Going Home
A game about people who have lost everything and live in filth, finally told they have just one chance to get home – or then next best thing.The theme of this game is obsession. An obsession that drives men to madness and despair, to acts of cruelty and barbarism, for the simplest of things: the chance to go home.
In the future, the world has been torn apart by warfare. The skies are eternally blackened with ash-laden clouds, the earth has been robbed of its fertility and the acidic rain pummels everything into muddy ruins. The war is long over, 1 years or so, and though the bitterness has not faded, it has been largely replaced by something else: despair. At first, people consoled themselves. Their wounds would heal, the skies would clear, and they would have to work oh so hard for it, but one day the world would be clean again, and children could play in fields and forests and breathe fresh air.
The children grew up, and most of them now don’t remember anything but the rain and the mud. The adults grow older and see no sign of a return to the way things were. The aftermath of the war continues to produce non-viable or deformed offspring, and those who know something of evolution fear that humanity will never be the same.
The war had other effects too. Cities and technology were, on the whole, destroyed. A culture wholly reliant on electronic data storage realised too late how prone it was to the loss of all its information archives. Complicated technology is in the hands of only a few now, those self-proclaimed genii that were not at the epicentres of the destruction. Their numbers are few, as are the numbers of the people who survived at all. They guide what is left of communities, helping them to rebuild from the shards of the shattered world and telling tales of what once was.
What a world it was, too. Shining towers, gleaming in the sunlight; food and water brought to your home, clean and wholesome. Parks, pets, family and friends, holidays even. A culture build up over thousands of years and the freedom to travel the world and see what had been done in the name of humanity. History. Comfort. Light. Free time, sports, hobbies, books, movies, TV, music when you want it, the change of seasons…
So many things lost, so little hope of seeing them again. Now, all many are faced with is a lifetime of living in ignorance, of near-starvation, of the depredations of bandits, and of the god-damned mud, seeping it’s way into everything. So, if someone said you could have it all back, what would you do to get it? For most people, the answer is simple. Anything.
- Going_Home.pdf
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Tags: Shevaun Frazier
