My first year in college was tough. I moved to a city 800-something miles away from what I called home (New Jersey to Illinois) to attend an art school for writing. As the eldest daughter, I had always been the one to keep my family on track, but I knew leaving would offer more opportunities in the long run—though I couldn’t afford it and would still be paying it off into my mid-thirties.
I lived in dorms that felt strangely sterile, and my high school boyfriend, whom I hadn’t planned on staying with after college, ended up at the same school. He cheated on me and ghosted me until I forced him to break up with me by sending a heartfelt letter under dorm door. My family faced one mental health crisis after another, and I was constantly worried about how I would stay afloat while working two jobs and attending school full time.”
Me at 18 in my aunt’s bathroom taking the most emo millennial photo to show off my dumb shirt.
Screenshot of Emily and her friend Cliff in his car.
After that year, I went back home for the summer and worked. Not much felt different; the struggles were the same, and the hangouts with old friends felt like I had only gone away to camp.
It wasn’t until I returned to the city and found my own apartment that the feeling began to shift. Suddenly, when I visited home, I didn’t feel the same comfort. I was missing so much, and my friends were still living their lives.
I remember being in one of my friend’s cars and realizing that we were naturally drifting apart. And there wasn’t anything wrong with that. I had no ill will toward him, and I assumed the same from him. But our lives were taking us in different directions, and I needed to savor the few moments we had left then, because I would probably never experience that moment just as it was again. We would never be the same after that.
There were moments I fought against that feeling, but as we grow, change is inevitable. As much as change made me anxious, there was no fighting it.
I love checking in on friends from high school. I scroll through their profiles and see how much life they’ve lived. However, I still have memories of us at sixteen, eating a whole family pack of Reese’s Pieces and wanting to vomit. There’s a part of me that’s still in those moments, experiencing them just as I did at the time.
I don’t know if they know that I sometimes revisit those memories, and I wonder if they are ever there with me, in those lovely, cozy moments. Even though we don’t really talk anymore, I’m so grateful for those memories and for the chance to have known them.
Editing the videos for KT’s playthrough of Homebody kept reminding me of those moments and the knowing that they were fleeting. The game has a nostalgic look, visually reminiscent of when I played Kingdom Hearts for the first time. Then, those graphics were absolutely stunning but then seeing them graphics now it’s almost shocking. Just that small thing layers the feeling of nostalgia onto the game and acts as a metaphor.
The story revolves around being trapped reliving the same night because one man tried to live in his memories. He saw that his friends were moving on, just as I had realized so many years ago. However, instead of honoring the beauty of something so fleeting, he sought to freeze it and live within it.
Recreation of my first play-through of kingdom hearts (sans empty coke bottles and little Debbie’s wrappers)
The lamb-faced homunculus coming to stab you.
I’ve seen a lot of people like this—those who choose to live in the past, speaking of what-ifs, should-haves, or could-haves.
In the game, there is a creature referred to as a homunculus that kills you at a certain time every night within this memory you’re trapped in. I liked what one of our commenters noted, the killer acts like a white blood cell, trying to purge you from the system. As the main character, Emily, you need to solve a series of puzzles, each elaborately created by the house’s owner, to dismantle the machine that keeps him (and subsequently her and her friends) in this memory. With each version of herself that dies and is reborn, Emily wonders what parts of herself are left behind.
I’m always annoyed by puzzles in video games, as they often seem placed there for no other purpose than to provide a challenge for reaching whatever small goal is set in that moment. This game does a great job of building each puzzle’s purpose, and each piece pulls you further into the moments the house’s owner was trying to live within forever. With each piece of the puzzle found, and every failure creating a new version of Emily, we, as players, are never the same as we were before.
Also, shout out to KT for being the one to suggest this game for us to play. Her openness of discussing the games themes in relation to her own mental health is so insightful. And she goes so hard on these puzzles that I am impressed every time she doesn’t rage out at them then I would (similar to a toddler when they can’t get the toy to do the thing they want it to do). Getting to edit these videos gives me a whole new level of appreciation for my friends and how smart and funny they are. And I’m there too…making fart jokes and puns about pheasants.
I’ve heard it said that youth is wasted on the young, but knowing your memories have a time limit while you’re still making them feels like, in the game, knowing the homunculus will emerge from the secret room at 10:30 PM to kill you. The ignorance that comes from a lack of experience is what makes certain moments so special. Otherwise, being too self-aware of the inevitable outcome can turn what could have been a beautiful moment into a curse.
This game plays with a lot of metaphor and does a fantastic job of layering each one on top of the other. Are we the homunculus, coming to kill the versions of ourselves who try to get stuck in our own nostalgia? Is the homunculus a version of us that has been stuck there all along and wants to save us from the same fate? Or is the homunculus, like our own anxieties, just our brain attacking itself, creating a loop we can’t escape unless we follow these ritualistic puzzles?
Another one of Emily’s friends who is an ominous phantom in the game…
Re-watching the game while making these edits has made me appreciate the storytelling even more, along with the memories it created with my friends. The story touches on privilege, mental health, art, purpose, time, nostalgia, and memories in a very loving manner. Despite referencing major works of literature and managing multiple layers of metaphor, it impressively avoids coming off like the grandiloquent homeowner. In other words, it’s super artsy and deep but doesn’t feel pretentious. If this were a piece of written prose instead of a video game, I’m sure my college writing program would have endlessly enjoyed analyzing it to death.
All this to say I really enjoyed the game and I can’t wait to edit the second stream to complete the series on YouTube. I guess I should close out my ramble with something deep and meaningful but I wrote a lot of this at two a.m.
Ugh, fine.
Time makes fools of us all, but like the Fool at the beginning of a tarot deck, we must all be fools when we begin a journey.
There, now I match that homeowner’s douchey nature.
