Home Sweet Home

The Thai mythology makes for an intriguing and quite unique setting, while the unsettling audio design is absolutely nerve-wracking. Add to this a superb implementation of Sony's VR headset and you've got a remarkable horror title, that unfortunately gets bogged down a bit by its linear and often frustrating stealth sections.

If Resident Evil 7 is VR’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, consider Home Sweet Home as the platform’s analogue to The Grudge. If you’re looking for a world to explore while being scared silly, you can do a lot worse than Home Sweet Home - a very promising debut from Yggdrazil Group.

The bottom line, though, is that I can’t help feel disappointed that the bugs I experienced really ruined it all as I hate losing game progress over something that wasn’t my fault. I’m hesitant to recommend the game until it gets patched (again, let people make setting changes from the pause menu! And give us a manual save, too!). Or, at the very least, let me caution you to be extremely conscious of how and when you go back to the game’s menu screen to avoid harsh, mental anguish.

This is a game with some really good ideas and sequences, but it also make too many mistakes that could’ve been avoided quite easily. Even the VR implementation feels quite rushed, although the experience is interesting overall.

Home Sweet Home is a decent horror title. It mostly relies on jump scares, but the brilliant use of sound builds up suspense where needed. The puzzles are decent, but some can be too obtuse for many to solve on their own, and the breakdown of AI at times means that some of your escapes are due to dumb luck. The explanation of Thai mythology would've been nice, and the VR use should've been better, but the fact that this isn't labeled as an episodic game will annoy players the most. Home Sweet Home is worth checking out — but only if you aren't already tired of the genre.

An intriguing horror experience with some neat ideas, but it doesn’t seem to have the muscle to make those ideas work as well as they could. It’s a short, concise experience, but it’s often interrupted by frustrating trial and error challenges that interrupt the flow with frequent checkpoint loading and rewatching cutscenes.

It looks and feels so similar to other horror games and it can't reach the level of quality they have. It offers some quality scares, though.

With a longevity of about five hours, Home Sweet Home is to be described as nothing more than a luna park attraction, but keep in mind that it fails to introduce noteworthy novelties to the genre, appearing at times like a blatantly incomplete game.

Far from being a revolutionary horror game, Home Sweet Home delivers some genuine and folkloristic jump scares. Too bad it doesn't have a true ending... how long we should wait for the second (and hopefully last) episode?

It’s a short, by-the-numbers thriller that’s enjoyably creepy even with the limits of the production on full display. [Issue#164, p.89]