Hands on Impressions Of No Place Like Home

Today we’ll be talking about my recent experience with ‘no place like home’. Thanks to the team at Sandbox Strategies for providing me with a copy of the game. As always, these will be honest impressions of my experience. And with that, let’s jump in.

Humanity has trashed the earth and left for Mars, Leaving only a few remaining. You are tasked with exploring the world, cleaning up the trash and rebuilding your village. There’s crafting, farming, animals, and so much more.

There are two game modes available to play Adventure and Creative. I chose to go with Creative, everything is free and available from the start in this mode, and I wanted to go off and explore what’s on offer from the game rather than needing to focus on the tasks.

Initially greeted with a tutorial, the game aims to help you understand all you’ll need to know before diving in. It was well-paced and helped to get an understanding of your equipment. It felt familiar in terms of controls as I’ve played numerous games like this in the past; it was a good refresher and allowed me time to adjust my mouse sensitivity and other settings as I went.

Your main task is to clean up the world by destroying mountains of trash and vacuuming all the rubbish; then, you’ll recycle the trash to gain resources to build out your farm. Cleaning up the world whilst being a repetitive task was rather relaxing, and cleaning huge areas felt satisfying to see your progress.

Throughout the cleaning up process, you’ll find hidden chests, new animals or met new friends. As you’d expect, each chest has hidden resources, the animals you’ll be able to befriend and give a home to, and your new friends may provide a new store, tasks or upgrades.

With so many resources to find, you’ll get a very filled inventory. You can quickly solve this by crafting chests to sort items in your home or, once unlocked, by upgrading your backpack.

If you need a break from cleaning up, it’s time to head home and rebuild the farm. You’ll be able to use seeds you’ve found to grow fruit and vegetables, build homes for your animals and use the produce from these to cook delicious dishes that can be traded.

I found some great amusement in the animal interactions, most notably being able to have a party with the chickens. There’s the ability to dress them in little hats, then place a disco ball and party along. It was so unexpected yet, but after venturing cleaning up the world, it’ll put a smile on your face.

So let’s talk about those ventures; you’ll go through many different zones on your adventures, each with its look and feel. As you clean up, you’ll interact with buttons and place boxes to unlock new areas and access more animals and resources. I’ve not fully explored every zone in this game as it’s rather expansive and will undoubtedly keep you busy for many hours, that’s for sure.

So how do I feel about this game overall? I spent around 5 hours playing and didn’t even scratch the surface of everything on offer. You could spend hours and hours bringing your world together uniquely, and it certainly captures your attention. If you’re a fan of Stardew Valley, Sime Rancher and Minecraft, this could be the next cozy time-consuming game for you. I found it very relaxing to play and will return to my farm again soon; if only to have a party with my chickens again.