Away From Home

“The game is not listed as early access or alpha/beta despite having no more than 2 hours worth of content, and in the almost 7 hours I've played I got softlocked each time trying to get access to side battles. If you deviate from where the story goes too early, you'll be unable to experience most of the current content in the game.”

“The game ends pretty abruptly, presumably because the story is not complete yet.”

“The game itself offers practically no clarity beyond its store page and a vague mention of being a 'prequel' to a larger story at the end of its description.”

“I do like the rhythm gameplay, but the notes come at you so fast that it is difficult to master any boss.”

“Core combat mechanics aren’t clearly explained—I missed a single block early on and was stun-locked from full health to zero, unable to respond.”

“I did end up being able to refund after the recent patch, might buy again later down the line but just wanna put out there that this game oozes passion and if it weren't for the performance issues and a bunch of QoL stuff (being able to skip dialogue after death, being able to fast forward through portions of dialogue without it skipping entire sections, mechanics that aren't explained or implemented in a cohesive way; like how failing to block an attack gives you a brief stun that may or may not have been patched out, & the pacing of the fights makes it so that it's very hard to recover and figure out what's happening before boom, you're dead), I would've really enjoyed this.”

“Text box infinitely looping and unable to progress forward, one of the duck people to the right of the teapot house in the first major area crashes the game, and serious performance issues despite exceeding graphics and RAM requirements.”

“As of this review, there are many bugs, graphical glitches, areas you can get stuck in, hard crashes, mechanics that don't work, objects that cannot be interacted with, buildings that cannot be entered and other ways to soft lock oneself.”

“Serious performance issues despite exceeding graphics and RAM requirements, along with graphical glitches and frequent crashes.”

“Now for the bad - this game is so buggy, it's borderline unplayable.”

“But as for me, I wish this had been thoroughly bug tested before release, or at least released in early access with a disclaimer that it was currently a buggy mess and needed help playtesting.”

“As of this review, there are many bugs, graphical glitches, areas you can get stuck in, hard crashes, mechanics that don't work, objects that cannot be interacted with, buildings that cannot be entered and other ways to soft lock oneself.”

“Performance is quite poor on Steam Deck for a pixel art game.”

“Text box infinitely looping and unable to progress forward; one of the duck people to the right of the teapot house in the first major area crashes the game, and serious performance issues despite exceeding graphics and RAM requirements.”

“I did end up being able to refund after the recent patch. This game oozes passion but has significant performance issues alongside quality of life problems, such as inability to skip or fast-forward dialogue properly, unclear mechanics, and problematic fight pacing that makes recovery difficult.”

“Being an RPG, grinding is possible, but given the only option is hunting down mushrooms, I don't think most people will find that engaging if they're having trouble with a difficult song and just want to pass it.”