In No Place Like Home, you play as Ellen Newland, a young girl who decides one last time to visit her grandfather before emigrating to Mars. However, she finds him missing when she arrives. Ellen embarks on a mission to find him while tending her farm and surrounding land. In this post-apocalyptic simulation game, it’s your job to rid the planet of human-made trash and toxic chemicals. You also need to grow fruits, vegetables and trees while taking care of the animals around you.
No Place Like Home has different locations, each of which starts a new quest. There are very few humans left on Earth, but the people around your father’s farm are happy to help find him, as long as you help them. Tasks tend to be very simple, such as helping find resources or building habitats for nearby animals.
Everywhere there are huge piles of trash, and two tools that help clean them up. One is a blowtorch-type device that destroys large piles of trash, and the other is a vacuum cleaner that sucks up the trash. Garbage can be recycled into furniture, buildings, materials, etc. For example, growing plants requires expanding your farm with more patches of soil, but you can make the soil out of recycled materials. You can also create decorations for your farm, home or animal shelter.
To take care of your farm, you first need to plant plants. The water can then be sucked into the vacuum cleaner and blown back onto the plant to water it. You need to water your plants every day, but there are upgrades that make this task easier. When your farm grows and you don’t want to water it yourself, you can build a sprinkler to do the job. Animals produce items such as eggs and milk, and those items are automatically collected once you upgrade your shelter to a certain level. And to keep the animals happy, you have to feed them, not just bath and pet them. The happier they are, the more items they produce.
You can upgrade your tools by collecting enough jars as well as the right ingredients. Jars are now the currency on Earth, and you collect them from the trash you clean up and from chests scattered around the map, and use them to store the fruits and vegetables you grow.
No Place Like Home has a lot of enemies to face. These enemies are different types of robotic spiders that pounce on you or shoot poison. You use your blow torch to kill them. But there is a handy robot that cleans up dirt. You can also invite robot llamas to your farm and they will hunt for ingredients.
No Place Like Home’s controls are very easy, and a tutorial is provided at the start of the game. You can also access the controls at any time during the game by going to the main menu. The only issue I had with the controls was accuracy. For example, when planting a seed, the cursor has to be moved to a very specific spot for it to work. I also ran into some interface issues where certain actions didn’t work. In-game, you can run while holding down the L button, but there were times when you could only walk if you held down the button.
No Place Like Home is a very fun and challenging game that is almost impossible to stop once you start. It takes a serious and terrifying look at our world and gives us hope. In this game, cleaning up the earth feels like an accomplishment, just like helping animals. Cleaning, farming, and combat are well combined so the game never feels repetitive or boring. There are also lots of cute details that add to the fun atmosphere of this game. That is, you can put hats on livestock. It doesn’t get any better than that.
