A downloadable game for Windows

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I  T O L D  Y O U,  Y O U  L O V E  M̷̧̛̱̫̙̳̥͕̙̭̭̘̺̈́͐͒̇̂̔̀̓̌͘ E̷̲̯̘̬͍̖͕̼͖̱̱͉̦͐ͅ

The week was rough, work was exhausting, and your husband did his best to set something nice up for you to come home to. Relax, embrace and enjoy the rest of your life weekend.

Warning: This House Is Not A Home is a psychological horror game that explores some uncomfortable themes with shocking imagery. Game contains strobing lights and flickering imagery, though not used as a way to get cheap scares.

Release Notes

v0.0.1b (Steam Release/Demo Update)

  • Q1 2024

v0.0.1 (Early Alpha "Concept" Demo)

  • Released November 30th.

v0.0.0a (Game Jam Demo Release, March 2021)

  • Originally a Brackeys Game Jam 2021.1 Submission!

    RECOMMENDED SPECS (NEEDS TESTING for more Accurate Specs):
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 (64-bit only)
    • Processor: Intel i3 or AMD Ryzen 3
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080/ AMD RX56
    • DirectX: Version 11
    • Storage: 2 GB available space

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

Early Alpha "Concept" Demo v0001 801 MB

Development log

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Comments

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Switch release?

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I watched the GP video and Im sold. How can i throw money at getting this greenlit? Experimental Horror conflated with Tile based dungeon crawler is a great idea. The movement style adds real dread to the experience and if you can keep up the genre breaking video interruptions I think the player will continue to be off balance within the overall mystery. Lovely demo

Thanks so much Zombie! No need to throw money. lol Earlier this month I got the project greenlit with my boss. Will make a formal announcement hopefully next month with some updates. Just be you and share your thoughts and experiences. All I generally ask for. :)

Stay in touch!  :D

That's fantastic to hear! I will certainly stay in touch and look forward to watching THH take shape

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Gave it a Let's Play, I enjoyed the visual style and left some feedback within my commentary/gameplay, hope others enjoy my personalized experience.

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Unique gameplay bravo, but some bugs made me stuck 2 times in seq i guess , so i couldnt finish, but really interested to see full realese

Thanks! Is it possible you can go through a couple of the steps that let to that issue? 

yeah  i complete the fill blanks on pc then take me to board and to pc again stuck there, second is after waking up midnight then meeting monster telling you something, i thought its part of game first and try everything but it really stuck there for minutes so altf4

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I was going to play this for youtube but cancelled video - I've been soft locked 3 times. Firast time was in the doorway after meeting Chris, the second and third time were from replaying and the previous options being no longer available until I ran out of options at all. Very dissapointed.


EDIT: 4 Times. Ridiculous. I watched some other videos and realized its apparently because I didn't do every single little thing right the first attempt. This is unbelievable.

Hey Asdoty, sorry this was your experience when th the demo. This is the first time hearing about such an issue. 

If you have time, can you list out the steps as explicitly as possible to reproduce this? Thanks!

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oh my!!! i love your art style and mechanics of the game you decided to use! p&c and limited movement of the character, like in old games. and description of actions and environment are cool too! it helps to add more details to your world! : )

proposition to add flashing lights warning at the beginning. i see it at the description in this page (thanks btw!), but some people will watch streams/letsplays and will not know about it.

Thanks for playing and the suggestion. I don't know why that had gotten past me especially in regard to those streaming for viewers unaware of the warning. 

thank you! <3

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REALLY looking forward to this gay horror, or rather, a unique horror experience that happens to feature a gay protag.

Just created an account on IO because of this game, hopefully I get updates from adding to my collection and following Newsom.

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Gays and horror. My two favorite things! The game's art style and story got me hooked. I'm looking forward to more of the game

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VERY GOOD DEMO! So much potential for the full game I really enjoyed what I saw, reminded me of tenebris somnia and FAITH with the cutscene and the ending was such a good show of whats to come! Best of luck with your game man! It does take a little bit to get to the good part tho so people may not give it a chance but it's so good and I hope people give it a shot!
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Hey there! I am a Twitch streamer, Hoorting.

I really enjoyed the game, though you probably won't understand anything I'm saying. Props to you for the incredible art style choices, the design, and the overall aesthetic. I couldn't stop admiring the visuals, and when the game started mixing in colorful sequences, it really blew my mind. The pacing and the gameplay are amazing too. I started off knowing nothing about the gameplay, thinking it would be more of a static point-and-click adventure, and I surely did not expect to be moving around in 3D, wielding a shotgun by the end of it! The game kept surprising me throughout the whole demo, and it's definitely one of my favorite recent horror games.


I will be keeping an eye on your projects, and I am really looking forward to the release. I wish you all the best. You've got great taste.

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This is a really interesting game and art style as well. I also like how you mixed 2-d and 3-d horror into the mix as well. The story also helps as well and I'll be keeping an eye on this game.

Here's my channel for other games I have played. https://www.youtube.com/@Levont

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Hi there, I am DragonExplosion and I am a Youtuber. If you like my videos, please leave a like and subscribe at my channel.

I don't know if I am the first person to play "Feducia" when it came out and I don't know if I am the first to play "This House Is Not A Home" either XDDD but I was definitely excited to see "Feducia" being further developed by the creator. Regarding the video I made for the game, it is unfortunately quite laggy and not in the best of quality but when I played the game, I did not suffer from major issues other than the cursor movement was quite slow (This could be due to lag on my part though) so I can still give comments and suggestions.

The game is quite intriguing as we learn more about the story of the main character and her husband, both working to generate income for themselves where the main character is dealing with either some internal turmoil or external paranormal event. The sudden transitions to the cutscenes and video clips were quite interesting and it does create a disorienting effect to allow the player to understand what the main character is dealing with. 

I felt that the introductory part, about the main character working on mundane tasks to purchase groceries can definitely be further worked on to emphasise the idea of repetitiveness and how dull the main character life is or to drag out further inner turmoil within the main character of being worthless. I liked the addition of the heartbeat and inventory into the game but I felt that it wasn't really being used much during the demo which is kind of a missed opportunity. Moreover, I liked the dark mood and atmosphere of the game due to the unique graphics and style of the game. Lastly, I liked that mirror segment in the bathroom as well.

However, the main issue I had with the game is the storyline being quite slow overall where it got a little boring at the start when Bob was having a conversation with me and the other conversations with my boss and Sarah. It would be good if more was done to made the introduction segment more interesting and concise. 

Thank you for reading my comment and I wish you good luck in your future endeavours.

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Thanks DE for the in-depth response. 

Regarding the lag, the mouse movement might be an issue with me limiting the cursor to the pixel ratio and not the screen size, so it may appear laggy, but might feel sluggish. This might have been an  oversight since responsiveness over aesthetics might dictate if I roll that back. I’ll prob add it as a settings option and default it to off.


The rest of the critiques I can definitely agree with. When the threat becomes real when the player explores the mines, the heart rate mechanic will become more apparent. Both emotional and functional as a mechanic.


Pacing between mundane and story will be balance more over time as I get to see more responses to the demo. Aside from patches, I hope to see you play the future demos as production continues.

Thanks again! 
Stuart

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Hey Dragon. Finally got back home from Vacation. Is it possible I can get a rundown of your system specs? I would like to run the debug on the similar specs.

Ummmm.... My computer specs use Intel Core i5-10400 CPU @2.90 GHZ, RAM 16GB, NVIDIA GeForce FTX 1650 SUPER. I recently upgraded my GPU so I am unsure if I was using a lower quality GPU when I made the video. The lag in the video is largely caused by my video recording application settings if you wanted to know why the video lagged.

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Yeah, I usually have to resort to alternate measures to record. I’d like to do whatever I can to make screen recording work as fluid as possible, so this helps a lot. Thanks again!

I have to say it was quite an unexpected experience. The game is really good, and now I want to see the full version of it. Seems like it will have 10 more minutes.... but there is only 2 updates and none of them specifies if it will be finished soon or not... we're in may tooo. But in either way, great game.

do you know how else i can play the game without downloading it?????

I'm considering figuring out a html5 browser version after the game jam voting is done. It's not that hardware intense, so  I think it would be a fun idea for those like you. I'll make an announcement on it if it's possible. :)

:)

By the way, love your avatar. Huge TPN fan. :)

i love tpn alot 

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My review: This one was a wild ride for me personally. I'm a big wuss when it comes to horror games even though I love them to bits.

Thank you so much for making this game, I really believe it's very promising and holds great potential. I loved that the atmosphere was gripping and unnerving right from the get-go., and the art style is very unique, reminds me of Pointillism. :') 

The first jumpscare got me real bad, imma be honest lol. I think that says a lot of good stuff about the game.

I'll be following the game's progress further down the line, really promising!!!

Yeah, I'm not a fan of jumpscares myself, thats why I tone them down audio wise. If something gets you, it should always be something built up on, than just random dude that pops out of nowhere. I'm super happy you enjoyed it. I can't wait for you to play the full version in the future. Definitely stay in touch! :)

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Exactly, pointless jumpscares are much less interesting than the one you managed to create, which is a very well-thought out one. I really appreciate your work! I will definitely stay in touch!!! Cannot wait for the full game and for any future games ya make hehe

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Loved this so much! Dig the retro halftone style! When it ended I wanted more! Will be playing the full game for sure!

Thanks! Hope to hear more from you in the future. :)

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An interesting game. Loved the art style.

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I really liked the art style of this game. The start of the game is great. (I would secretly eat more cake than Chris) The splash of color is great throughout the house. I wish there were some splash of color on the monster as well. The game itself is not too scary, but did a great job of creating an unnerving atmosphere. I am curious what more is to come for the full game. I have a couple critiques for the game. One, I would avoid any word breaks in the text box to make it easier to read. Second, maybe change the color of the font when you highlight an item on screen. Sometimes the white get blended in. Overall, good job dude!

Thanks Berry for giving the demo a try. Glad the unnerving atmosphere hit its mark. Since there isn't any direct player urgency in the demo, I wouldn't be surprised some won't be feeling it's scary in gaming context. I hope the full game will be able to give that much needed urgency though, so I look forward to having you test future builds and give me feedback. I'll definitely being opening up closed testing to gauge what works and what doesn't.

I want to dig into that text break part though. Do you mean when a sentence preemptively breaks like in your video where the "I" sits alone as the sentence carried on? Like you'd rather after a sentence ends, the following sentence will sit on its own line? Or do you mean you'd rather hyphenate words that wrap so it flows like a block.

The rest of your critiques I can say are definitely already planned, so hopefully you'll be happy with the goals of the end product.

THANK YOU for the critiques. I'm really appreciative of it. :) Stay in touch! You can definitely reach out to me over on twitter if its easier over comments.

Yeah, urgency is big driving factor for a lot horror games but there are plenty that did well without it as well. You could try adding a timer or a reverse loading bar when selecting text options or just searching around in a room, if you wanted that moment of panic. Maybe you could try quick time events if you like. 

For the text breaks, a good example I can think of is during the demo where the shaking "YOU ARE WORTHLESS" appears. The "less" is truncated and goes to the next line which breaks the immersion a bit. Perhaps if you play around with the spacing of powerful statements such as this you could have one word on each line centered or flowing diagonally. The majority of the text so far in this demo is solid. The shaking text really makes it feel more interactive. Characters have their own text color which is awesome and they provide a paragraph gap after they finish talking. (except for that one time where Chris slapped his belly) Staying consistent with text spacing will go a long way so when you break that consistency on purpose it sends a different message in a strong way. I hope this makes sense haha.

 I would love to see your future builds and help you out in anyway I can. I don't mind either way to communicate via twitter or here in the comments. Good luck on your project!

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GAMEPLAY WALKTHROUGH
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Thanks for playing and video! Hope you come back and play the full game in the future. <3

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Are you f***ing kidding me! Genre "Adventure." I was sitting in my room, just preparing to go to bed, and wanted to have a brief look at the game.
The jumpscare was unexpected. Now I am wide awake.
Good job... good game haha^^ :D

I'm sorry. lol Glad you liked it. Definitely stay in touch! :D Hope you like the things in store for the future full release. :)

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Ok I must say this game is very unique I liked it because it was different . But I have to ask why a mooseman? haha anyway thank you for allowing me and others play your game. Keep on creating my friend I would like to see more. 

Mooseman. Funny, I've been thinking about your comment and I decided to search Feducia on youtube. Funny enough a random youtuber dealing with hunting, has a bunch of videos with deer horns plastered on their thumbnails. Weird coincedence. XD

Nonetheless, this entity is but one of five entities with meaningful representations through their visages.

Hope you come back in the future for the Full Release!

Take care. <3

Of course as I would love to play this game again.

Show post...

GOOD

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Good submission to the game jam. I like the visual style, fun little point-and-click experience. As I note in my video, the theme at play does seem to be a little on the heavy side, but I also understand for such a short game you don't have a lot of time to get your point across.


Overall, thumbs up, and I would be interested in playing a fuller version. Kudos!

You nailed it on the head. A lot more going on than what's seen in the demo. Though I planned it to be completely during the jam, I was a little rusty since the last jam I did was GGJ2013. Stay in touch and I hope you get to enjoy the full version in the future.

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Nice demo! I am looking forward to future updates :) 

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Most definitely and thanks! Probably going to tighten up the mechanics and implement some features I dropped to meet the deadline. Happy to have you around. :)

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Hi there, I am DragonExplosion and I am a Youtuber so please leave a like and subscribe at my channel.

It has been a long time since I posted a video on my channel and I decided to visit itch.io to see if there are any interesting horror games all of a sudden. I came across your game and I am glad that I played your game.

The horror atmosphere in the game was spot-on and I really loved the game mechanism that you have used in the game. It has an interesting storyline and I really hope to see more games that you will make, in the future. This is a great horror game overall, nailing the atmosphere and storyline but I felt that there could be more audio effects throughout the game.

Thank you for reading my comment and I wish you good luck in your future endeavours.

Super glad you enjoyed it. Third day working on the game for the jam, I knew I would wanted to keep working on it. There's a lot more to the story than what's in the demo, so I hope you'll get a chance to experience it in the future. :)

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Alright, will be following you :)