Home Free, the first Kickstarter project from Kevin Cancienne, is off to an amazing start. The campaign has only just launched and has already earned more than half of its $50,000 funding goal. Why? Because people love dogs, that’s why, and Home Free has them in spades. Here’s what you need to know.
Pitched as an open-world action RPG, Home Free has players navigating through a procedurally-generated city as a lost dog. Like Minecraft, each individual will have their own unique world to explore. Gameplay entails (heh) scavenging for food and searching for shelter, encountering humans and other animals along the way. The narrative is sold as a player-driven experience, with emergent moments and opportunities presenting themselves over the course of one’s travels.
The long-term goal is to get familiar with your city – learn where to go and where to avoid. One neighborhood might feature plenty of edible litter, for example, where as another might be inhabited by a hostile pack. It’s all up to the player to explore, learn, and adapt as one of twelve playable breeds.
The pitch video on the project’s Kickstarter page reveals a colorful, polygonal art style reminiscent of Grow Home. It’s also a pretty decent demonstration of the sort of activities players can expect to get up to should the game reach its target. It does look a little janky in places, but there should be plenty of time to tune these things up between now and its projected release window in Fall 2016.
I think Home Free has some decent potential, though I worry that the lack of straight objectives might not lend the game very well to play sessions longer than twenty minutes. With the right execution, though, it could definitely work, and the Kickstarter community clearly has faith in the project. It’s no underdog, that’s for sure.
If you’d like to support Home Free, head to the project’s Kickstarter page. Make sure to follow Mark Cancienne on Twitter for updates, and keep an eye on Cliqist for future coverage.
Track the progress of the Home Free Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.
