Making it Home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf77bdewFzI A pretty fun and creative sandbox game which sets you up to create a sailing vehicle as well as managing it. This is to make to travel along some distance to reach the finish line in each level within the story where you are travelling home. It does have some poly bridge kind of feel as you get into the sandbox section that provides a limited amount of money and resource where you need to make a vehicle that can actually travel against the winds. Though it is not so much a typical vehicle as you basically just set up various kinds of rooms that each gives some speed. Some are simple rooms that doesn't require interactions, though the more you progress, the more complex rooms are available to be added onto the contraption that does require some involvement. There is some platforming involved as well as you would need to organise your rooms with walls of course since you can't move between floors in mid air. You would also need to set up the floors to be optimal so that the most amount of speed can be gained throughout the travel, but also be able to reach the different areas of the contraption so that you can actually gain said speed. It does have an interesting little story with some humour where you are a cute little ladybug trying to make it home for a little girls birthday. Results are based on how fast you are able to reach the finish line with the contraption you have built with the budget given where it is fun to try and create the optimal one. Overall it is an interesting little indie game for those who like to create things.

Pillbug interactive keeps improving with every new title. A very bizzare and unique game. Great soundtrack and background watercolor art made by some talented people. Game contains a surprisingly mature story despite what the artstyle would suggest, but it's skippable if it's not your cup of tea. The developers have been very nice and receptive to feedback during development. If the game looks interesting to you, and you want to shape the future of where it goes, I highly recommend joining in on early access and talking with them on discord. :D Note: Participated in beta testing and did a decent amount of bug testing, which is why my play time is so high. I would say it takes about 30 - 60 minutes to get through an act, depending on how much time you spend tweaking your vehicle. However the game greatly encourages several runs of each act, so I would say there's about 5 - 6 hours of fresh content in the campaign, 9 - 12 hours for completionists. Maybe more if you just like running vehicles, it really depends per player. This isn't including challenge mode, which is a bit bare bones at time of writing, but I'm sure will develop over time.

Really fun and novel title! Loved the mesh of platforming and building as well as slowly uncovering different tile combinations to improve that mph! Inclusion of Remote Play Together Co-op instrumental, however did have some issues with the camera control being hard to juggle when playing far apart. Would have also liked some more hand-holding for some of the bonus objectives like the honey pots & cake ingredients too. Overall, a neat concept and fun game! Plus the soundtrack is absolutely insane! 🤩

[h1]Making it Home[/h1] [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Making it Home is a vehicle building and part platformer where you play as a dad bug who has to build your own vehicle that is fast enough to reach your daughter’s birthday in time. The gameplay loop consists of collecting money, driving each day and drive again the next day with any improvements you can make. Since you have to reach on your daughter’s birthday, the time is limited and it factors in to what kind of vehicle are you going to make. In the middle of your journey you get options to stop and do part time jobs which will pay you on per hour basis. This adds another decision of whether you want to stop and waste precious time which will help a lot in building your vehicle or you can save some time but risk running a slower vehicle. You can outfit your vehicle with all kinds of things like sails, propellers, generators and what not. Almost everything has to be manually started and shut off after sometime if not operated upon. This requires you to always stay on your feet and coupling this with the obstacles that fly around and collecting coins, the game never lets you breathe during the course of a stage. There is a story here too, which revolves around, as I said before, reaching home before your daughter’s birthday. During this course, you meet your sister, Dad and other characters, all of whom have their own backstories connected with you and the characters themselves are surprisngly fleshed out. The motivations are clear and that makes it easier to connect with the characters. There are a few bugs here and there and I experienced a couple crashes but I’ll give it a pass considering its early access nature. Overall though, the gameplay of Making it Home is fun, engaging and never lets up once it gets going. [h1]Visuals[/h1] This is one of the areas of Making it Home I found a bit average. Don’t get me wrong, it does not look bad and I do not believe all games have to be a visual masterpiece to be entertaining but Making it home can do with a wider color palette. I know that you’re supposed to be driving through a desert but the game looks pretty drab in every area. The animations can also use a bit of improvement and overall, visually, Making it Home is a little lacking. [h1]Sound[/h1] Unlike the visual design, the sound design of Making it Home is very good. The soundtrack while fairly basic is very harmonic in nature and gives you that relaxing vibe in every drive you undertake. There were two ways the developers could have chosen to handle the sound design, a thumping soundtrack which would’ve gotten on your nerves considering how hectic the levels are or this and I personally think that they made the right decision. [h1]Overall[/h1] Making it Home more than makes up for its lacking visuals with some engaging gameplay and a genuinely good attempt at a story with fleshed out characters. Considering this is still in early access, it is going to be very interesting to see where the developers take the game from here, but as it stands, Making it Home is still worth your money. This Review was brought to you by [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steadygiveaways]Steady Giveaways[/url] ''If you liked this review and you want to get in touch with us, mail to contact@dnbmedia.co to get your game reviewed or promoted''

Awesome game. Brings back the classic feel of Super Mario Bros for me. There's plenty of challenge in it for those looking for it. You start generating speed when out of the blue - BAM!!! carrot attack. Build a vehicle too long or too high you will have issues at the ends that you cannot see. Try and collect the money, you will forget to take care of the power needs. Overall the challenge of multitasking is the main enjoyment in this game, which is why I like to categories these games as panic management games. I have moved on to Act 2 so I can tell you there's a lot of innovative ways you can create thrust/power. So if you like small mini-games with a lot of challenges you might just enjoy this one too.

Neat little game with innovative ideas and design-choices. A little bit rough around the edges, well worth a try if you’re interested. See the suggestion portion for some more info regarding aspects that are potentially flawed. [b]Pros[/b] • Innovative gameplay. • Unexpectedly good music every now and then, it just goes off and is great. • The core mechanics are very well made and feels great to play around with. Roguelite mechanics where you can permanently unlock parts, always fun with a bit of roguelite. [b]Cons[/b] • The story and surrounding aspects are quite rough around the edges. • The pacing of the music is a bit too varied, doesn’t set the mood properly. For example, when racing a bunny, the music was slow and then all of a sudden it went into a chant that gave an impression of a tense moment and increase of pace, then it just died out and left a bit lacklustre moment; The music built up to nothing. [b]Suggestions[/b] 1. Have tutorial windows on the left side instead of the right side. Currently the tutorial windows are obstructing coin pickups which can potentially cause the player to skip the tutorial windows to get a better look at the coins. They cause more harm than help as they stress new players and confuse. 2. The “cinematics” which are conversations should have a way to hop through quicker, currently you can only skip the entirety of the cinematic which might not be to one’s wish. This might just have been the first intro-cinematic though, the rest of the dialogues can be quickly read through. 3. Having the controller bindings visible in blueprint-phase gives the impression that one is able to construct the vehicle with it, but it appears multiple functionalities aren’t available through the use of controller which forces one to use keyboard and mouse. This presents the following questions: Why should I play with controller when I am forced to use KB&M either way? The partial controller support is accurate, but it feels a bit odd that *some* of the construction aspects are supported and some aren’t. 4. The game speaks of a schedule, the player is not shown this in a well thought out way. Maybe display a more visual timetable to give the player a better view of how one can strategize the use of time. For a game that encourages speed and optimal time-use, I didn't see any obvious way to get a good feel for how much time I had to work with. The game said "You're X time ahead/behind", but this was very abstract as I didn't really know how much I had to work with in the whole. How much is two hours behind relative to how many hours in total? How long time left? 5. Recharge indicator for objects. It’s difficult to plan on how to move without indicators on parts. Nothing big, maybe just a small meter on the object that progressively fill depending on recharge. This is also something the player themself plans, so it might be a design-choice to exclude this as it encourages planning in a different way. If this is the case, maybe give the player some more info regarding the parts? Recharge time in seconds when in blueprint phase or maybe the possibility to run around in blueprint phase and activate the parts to see their recharge time and effect. Might be in the game already but with me missing it.

I abandoned my family so I could build an overcomplicated behemoth powered by the sun that moved slower than a piece of wood attached to 4 sails. 10/10, reminded me of my childhood.

Very nice little game, the car building mechanics have a lot of variety and replay value. There's a rewarding gameplay loop as you'll definitely make some mistakes when building your panels, but it's quick to try another strategy and get back into it.

Is it a platformer? Is it a sandbox? Is it an optimisation puzzle? Yes! and it keeps growing and developing in ways I couldn't have predicted. Build your vessel, mario all over it to get coins, use coins to make a grander vessel, and all against the clock. Depending on your style, maybe the vehicle operates itself, maybe it's 100m tall, maybe it's 100m long, maybe you can use your melee 20XX skillz to go even faster than automation allows?

Honestly, was just unenjoyable