Stay Home

Stay Home is a short game about a girl and her dog. It's a short and quite linear story with four endings (three normal and one secret) all set inside a single house.

The game? You have a list of items that you have to find exploring the six (well seven, if you consider the secret and originally forbidden room of the secret ending) rooms of the house.
We play as June, a girl that lives alone with her dog Peanut, and while the world outside is suffering the effects of some kind of virus, they are celebrating Peanut's birthday. How goes the day and what will be the endings depends uniquely by the choices and interactions chosen by the player during some events.
Basically the game consists in interacting with the surroundings until you collect all the items, reading the descriptions and learning about the situation that June is living. Oh and interacting with Peanut, let's not forget our little hero that is the star of the game!




What else? Oh yes, I spoke earlier about the secret ending: it's not too hard to unlock but you have to do some precise actions and it's well worth of it since not only it explains a lot about the setting, but it also gives access to the secret developers' room where you can find... a lot. No really, it's well worth playing the game more than once to discover that location and learn a lot about the story.
Oh yeah! The story... as usual I won't spoil the backstory since I already told enough, but please note that this is a deeply emotional story, sad and... well depending from the ending you will get it will be more less depressing. In any case it a well written short tragic story. With cuteness added on top!

Did I say "cuteness"? Well, the most distinct feature of this game are probably the nice custom graphics that are really cute, and what stands out is that the enviroments and protagonist have a distinct turquoise color that dominates everywhere and gives a particular aspect to the game.



Conclusion
There's not much else I cold say about this little game. I found no typos, bugs or errors, except for a single interaction that leaves the portrait on the screen until you interact with something else (happens when looking for the hidden ending, by the way, and it is not a game breaking issue at all!). For the rest it's a pretty good game, I especially liked the cestom graphics and menu
I'd normally give a 3 for this kind of simple and short game itself but the beautiful custom graphics and illustrations makes me give a 3.5 out of 5. A tiny emotional game made with love.