I Wanna Go Home

Global Game Jam 2019 - NYU Game Center (Brooklyn Site)

Won: Best Overall Game, Best Audio

Nominated: Best Visuals, Best Narrative, Best Game Design

Controls: 

Z - Select Option, Interact

Arrow Keys / WASD - Move

Summary: I Wanna Go Home is a 2D narrative game about attending a high school party as the “new kid in town”, and working up the confidence to talk to a dozen party goers, and, hopefully, not be the “new kid” anymore.

Mechanics: The primary mechanic in I Wanna Go Home revolves around the gaining and losing of confidence. By being honest, you can make new friends and gain confidence. But like in real life sometimes you say the wrong thing without realizing it and that social snafu leads to you losing confidence.  Some characters will be pretty intimidating, so you’ll need a lot of confidence to speak with them.

If making new friends is proving difficult, you can try drinking to boost your confidence. However, drinking makes it harder to communicate by scrambling your dialogue choices. If you drink too much you won’t have any idea of what you’re trying to say until you’ve already said it.

Having enough confidence allows you to talk to more and more intimidating members of the party, until you finally have enough confidence to talk to Ivy, your school crush.

Credits:

Featuring the Game Design work of Emi Schaufeld and Michael Fegreus

The coding and unity development of Michael Fegreus and Rebecca Jones, with Yarn assitance from Harry Rabinowitz and Emi Schaufeld

Brilliant writing by Harry Rabinowitz, Emi Schaufeld and Magnolia Porter

Art: I Wanna Go Home features hand drawn characters, backgrounds, and animations by our amazing artists and illustrators. With work from Corinne Stein, Courtney Sanders, Magnolia Porter, and Rachel Jones

Music: I Wanna Go Home includes digital sounds as well as an original score performed and recorded by our amazing musical Andy Bow and Trent Garlipp. A large variety of string instruments, including acoustic guitars, bass guitar, and ukulele were used to create “themes” for the various characters in the game!

Statement on Alcohol and Consumption:

We do not associate drinking with being a confident person, nor do we encourage unsafe drinking practices. I Wanna Go Home borrows a lot from the team’s personal experiences with alcohol and high school parties. This game is meant to emulate these experiences.

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars
(50 total ratings)
Authorsmichael.fegreus, EmiSchaufeld
GenreAdventure, Visual Novel
Made withUnity
Tags2D, Cozy, Cute, Global Game Jam, Hand-drawn, relationship

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

(+1)

So cute game!I really like!

(+3)

the double vision and messed up text is a super cool mechanic!! that was lovely, i beat it twice (once with drinking, and one without)

(+2)

Thanks for playing!

(+2)

dude now this is epic, i love leon and theo, also the moving mechanic was really smooth and felt nice, the colors i love also and the words when your drunk feels kinda scary but is realistc to how people think kinda in real life, the music was pretty fitting to the characters and lastly i love the different characters in this game, all seem like people you might see at a party, amazing work!

(+3)

Won on the second try, but honestly, this game made me remember my first school party, only good memories from it.

(+2)

Glad you enjoyed it, your comment makes me smile.

(+2)

yeah, i win without drinking!!

(+1)

The story is so nice and i love the art style. Leon and Theo for the win

So fun! Love the art and the concept of this game!

(+1)

managed to win without drinking on my first try!! but i had to go back and see what would happen if i did drink -- really cringey and realistic tbh

the concept was great and i really loved the art style. was able to gain confidence with only drinking once. it's a lovely story indeed. :-)

A nice ludic narrative with great art.  Fun and unique.

The hand-drawn art in this was so pretty, especially the color palette. The music was also nice.
I tried to "win" without drinking, but I think I messed up a choice or two along the way, so I was left with literally nothing else to do but take a drink. That doesn't make much sense to me. I feel like there should be other ways to build up confidence even after you mess up.
The game could also benefit from a system like in Oxenfree where you can overhear characters talking (i.e. read their speech bubbles) as you travel the overworld, to make the conversation more natural.

Still, this whole game is really impressive especially considering the time constraint. Keep up the good work!

(+2)

This was lovely.