking game with interesting sounding idea, but I could not get far before I started to get uncomfortable.

Nice graphics and setting and so much potential - but the controls are horrible at the moment.

Homebound is making the same mistakes as ADR1FT before, by making the control patterns too difficult to master:
You would have to learn to control your astronaut for at least one hour, but I got sick and quit after 10 minutes.

Take a look at Astronaut VR for Cardboard for a much easier movement pattern by using the head rotation and gaze for movement. I could be so easy and enjoyable.

Great graphics and unique movement system giving you the impression of weightlessness. However you need an iron VR stomach for this. Not very intuitive controls using the tracked motion controllers. Interaction with objects is terrible. Not clear how to proceed through the game without dying. Short game. I kept it in my library for a while hoping for improvements, but have deleted it today.

It was really short....and the graphics weren't all that great. I have never gotten sick in a VR game yet but this one made me quesy. Kinda cool but not worth 8 bucks IMO.

I like the concept, seems like it could of had plenty of potenial. The price is very reasonable even if it is a short game. My problem is the game didn't work, I couldn't get audio, my hands would fail to track or disappear, I got stuck behind a hatch I opened, the game was designed for 180 degree seated experience, it was odd trying to align my body with the "front" of the camera since you can easily move around 360 degrees on the vive but the game was cleary not designed for it. I couldn't tell what I was doing or how I ended up falling to earth? It felt odd falling to earth, my legs were above my head, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be doing anything at that point other than crashing. Imagine you open a hatch, no sound, all of the sudden your legs are in the air, the camera starts shaking like crazy, you crash, can't really tell you crashed, all of the sudden you are back in the air falling again, crash, fall again, no sound, heavy shaking and all you can think is "WTF is going on?" It felt far to clunky to enjoy. As a matter of fact I would say it was a very odd experience, like WTF were the game designers thinking trying to sell this in it's current form?

This experience lasts no more than 25 minutes, visually it looks great but unfortunately the control scheme is awful and the plot as far as it has one is minimal. It supports touch controls but your hands are out of sync with the actual location in the real world, and moving around is awkward (this is after the update that is supposed to fix these issues).

For what seems to be a game from a developer with a good pedigree this is a real dissapointment. I am not so bothered about the length, but at the moment it doesn't even feel like it was designed for VR, the controls and interaction are so poorly implemented it feels like they that were bolted onto an existing non vr demo. If you have played Adr1ft there is little new here, other than the closing few minutes which are kind of cool.

There is clearly some talent behind this, but it could have done with a significant amount time in testing and needs far more polish, as it stands I can't recommend it.

Great experience, amazing graphics and well thought out execution. It has bugs but looks better than any space VR game by far. Worth the $ for sure. Looking forward to a lot more from this developer.

Considering that this game was made for the most part by just one person, and in such a relatively short amount of time, Homebound is a truly impressive achievement. In the young landscape of VR I believe it can hold its own among the big productions of the moment, and it really deserves some attention. For the price it sells for, bargain isn't really the word. "Steal" is more like it :)

Visually Thrilling!

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Homebound.
The visuals are fantastic, probably the best I've seen in a VR game so far.
The gameplay works great and the VO is quite entertaining.
If you own a VR headset this game is a must play!

Probably the best visual experience so far in VR. Graphics are stunning, audio is really believable and I gotta admit, my palms got a bit sweaty during the atmosphere level. Played it at a friend's place a couple nights and and then the camera controls were a bit hard to get used to, but fortunately I didn't have to as it was patched recently. A few minor bugs aside I'd say this is one amazing ride.

It's a nice idea, the voice acting from the robot isn't bad but unfortunately almost everything else is. When I first played this game you turned when you turned your head, which is a terrible mechanic. The developer immediately updated the game and fixed this, which I commend them for. Unfortunately too many other issues remain:

The game runs poorly
The hands and gripping of things feels awful, it's buggy and your relationship to your onscreen hands is continually broken.
As the game is an experience the story of 'press the button' is really weak.
Once the action begins it's uncomfortable and unpleasant. It also does not look good.

This is the only negative review I've felt an urge to give yet and only my second refund on steam. I hope the developer every fortune in the future and hopefully this will be a learning experience. Even at the low price this experience is not worth it, nothing was enjoyable and in fact most of it was largely unpleasant.

There is so much potential here - the visuals and design of the space are phenomenal but the control scheme completely misses the point of being in a space station. Ambulating on solid ground is difficult to imitate without having infinite space to walk around in (an average room-size VR environment), but in zero-g your hands are what move you around the environment naturally. The game "Climbey" is a solid example of what I'm talking about. Having a game set in a space station with motion controllers could have completely opened up the immersiveness of room-scale VR with motion controllers, but instead they force you to sit down and use a movement system that is as unintuitive as it is illogical - in zero gravity, how am I just moving forward without pressing against anything, and why do I have a strong amount of inertia for no reason? If they could even add an option to play with natural movement in standing position, I would completely flip my review to a positive one. It's especially frustrating because I program in Unity and have already created basic movement systems like this with very simple add-ons, and it wouldn't take much to program - just make all border objects "grabbable" & "climbable" and eliminate all inertia slowdown effects when you aren't actually holding on to anything. That's the whole fun of floating. Once again, though, it is visually stunning - just wish the control scheme was more intuitive.

The game shows great promise! The visuals are mostly stunning (with some bad textures here and there) and the audio sounds great.

I tried playing it on the Oculus Rift with Touch and that really doesn't work smoothly yet. For me there was always only one hand visible (the last one i pressed a button with) and the position of the hand was offset and never at the same position as my real hand. Also the interaction with objects/environment is still really buggy & sluggish.

I'd recommend the game to all Vive owners and i will continue playing as soon as the touch controllers are integrated fully.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed in this visually great looking little experience.

The whole thing takes about 15 minutes.
Gameplay is almost non-existent. I believe there are 6 actions, like pulling a couple of levers, pushing a button, "steering" a flight stick and that's about it.

Locomotion is questionable, personally I did not feel much discomfort while floating around although I imagine a lot of people will. What's worse though is when you turn your head beyong a certain point, the entire view shifts which is VERY unpleasant.

For such a short experience, it has quite a lot of bugs. About three times my right hand just disappeared for a minute, and one time it was floating half a meter in front of me. It weren't tracking issues, I made sure to check. Grabbing things sometimes doesn't work.
It does look nice and has a good atmosphere, but that's about all it has going for it right now.

Edit: developer has since tweaked controls, so this review may not be completely valid.

Really pretty. Really well laid-out. Once I was able to find out how to progress and not die, everything turned out pretty awesome. I'm changing my review now that I've been able to get into the other 2/3rds of the game and see that the developers are going to patch up the problems people have with it.

If you've got an iron VR stomach, this is pretty top notch for about 20-30 minutes. If you don't, then you should probably run away from this one (unless the devs patch it up a lot) - it shakes the camera intensely for most of the gameplay.

I also really like just laying in the station staring off at everything since the game doesn't really push you to do anything until you press the red button.

People that threw cash out for something like a GTX 1080 will really appreciate this one.

Its a pretty game - really more of an interactive experience than a fully fledged game though - took my time looking around but still "finished" it in under 30mins. However hoping to find more little easter eggs next time I go on. Apart from the controller/hands/objectives bugs others have mentioned - I couldnt figure out how to activate items - like I could pick up the fire extinguisher but no combination of buttons or using the other hand seemed to make it work like in the game trailer. Even so this is a nice little package for a decent price and gives a mostly unique and enjoyable experience. Looking forward to letting a few friends have a try. Hopefully with a few more bugfixes it should be grand for demo'ing.

Personally I struggle with some aspects of this game due to my own vive controllers - the thumbpads dont press down on the edges anymore but the touchpad section on top still works fine - makes it nae on impossible to manueveur in this title though as its all edge of button pushes...so just a heads up if you have similar controller issues to mine ^_^

I've not played too much as the low fps on my hardware made it a challenge, but I got at least this much from my experience.

Pros:
- Graphics and 3d assets are fucking georgouse!
- Suprisingly no motion sickness from all the floating around
- Simpsons Reference.

Cons:
- Very hard to destinguish interactables from the rest of the enviroment.
- The interactivity felt really sticky and frustrating. It was extramely difficult to tell if you can actually interact with the objects as there was no indicator.
- Requires lots of hardware to run at the optimum framerate.

I'm running a GTX 1070 with a core I7 6700k and I had an uncomfortable framerate on low settings.

For the low price, I'd still recomend this game due to it's really high production value and awesome setting. Although if you aren't confident that you can run it, you're not gonna have a good time.