No Place Like Home is Chicken Launcher’s post-apocalyptic farming simulator. Published by Awaken Realms, it comes into a genre of titans like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley with a slightly unusual twist. You are also trying to save the world, or a little bit of it anyway. Returning to nature has always been something of a running theme in similar games, though No Place Like Home promises a more-hands on approach involving clearing up an awful lot of litter.

Story

The heart of the plotline itself in No Place Like Home is essentially a mystery story.

It begins with its protagonist, Ellen Newland, sitting on a space station up above a polluted and rubbish-strewn earth, awaiting her turn to depart the ruined planet for a new life on Mars. Before she leaves, however, Ellen decides to pay one last visit to her grandfather and his farm. On arriving,  she finds the place covered in piles of rubbish, no sign of her grandfather, and a chicken in hiking gear informing her that he has departed on some sort of mysterious mission. The chicken talks, naturally.

From there on out Ellen can follow her missing relative’s trail, and try and piece together his location. NPCs will lay out the clues to follow. It’s a simple enough story, but has enough stakes and is told competently enough to hold some interest.

Gameplay

In order to find her missing grandpa, Ellen has to not only track him, but master taking care of his abandoned farm in order to acquire the funds to progress. Beginning No Place Like Home, you are presented first with a tutorial, which pictorially demonstrates the basic mechanics of how things work, before wandering onto the farm. There you find no grandfather, the adventure chicken, and piles and piles of rubbish that block off any progress beyond the house. Fortunately, Ellen is equipped for the situation, possessing the two vital tools in the game, a large drill and an extremely powerful vacuum pack. With these, it is possible to break down piles of refuse into scrap, which not only clear the way forward but can be loaded into a recycling machine on the farm and turned into building materials.

A great deal of what you spend your time doing will be occupied by clearing up junk. Approach a pile, break it up, and suck up the contents. It might not sound like the most exciting activity, but the fact that piles do not respawn lends a weird sense of satisfaction in clearing areas and turning an initially-hideous-looking view into a beautiful vista. Many quests you complete will also restore and renew certain features in the world, which does hit a spot of satisfaction, even when the item rewards get underwhelming.

Advancement throughout the world is made by clearing a path, upgrading equipment, freeing animals you find in cages around the map, and destroying enemies that resemble robotic spiders that seem to have a big vendetta against litter picking. Combat is fairly basic and a bit clunky. You cannot attack effectively while running, so it inevitably comes down to running up to a foe and smacking it from an angle that it can’t effectively attack you from until it falls apart. Later enemies add on levels of complexity, like armor that needs to be vacuumed off, but it is rare that anything provides a genuine threat.

Exploring the world inevitably involves running into one of the NPCs dotted around the areas. Anyone expecting the farming sim staple of befriending the locals with gifts of strange items may be disappointed, as the residents are very much there for utility. You can expect to get some exposition, a shop option, and possibly a few quests. Most are mainly useful for selling plans that are needed to upgrade your farm.

The farm, the other half of the core mechanics, is your base of operations. It is an integral part that cannot be ignored as producing certain crops are necessary for advancement.

Crop growing for profit is something of a slimmed-down affair. Your crops can be flung into the preserving machine, which will churn for a while and spit out the game’s currency, though some merchants also ask for one kind of produce alongside money to make purchases, gating your progress to your farming progress, which in turn is gated by what seeds you can dig up in the rest of the world.

Alongside the crop cultivation are the animals. In many ways, this is where the whimsical charm of the game best shines through. Animals are acquired by rescuing them out in the world, building them a home, and bribing them with a food item they like to get them to come and live on your farm. You can name your new buddy, dress them up in different hats, and even throw parties and picnics to increase their affinity for you. Watching your flock of chickens tear up the dancefloor by giving them a disco ball rarely fails to raise a smile. It has little touches and attention to detail that is greatly appreciated.

Audio and Visuals

The main takeaway from the visual in No Place Like Home would probably be ‘cute.’ Animals are round and bouncy with button eyes. Buildings are colorful, quirky asymmetrical models that a concept and environment artist clearly had a lot of fun making. Even the enemies look like they could corner the toy market.

The graphics are not necessarily flashy, though given the number of loose objects that can end up flying around on screen this was probably more in the service of not chewing through graphics memory. The art direction and painterly style suit it well. There is a very satisfying contrast made between the browns and greys of the polluted areas giving way to the lush greens and blues as you clear up around you.

The audio works very well. The music tracks are unobtrusive by impressively catchy, with a few sticking around in my head sometime after I turned the game off. Sound effects seem to do a good job of managing to give the junk-sucking mechanic a satisfying sense of weight without becoming infuriating to hear after ten minutes of clearing, which is no mean feat when your tools are basically a big drill and a vacuum cleaner.

Replayability

No Place Like Home has made some thoughtful provisions for returning players with the Creative Mode, which unlocks everything and allows the player to focus on building a farm exactly how they like it, rather than slapping things down as plans unlock. The one issue there is that adventuring for upgrades forms quite a large part of the overall game, so with everything at your fingertips, the farming aspects may not be deep enough to occupy for long.

What It Could Have Done Better

No Place Like Home started its playable life in Early Access, and whilst updates have been regular, there are definitely a few polish issues with the final release that, while they don’t impact the core gameplay, can give the impression that it could have used a little longer in the oven.

Ellen lacks animations in a few areas. There is no death animation, with simply a pop-up and immediate loading screen that takes the player back to the farmhouse, and moving down between platforms sees Ellen drops like a rock in her idle pose. There are lots of typos in the dialogue. At one point an enemy launched itself into an inaccessible area and stayed there for multiple days, flinging projectiles at me every time I tried to talk to the nearby NPC until I built a house on top of it. None of these things are particularly game-breaking,  but it doesn’t give an overall full release feel.

Verdict

It’s hard not to be at least a little bit won over by the charm and the sincerity of No Place Like Home, and you can expect a relaxing and ultimately satisfying experience. However, like a chicken coop made from things you found on a landfill, it’s a little rough, and might be lacking things you’d immediately expect in a similar product.

The developers have made it clear they wish to continue adding features in future updates, so there is certainly room for it to grow and develop. If they can come through on that promise, No Place Like Home may be able to cement its own little niche in the genre.

No Place Like Home is available on PC via Steam.