No Place Like Home

2024-10-23

While waiting for Farm Together 2 to leave early access, I embarked on the Great Farming Game Binge of 2024 and got this trash-picking-upping game believing it was a farming game. It's not really a farming game. It's a post-apocalyptic kinda-farming but mostly clean up the pollution game. The citizens of Earth abandoned our beloved planet for Mars, and those who remain are struggling with the trash they left behind.

The trash picking uping is generally satisfying, as is clearing out the areas. People compare it to Powerwash Simulator, which I actually didn't like. I like this a lot better because cleaning up the trash (by drilling down trash heaps and vacuuming up loose trash) does something. It opens up areas, reveals chests, uncovers passages, and so on. After you clear away trash, you can build structures and plant trees and crops almost anywhere. There are also robots, which you stun with water and tear apart with your drill.

Recipes must be purchased before things can be crafted, so you need to explore to find seeds so you can grow vegetables for upgrades. The game gives you craptons of seeds, so there's always plenty to sow about. You rescue animals and befriend them to convince them to live in the pens you've built for them. Animals can be named and given hats. If you put balloons on a pig, it floats away.

The farming is basic. You put seeds in turned plots and water them until they sprout. There are no seasonal restrictions or anything like that. You water crops with a big fire hose thing which is pretty satisfying.

There are some good QOL features. One thing I particularly enjoy is there is no need to sleep, and if you die you simply respawn at home. This adds to the overall chill vibe of the game, where you simply take your time and do whatever you feel like doing. The game has fast travel, which is unlocked through exploration.

There is a fair bit of jank, a constant reminder this is a thoroughly indie endeavor, but I think the QOL truly offsets these and manages expectations. This just a chill, quirky game with a ton of achievements that lets you decide how you want to spend your time.

Unfortunately, since the progression and crafting is somewhat structured, it sometimes feels like "a thing to do" rather than a fun game to get lost in, and the garbage vacuuming aspect can compound that. The dialogue and story is also boring IMO. But gradually cleaning up the world is satisfying and a good way to vibe.

2026-04-18

I decided to fire No Place Like Home up and see where we're at. It took me a few minutes to reorient because my farm is absolute chaos, this game is truly inventory management hell. I scampered about, cleaning, befriending animals, and experiencing the jank. IIRC I stopped playing before because I got tired of cleaning, but right now, cleaning is the point, so it's working out for me.

This game has a known save issue bug that I stumbled across. The problem is the game doesn't correctly overwrite the manual save slot. Fortunately, the game keeps multiple autosaves and you can convert one of those.

Users/User/AppData/LocalLow/Awaken Realms/NPLH

Find the autosave backup (e.g. autosaveslot1.nplhsavebackup363) that reflects your most recent save and rename it to one of your main slot saves (e.g. slot_1.nplhsave).

2026-04-19

We continue. As you can see, my farm was a hot mess. I tidied up by removing all the extra animal pens. This puts the assigned animals in limbo. After you place the pen elsewhere, you have to befriend all the animals again. Realistically, you only need one pen of each type at your farm, and it's best to construct extra pens at convenient waypoints.

I forgot you can plant fruit trees just about everywhere, so I've been scattering them about. I spent some time going around in circles for a few quests I couldn't remember how to handle but I think I've got it now.

2026-04-21

Don't mind me just putting sombreros on my cows.

The desert area is fun because the quests let you recreate oasis, lakes, and greenery, which is the whole dang point of this here game. I got stuck in a drainage canal and ended up falling out of the level, so there was a bit more jankiness here wrt the map design, but it was a good time and you can befriend fennics.

One big advantage of this game is you can set up camp and build stuff anywhere there's level ground, which is something I really should have been doing from the beginning, so I set up a mini camp at the entrance of the desert to grow area crops and I'll set up a goat pen out there as well. You can actually create WAY more resources than you'll ever actually need from the billions of seeds you loot and the abundance of machines you can create, so--for example--having 1 or 2 bee hives in an area where you can recruit pigs is more convenient than returning to the farm, even if you can fast-travel. At best, any given crop is used to befriend a handful of animals and maaaaybe purchase an upgrade or craft an item, and after that there's not much practical use unless you're angling for certain achievements.

What I'm saying is you can declutter your farm with impunity. It will be fine.

I was warned the storyline for this game is dumb and I won't lie, the dialogue is tedious and boring as shit, so I tend to skip through all that and consult my quest ledger to figure out the specifics of what I need to do to advance the game. I have a lot of spare quest items lying around because the game provides more than you need, presumably so you don't have to hoover up every scrap of trash to complete your objective since quest items are usually hidden in piles of junk. So I've got a bunch of quest items I probably don't need but this game is so janky I don't want to trash anything just in case I need it later and end up breaking the game. I haven't actually tried to trash quest items but I'm assuming it's possible, considering everything else. IMO the best way to handle this sort of thing is to have quest items be "collected" in a separate inventory that cannot be manipulated, so they don't clutter up the main inventory and can't be accidentally removed.

2026-04-22

My time with No Place Like Home is winding down, but I'm continue to admire the jank. Take this tea set. Why is it so large? No one will ever know.

I'm to a point in the game where I have some crazy fetch quest I have to do to open the next area and it appears to require backtracking, so my interest waned. In retrospect, I think a game like this shouldn't have gated areas. Quests should be optional ways to further clean up the environment and make spaces green again. I mean, let's be real. EVERYTHING in this game should be optional.

I honestly didn't expect to come back to this one 1.5 years later so maybe I'll pick it up again sometime. But if I wanna just clean for a bit, I'll probably fire up Fresh Start instead. The cleaning and "glow up" nature mechanics in that game are more satisfying.