Have You Played... Three Fourths Home?

I don't know about you, but I always dreaded coming home from university for the holidays. After flying the proverbial nest, the walls I grew up in started to feel less and less familiar, and after the excitement and bustle of uni halls it always felt like stepping back into the past. I imagine most people who leave home experience this feeling at some point, an easy sense of guilt that you're not quite as homesick as you should be.

Three Fourths Home explores the guilt and paranoia associated with going home for the holidays, as uni drop-out Kelly drives through a thunderstorm to see her family back in Nebraska.

It's a very simple game really, you just hold a single button to make the car drive. As long as the car is moving, dialogue options pop-up on the screen, as Kelly calls various friends and family to pass the time while storm sirens blare in the background. The storm is at the centre of Three Fourths Home's striking imagery, with it's logo representing an up-rooted home. In reality though, the storm isn't really the main event. Kelly's anxiety grows as she heads closer and closer to her old home, building and building to a surprisingly touching finale.

I'm fairly certain that Three Fourths Home was the game that got me into writing. While moving house earlier this year I found an old notebook with a hastily written review for Three Fourths Home in it. It was the first review I'd ever written, so I suppose you could say I was fairly moved by the whole thing. Three Fourths Home is a great rainy day game that can be finished in a couple of hours. Come for the storm, stay for the relatable sense of twenty-something angst.