HOMEBOUND Reviews

Its a pretty game - really more of an interactive experience than a fully fledged game though - took my time looking around but still "finished" it in under 30mins. However hoping to find more little easter eggs next time I go on. Apart from the controller/hands/objectives bugs others have mentioned - I couldnt figure out how to activate items - like I could pick up the fire extinguisher but no combination of buttons or using the other hand seemed to make it work like in the game trailer. Even so this is a nice little package for a decent price and gives a mostly unique and enjoyable experience. Looking forward to letting a few friends have a try. Hopefully with a few more bugfixes it should be grand for demo'ing. Personally I struggle with some aspects of this game due to my own vive controllers - the thumbpads dont press down on the edges anymore but the touchpad section on top still works fine - makes it nae on impossible to manueveur in this title though as its all edge of button pushes...so just a heads up if you have similar controller issues to mine ^_^

Really pretty. Really well laid-out. Once I was able to find out how to progress and not die, everything turned out pretty awesome. I'm changing my review now that I've been able to get into the other 2/3rds of the game and see that the developers are going to patch up the problems people have with it. If you've got an iron VR stomach, this is pretty top notch for about 20-30 minutes. If you don't, then you should probably run away from this one (unless the devs patch it up a lot) - it shakes the camera intensely for most of the gameplay. I also really like just laying in the station staring off at everything since the game doesn't really push you to do anything until you press the red button. People that threw cash out for something like a GTX 1080 will really appreciate this one.

There is so much potential here - the visuals and design of the space are phenomenal but the control scheme completely misses the point of being in a space station. Ambulating on solid ground is difficult to imitate without having infinite space to walk around in (an average room-size VR environment), but in zero-g your hands are what move you around the environment naturally. The game "Climbey" is a solid example of what I'm talking about. Having a game set in a space station with motion controllers could have completely opened up the immersiveness of room-scale VR with motion controllers, but instead they force you to sit down and use a movement system that is as unintuitive as it is illogical - in zero gravity, how am I just moving forward without pressing against anything, and why do I have a strong amount of inertia for no reason? If they could even add an option to play with natural movement in standing position, I would completely flip my review to a positive one. It's especially frustrating because I program in Unity and have already created basic movement systems like this with very simple add-ons, and it wouldn't take much to program - just make all border objects "grabbable" & "climbable" and eliminate all inertia slowdown effects when you aren't actually holding on to anything. That's the whole fun of floating. Once again, though, it is visually stunning - just wish the control scheme was more intuitive.

THIS IS NOT A GAME! ( #refund ) There are hardly any opportunities for interaction and the controls are so awful that you experience motion sickness right from the beginning. And I can say that I endure a lot before I feel nauseous. But this piece of software is just not enjoyable! Although I got this game on sale for less than 3.- Bucks, I'm refunding it because I still feel tricked into buying a game that isn't even worth to be called a demo. Besides the fact that this "game" has a runtime of less than 15 Minutes, implied the controls would not be broken and you don't experience glitches or get stuck in the walls, the sound is a mess as well. It is just loud and not mixed properly. And let's be honest here: pretty graphics do not deceive over missing content and lack of quality! Do not even bother thinking about buying this...

The game shows great promise! The visuals are mostly stunning (with some bad textures here and there) and the audio sounds great. I tried playing it on the Oculus Rift with Touch and that really doesn't work smoothly yet. For me there was always only one hand visible (the last one i pressed a button with) and the position of the hand was offset and never at the same position as my real hand. Also the interaction with objects/environment is still really buggy & sluggish. I'd recommend the game to all Vive owners and i will continue playing as soon as the touch controllers are integrated fully.

It was really short....and the graphics weren't all that great. I have never gotten sick in a VR game yet but this one made me quesy. Kinda cool but not worth 8 bucks IMO.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed in this visually great looking little experience. The whole thing takes about 15 minutes. Gameplay is almost non-existent. I believe there are 6 actions, like pulling a couple of levers, pushing a button, "steering" a flight stick and that's about it. Locomotion is questionable, personally I did not feel much discomfort while floating around although I imagine a lot of people will. What's worse though is when you turn your head beyong a certain point, the entire view shifts which is VERY unpleasant. For such a short experience, it has quite a lot of bugs. About three times my right hand just disappeared for a minute, and one time it was floating half a meter in front of me. It weren't tracking issues, I made sure to check. Grabbing things sometimes doesn't work. It does look nice and has a good atmosphere, but that's about all it has going for it right now. Edit: developer has since tweaked controls, so this review may not be completely valid.

At 75% off, curiosity got the better of me... Short version, don't bother. I was already aware of the play through time for this, so that wasn't a problem - the stupid thing is that the issues I had are so glaringly obvious, and they weren't taken care of before launch, or even in a patch. Hands seem to rotate somewhere around your fingers instead of your wrist, and objects when grabbed attach somewhere to your hands local vicinity. Level of detail and texture pop-in in places is blantant (even when set at ultra), and in one place, if you go too near to an airlock door, the entire thing disappears to reveal a blank wall behind it. When you're in the escape pod, my head was rotated so that it was pointing at my legs, and when the pod turned, my point of view didn't - apparently I had the neck of an owl. The floppy disks are flat polygons instead of being properly modelled, and while that might seem like I'm being picky, since they're the only objects that you actually need to collect, they really needed detail put into them. Check out Mission ISS (Oculus Home) or Adr1ft instead.

Great graphics and unique movement system giving you the impression of weightlessness. However you need an iron VR stomach for this. Not very intuitive controls using the tracked motion controllers. Interaction with objects is terrible. Not clear how to proceed through the game without dying. Short game. I kept it in my library for a while hoping for improvements, but have deleted it today.

I've not played too much as the low fps on my hardware made it a challenge, but I got at least this much from my experience. Pros: - Graphics and 3d assets are fucking georgouse! - Suprisingly no motion sickness from all the floating around - Simpsons Reference. Cons: - Very hard to destinguish interactables from the rest of the enviroment. - The interactivity felt really sticky and frustrating. It was extramely difficult to tell if you can actually interact with the objects as there was no indicator. - Requires lots of hardware to run at the optimum framerate. I'm running a GTX 1070 with a core I7 6700k and I had an uncomfortable framerate on low settings. For the low price, I'd still recomend this game due to it's really high production value and awesome setting. Although if you aren't confident that you can run it, you're not gonna have a good time.