"Back Home" is a story-driven rpg with several shorter episodes, all building on one storyline.
When Chess' best friend is left to die, he immediately sets out to fulfill an ancient ritual, ultimately reviving Julian in the form of a guardian creature, a Woodwalker.
While living together, Chess is soon certain that Julian has completely lost his memory of being a human, despite him still showing remnants of his old behaviour. Hoping to find a way to return Julian's memories while also trying to keep the Woodwalker a secret from the villagers that shun him, Chess starts his plan to help Julian slowly revive the forest around their home and return the fae and guardians back to the land.
A lot of the game involves piecing parts of several background stories together by exploring your surroundings.
There are smaller quests, some optional, some needed to advance, where you can explore different reactions by taking along Julian or leaving him at home. The game does offer you the possibility to make your own decisions at times, but there are times where you can't advance if you don't give in to a certain choice.
The quests don't involve actual puzzles, but do involve figuring out what you have to do and what items you need to continue. It also might be abbout finding the right person to talk to, maybe only with a certain item in your bag. The game does not (and likely won't ever) have a battle system, as it does not make much sense for the story.
Each episode of the game has a small split ending that gives the player more information. While it is easy to acquire, you can't randomly enter the patth to the secret ending. Only by having found the split ending in the prologue can you find the split ending in the first episode, only by finding the split in the first episode can you find it in the second, on so on...
SCREENSHOTS
CHARACTERS
STORYLINE/PLOT
Most of the actual thing you do is trying to get a better environment for fae and guardians to return back to the forest. Meanwhile, there are several storylines going on in the background that you can find out about more by completing certain small quests or looking around.
Some of those are the circumstances under which Julian died, which was his parents leaving him to die. This storyline also has a part about why they did this and quests about interacting with Julian's siblings or parents.
Another storyline is about the nature of Chess' curse and how to get rid of it. While I'm planning to include this, I want to leave open an option about a sequel, and this isn't supposed to be the main focus of the game.
Something that you have to mainly piece together is what Julian is doing behind Chess' back. Julian is hardly articulate as a Woodwalker and Chess, as well as the player, are supposed to mainly see him as the naive creature he portraits. Some parts are supposed to focus on scenes where he behaves weirdly, though, hinting at the secret ending of the game.
DOWNLOAD LINK
https://maligarnet.itch.io/back-home
A note on feedback
This is my first try at a rpg. I'm still using a lot of pre-made things and I'm certainly not exploring all of the possibilites yet. I want to make each of the episodes better and better, so I hope to get as much feedback as possible.
If you'd like, please try the prologue and tell me your thoughts.
Of course, if you find any bugs or get stuck at parts that aren't clear,
but also if there's anything you find weird/unnatural, things you'd like to see in another episode, your thoughts about the characters or the story thus far.
Any and all feedback, positive or negative, is appreciated!