![]() Ao mentions considering looking into an ADHD diagnosis, but shuts the idea down. It often feels like life is just passing by. You can’t just go and do a revolution, or ‘organise’ – you have essays to write, or work to finish up before tomorrow, or tidying to do because you should really put those jumpers away and stop transferring them from the chair to the bed and back again depending on which one you’re currently using. The feeling of being small in the world – seeing all these societal problems but unable to find solutions makes you feel inadequate and somewhat complicit. The game touches so many aspects of life in such a short space of time. If they really try, and resolve to take the time and effort to figure things out, people can stay in each other’s lives. It’s not framed as an irreversible loss, though. Having gone through the experience of leaving school, with all sides needing to make a constant effort to stay in touch, Bo and Ao’s fear of losing each other felt like a creeping inevitability. Leaving uni, I fell out of touch with friends I’m only just getting back in contact with. I have precious few close university friends, but the wistful melancholia so beautifully communicated in No Longer Home still feels so real to me. Unlike No Longer Home‘s cast, I was lucky enough to find my closest friends during my school years, and through uni, managed to stay in touch. I’m only a few short years out of university. From the unknown of the ‘real’ world to feeling like you’re always the one who takes the bins out (even though your housemate probably actually does pull their weight), you can always find points in the story which speak to an honest, human experience. ![]() It’s more that No Longer Home manages to convey such a genuine depiction of the fears and worries young people have in this big scary world that it’s hard not to feel like it’s directed right at you. It’s a setting that’s easy to see as mundane, but with this comes a mirror, allowing the player to hold their own experiences in front of No Longer Home and feel less alone. It isn’t so much a back-and-forth as a collaboration – everyone can add their own bits to the chatter to take it to more interesting places. It’s a system I really like, since you’re kind of playing as all the characters at once. With each conversation, you have a few options, allowing you to choose who makes the next statement. You’ll have friends over for one last BBQ, chat about the future, and complain about how much of a pain moving house is. The gameplay consists of wandering around the somewhat dilapidated living space and reminiscing over the lives the characters have lived over the last year. It’s a London flat after all – not a huge amount of space to go around. There’s no map screen, but it’s really easy to get to know the place. You explore their flat from an isometric angle, and can rotate each room to reveal more parts of it. The Home Office’s immigration policy is forcing Ao to move back to Japan when they aren’t ready to do so, and Bo must move back into their family home due to skyrocketing housing prices and a lack of direction in life. You follow the story of Bo and Ao, in their South London university flat for the final year of education. READ MORE: Why ‘Tomb Raider’ will always be a core part of my queer identity.It’ll hit home in several ways with every individual person who plays it, and that’s something Hana Lee and Cel Davison of Humble Grove can be immensely proud of. ![]() ![]() It’s hard to put No Longer Home into words without ending up delivering personal reflection.
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