A central theme to the game is growth Bo and Ao grow from incredibly self-pitying (understandably so) people to something more hopeful. I feel like the game’s ending is way more hopeful than what we experienced in real life.Ĭel: I think No Longer Home’s ending is perhaps the hope we could have used when we were at that point in time. Neither of us are huge fans of happy endings where everything goes a-okay so while we could have given Ao and Bo a satisfying conclusion, we were more keen on giving them a small sense of resolve. Hana: I think the whole notion of “graduating and not knowing what to do next” is an intense emotion that most people who went to university go through, so naturally the start of the game is full of dread and frustration. What inspired you to make No Longer Home start on such a low note that people normally dread and end on a slightly higher one? I think taking these steps into adulthood is incredibly disorienting, for some their paths are a bit clearer, but for me I had no idea where I’d end up. They feel lost and unsure what paths to follow. Among the Leaves (the meta-game) also reflects what Bo talks about after waking up. Some of us actually have to resort to living in houses and flats that don’t really operate as proper accommodation, like how Sofi ends up living in a small room in a church depending on dialogue choices.Ĭel: House/flat hunting is an absolute nightmare in London, especially if you’re a student. We also wanted to communicate how difficult it is to find a reasonable living space in the UK (London especially), even if the location isn’t exactly specified in the meta-game. Hana: We really just wanted to convey that feeling of playing video games with your friends and shouting “do this! Do that!” at the screen at whatnot. What was the meaning of Among the Leaves? I do think there’s a clear sense that that’s what Bo and Ao are mourning. I think however players can maybe fill in some of those gaps with their own experiences. I think it would’ve gotten a bit too tangential anyway so it was worth cutting in the end.Ĭel: I think there’s a lot of joy and exploration in university, which due to the game being about the end of it all we weren’t really able to work in. Hana: There was some dialogue regarding my family, but I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it in detail, especially since they got a little too personal. Players get a good sense for your uni years through the game, but wondering if there were any moments that you wanted to add but didn’t make the cut? I don’t really count course crits either. I did talk to Cel before that but in an extremely drunk state, so I don’t really think that counts.Ĭel: Yeah, I’d say our first time properly chatting was at that BBQ at Friary Road that Hana invited me to. We met during foundation year of university (equivalent to first year) so we knew each other vaguely, but we never talked properly until the end of second year. ![]() Hana: There’s a tiny bit that the game missed out on, but it’s more or less the same as Ao and Bo’s meeting. How did you two meet? Was it the same as Ao and Bo’s meeting? Instead of belaboring the point, I’ll let the developers speak for themselves about their uni days, developing the game, and what comes after. ![]() A short and bittersweet story about closing a chapter in life, I believed it perfectly captured that ” pain of parting while taking solace in the fact that home is truly where the heart is,” while my colleague Daymon Trapold described it as “a tiny window into the human experience that leaves you feeling, well, all the feels.”Īnd while the game was very, very good at getting its emotions out in the open, I found myself itching to ask Ao and Bo’s real life counterparts, Humble Grove’s Hana and Cel, more about their experiences developing No Longer Home. When No Longer Home first released on PC in June of 2021 and on Nintendo Switch that same October, the lucky reviewers (myself included in that category) were definitely in their feelings about it.
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