How to Make It Home is a game that takes you on a oneiric tour through an abrasive, stinking world, filled with dust and quivering flesh.
At the beginning you are asked various questions that decide upon your stats – these seem, in turn, to decide what path through the game is open to you – will you become one among many scavengers, an effigy of the machinery that runs the world, a mere feast for the worms, or might you turn away from the carnal allures, leave, and see the littleness of your former world as you travel away?
The graphical- and sound design are – while not great by their own – coherent, and are a satisfactory frame for the story and the writing – that is astonishingly good, and those who expected genre-typical body horror might be in for a surprise.
The poetry of How to Make It Home is located somewhere in the space between existentialist novels and Fin de Siècle-Poetry: Indirect, yet uncryptic -as it defies a clear interpretation, but still makes a clear statement; grim, yet beautiful – as even with all the filth and depths that are prevalent in the games world, it never drops into a vulgar nihilism, but leaves open the option of a path out of them (although – and this is the point that might be its biggest weakness – not for everyone: Once your path is set by your initial choices, there is – as far as I can tell – no way back. There seems neither space for a change of heart, nor a remedy if you don’t like where you end up – this might be an intended message, a technical necessity, or an oversight).
How to Make It Home is an interactive fiction of rare artfulness, beauty, and thoroughgoingness. The creator of the game, bodypoetic, has more games available on Itch and runs a website.
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