Fellow Manhattan island dwellers Goodnight Games brings us a new iOS and Android title called Never Go Home. What starts as a deceptively simple title quickly sets itself up as something much more complex and, at times, hair pulling. Though in a good way.
You start Never Go Home on a spaceship hurtling through the endless, freezing abyss. Your ship is in disrepair and you can, drum roll, Never Go Home. You’re stuck landing on planets, collecting gems, shooting down baddies with God beams and rescuing crew members all with a tap and hold of the touch screen. After destroying each planet you land on (no one said you were a nice explorer) you’re sent back to your ship with your new gems and crew to endlessly wander space once more. You can also find additional upgrades for your ship and crew as well.
However that’s not all there is to gameplay, good thing as well because then this title might get old fast. Turns out space is not only wrought with terror, but full of peril. If you remember the hardships of Oregon Trail it’s a lot like that. And by the hardships I mean the deaths. Your space crew is going to die. A lot. Which is fine because they’re all pretty expendable. As you’ll sail through the cosmos your game will constantly update you on their condition. That condition is bad, usually bad. From food poisoning to failing life support, black holes to pesky ass asteroids, the lesson in Never Go Home is life is short and precious, and also don’t get too attached to your crew.
There are about three different states of play. When you land on a planet it’s sort of like a tower defense title, as your selected crew member stands in one spot and lasers charging enemies to death. The space exploration is a lot like any other space explorer, dragging your ship through the galaxy and finding what you can in a procedurally generated world. Finally there’s traveling between wormholes, which asks for the avoidance of flying objects, this one is a lot closer to the classic side scrolling shooter.
Score building is what it’s all about, and the game keeps track of your highest score all around. As far as I can tell there’s no “win” state, just pushing the game as much as possible until you die. There is an overall score that keeps track of upgrades, bosses killed, galaxies explored and so forth, so really the challenge it asks of you is to just test yourself. Often you’ll just find yourself in a race against the clock, it will tell you some aspect of your ship is failing and you will try and rush to the next planet to gather as many supplies as possible with what little health your crew members have left. The game even asks you “ready to die?” on each play-through, which is pretty descriptive of what you’ll be doing.
The graphics are pretty simple, and the music is just the same couple of haunting space tracks looped over and over again. While none of it stands out it all works for what the game is trying to accomplish. It also means the app’s file size remains low, which is a great thing for this title.
Ultimately however Never Go Home is more addictive than anything else. If it were on console or computer I might not be as enthused by the relatively simple overview and immediate states of death this game offers, however since this is a title I can see myself going back to on my phone repeatedly whenever I’m say, on a train or a car ride or in line for a concert, it fits its platform exactly. I also have to admit I’ve never seen anything like this, which could be due to my under exposure to iOS games but it’s still nice to see something outside the realm of temple runners and microtransaction laden town builders.
With its score tracking and “jump in and play” game structure It’s really got the strokes of other iOS apps that have stayed on my phone for a good long while, and I don’t imagine Never Go Home is going away any time soon. The game has an asking price of 99 cents, which feels exactly right. If you like the pleasure of arcade score chasing with the sadism of Oregon Trail, this one is likely a match for you.
