Home Safety Hotline Image
Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: Hearing noises? Seeing things? Call Home Safety Hotline! Our operators are standing by, waiting to give you the answers you need to protect your home from all manner of pests and household hazards.

    Home Safety Hotline is an analog horror inspired telephone operator simulator where you
    Hearing noises? Seeing things? Call Home Safety Hotline! Our operators are standing by, waiting to give you the answers you need to protect your home from all manner of pests and household hazards.

    Home Safety Hotline is an analog horror inspired telephone operator simulator where you answer incoming callers' questions about what's inside their home. Read through a vast catalog of common pests and household hazards, and do your best to become an expert in home safety. You will be held responsible for what happens.

    A new horror experiment from Nick Lives, the creator of NiGHT SIGNAL and A Wonderful Day For Fishing.

    * Navigate a vast catalog of safety information using the latest in 90's technology.
    * Listen to original jazzy lo-fi music by David Johnsen while you place callers on hold.
    * Correctly deduce what's in your callers' homes or else leave them to suffer the consequences.
    * Learn about the various untold horrors that live inside your home.
    * "Phobia Toggles" - An accessibility option that allows you to disable in-game images for common phobia triggers including arachnophobia and more.
    * Unlockable Art Book detailing the game's development history.
    Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Jan 22, 2024
    80
    As a whole, Home Safety Hotline doesn’t outstay its welcome, and it’s an absolute treat for lovers of folklore or fans of the uncanny. I never thought I’d say it, but this is one call centre I’ve absolutely loved clocking into.
  2. Jan 30, 2024
    80
    Oh, and it has a very brilliant, and extremely reachable ending (something I think too many post-Papers Please games make unrealistic for most to ever see), followed by a new game+ that will address any lingering questions you may have. I know this has received more coverage than some other games featured on Buried Treasure (including some pretty huge YouTube attention I wasn’t aware of until after reviewing–it’s fair to say our audiences don’t overlap much), but for some bizarre reason this hasn’t extended to reviews, and all-important review scores, so here we are. Home Safety Hotline is certainly too repetitive, lacking that one extra twist that would have propelled players to the ending, but its imagination, writing, and performances ensure it succeeds.
  3. Jan 31, 2024
    80
    Home Safety Hotline is a unique game in both the adventure genre and the horror genre, using deduction-based gameplay to great effect as folks attempt to decipher just what kind of gnome or fantastical fungus is plaguing each caller. While it could have been tougher, the cleverly-designed blend of supernatural phenomena and sharp comedic writing with a nicely dark edge will keep players hooked until the end. The prospect of working at a call center for things that go bump in the night sure is terrifying (although that goes for any job at a call center, period), but here, it's a job worth tackling.
  4. Edge Magazine
    Jan 25, 2024
    70
    With a little more mechanical variety, this might've been a minor classic. [Issue#394, p.106]
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  1. Home Safety Hotline is definitely in the Daniel Mullins vein of game ideas, where a game starts as something and becomes something else, and while Home Safety Hotline is very thoughtful and has a brilliant framing, it never fully transformed. Which is perhaps ironic, given the ending.