The Way Back from Home is a first person story driven platformer in which players take on the role of Whiskers a common house cat. Whiskers has a god complex like most cats and gives of the belief that all his humans are in fact peasants whom he has enslaved despite secretly feeling rather attached to them. After moving palaces Whiskers is incessantly bothered by the small tail pulling peasant who constantly howls loudly at the loss of her favourite teddy which her parents think was left at their old house on the other side of the country. Telling himself that he is only doing it to get some peace and quiet Whiskers sets off a journey to retrieve the item, with one minor problem. Whiskers is blind.
Players travel across the country through a variety of methods to reach "home" and return with the lost teddy. Whiskers will face many perils on his way there and back including himself. Being blind Whiskers must navigate through hearing and smell, luckily he has sharp enough hearing to act as a form of echolocation. Players can mew to generate sound like echolocation to briefly show them the environment in black and white however this will alert potential enemies to his position and while players are able to use their claws to fight they are not very effective, much more useful for climbing. Players can also use Whiskers sense of smell as a smell-o-vision to track objects of interest in the environment such as the food they will need to gather to keep themselves going.
Other than this Whiskers is capable of everything a normal cat would be. Jumping, climbing and always landing on your feet are standard (though he doesn't have nine lives) at the end of each level players will see a skip-able quick full colour video recap (as from the perspective of a security camera) of their progress through the level so they can see things they may have missed or how obvious a solution was that took them a long time.
The Way Back from Home has a strong narrative, exploring our relationships with animals through the personification of Whisker by using regular inner monologue to develop an adorably flawed character in denial about his own affections for his humans. The game aims to set a light hearted pace as players progress focusing on humour and satisfying puzzle solving to keep the player involved, dropping into more serious narrative only during crisis points in the storyline to leave the player feeling satisfied with the depth of the experience
●Unique simplistic art style
●Solving puzzles from a new (four legged) perspective
●Deep emotional story
●Hilarious recaps of players fumbling around trying to solve a puzzle from an outside perspective
