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Light My Way Home

by Caelyn Sandel (as Venus Hart) profile

2014

(based on 17 ratings)
3 reviews

Game Details


Awards

Commended - ShuffleComp 2014

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Member Reviews

5 star:
(3)
4 star:
(6)
3 star:
(7)
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Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 3
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Going Gentle, June 10, 2014
by Sam Kabo Ashwell (Seattle)

Light My Way Home is a simple, evocative little game. The unfolding of exactly what is going on is, I think, important to its emotional arc, so I'll avoid spoilers.

Knowing how to make use of empty space is a big deal in most artistic disciplines. Home is deft in how it employs the gaps often present in games: the dark loneliness of night-time in interstitial urban space, the gaps in recognition and memory, the unbridgeable distance between PC and NPC. It shows rather than tells, and doesn't overshow. It's able to do this without being frustratingly opaque, because the underlying story is quite simple; it is more of a tone piece than a plot or character piece. There is a small knack to interaction, and a little thought is required about how to progress, so the pacing is neither puzzly-slow nor trivially-rapid.

To some extent, it felt akin to a small, moody point-and-click 2D Flash adventure: the single mode of interaction, the genderless NPC who follows your actions rather than being explicitly directed, the atmospheric music and emphasis on lighting.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A melancholic story of longing and loss, May 11, 2016
by verityvirtue (London)
Related reviews: melancholic

Light My Way Home is a contemplative Shufflecomp entry set by a hydro corridor, and the landscape is unlikely: metal towers, scrabbly grass, abandoned barns. But in the midst of this comes a simple, lovely story of longing and loss.

Light My Way Home is a lovely sensory experience. The location descriptions are evocative; it features a quiet soundtrack punctuated by the chirping of crickets. This game revolves around a special command, >POWER OBJECT, which allows you to change the environment around you to guide the one NPC and, in so doing, find out more about yourself.

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One of the highlights of ShuffleComp 1, September 4, 2023
by Andrew Schultz (Chicago)
Related reviews: ShuffleComp

As LMWH starts off, you don't know what to do, and you don't know who or what you are. But this isn't an amnesia game, far from it. It's a tightly contained game where you, quite simply, have to help someone find their way. You are some sort of ethereal spirit, and you have the ability to give an electric charge to one item at a time. The goal, as stated in the story, is to bring someone home--figuratively or literally.

This person is the most beautiful person you've ever seen, with no direct description why. The story implies it strongly, and it's not hard to figure out, but of course it works better than if you'd been told directly.

Objectively, the person you guide seems a bit stupid as they bump around oddly, but it's not hard to care for them in the game, because of who you guess they might be, and what they need to do, and how powering certain things up makes them move around.

There are only a few things you need to power up or down, but that is enough for a satisfying story. Too much, and the person might seem clueless indeed.

The author seems particularly good at making these nice short stories that provide a quick burst, both as a player and as someone who'd like to make a few more good short games or scenes. Replaying this years after it came out for ShuffleComp, the combination of what I remembered and what I forgot felt about right.

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Light My Way Home on IFDB

Polls

The following polls include votes for Light My Way Home:

For Your Consideration: Games from 2014 that should be nominated for the XYZZY Awards by Molly
There were a lot of great games released in the past year, and now that the XYZZYs are coming up, it seems like a very good idea to take a poll of all the games from last year people would like to see nominated. The management has asked...

IF with a sense of wonder by blue/green
What interactive fiction would you recommend that evokes a sense of wonder? These could be games that capture wonder or beauty in ordinary things, perhaps by viewing the world through the eyes of a child. Or they could be games that...

Best Short Games (5-60 minutes) by Sasha Davidovna
I'm pretty new to IF and am having a lot of fun, but in between a toddler and a job and other real life stuff, I'm having trouble finding time to finish many of the longer games I want to play. Can you please recommend me some fun and/or...




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