Home Free - Scratch and Sniff

The latest update for Home Free which explores life as a dog lost in a randomly generated city.

Scratch & Sniff

True story: Our wonderful dog, Princess, is a genius and taught herself how refrigerators work. She's known the secret for a couple of years now. The result, predictably, is chaos. Because she's strong and persistent, she's also learned to defeat a succession of child-proof locks we've installed on the refrigerator door.

The lock that worked best was a home brew version of a device used to secure appliances in earthquakes: a long strap with industrial strength velcro that we have to remember to stick in place whenever we leave the house. That version has worked for about a year, but Princess's determination finally won out. With some combination of nose and paws, she's now able to wrench open even a strapped-shut refrigerator door and throw a little party for herself with whatever she finds inside.

Last week, she ate about two pounds of cheese, two whole eggs (including shell), and a about a cup of vegetarian chili. We found another unbroken egg in her bed.

I try to imagine how she must feel when she finally forces that door open, and I can't help but feel a swell of pride in my chest. She must feel psyched. It's hard to think of anything a dog loves more than food, and whenever she opens that door, she gets access to more than she could possibly eat.

For the past several weeks, I've turned my attention to the same part of the experience in Home Free: the details of finding and obtaining food. One of the game design challenges in Home Free is providing videogame reasons for a human to do stuff a real dog would do when lost in a city. Hunger is a great motivator, but I also want to do my best to pay tribute to the sheer excitement a dog can feel for a piece of food. What does opening the refrigerator feel like to Princess? It must feel like opening a treasure chest. What does videogame food feel like to a videogame dog? It must feel like sweet loot.

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In the video above, you can see demo of a new way to find food. Keeping an eye out for promising piles of garbage in gutters is a dependable way to find a bite or two as you make your way around the city.

Focusing on food, and trying to fulfill my design goal of hinting at how and why food is so exciting to a dog, has meant lots of painstaking work. Lots of small but important details fell into place recently: clear highlights for interact-table objects, control fine tuning, particle effects, and, most annoyingly, user interface.

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In the video above, our dog has found a lucky pile of food garbage at the end of an alley. This serves as a good illustration of the overall food discovery process. When you first encounter a piece of food, it's unidentified until you've sniffed it. Sniffing is passive: all you need to do is walk toward sniff-able stuff and you'll start the process. Once a piece of food has been identified, an info overlay tells you what it is and its important details: how big it is, how filling it is, how good it will taste, and more…

It was important to focus on the details in this sequence. It's something you'll be doing a lot in the game, and I think it's a key place to build the player's connection with their dog-avatar. Everything from the way smell particles flow into the dog's nose to the control-feel of switching focus between different food items deserve a surprising amount of attention.


Building out the food-universe of Home Free has been a lot of fun. There's some more interesting stuff lurking in that corner of the game, but I think I've given you enough to chew on for now…

More information.

Roleplaying as a dog:

To pee on it or not to pee on it.

So, just as much choice as an Elder Scrolls game!

(Don't shoot me I actually like the ES games but they have zero choices other than do the quest or don't).

Really???? Guess anyone can make a game nowadays.

Looks pretty sweet.

Originally Posted by Ripper
Looks pretty sweet.

Wait you're not the developer are you Ripper.

Strange premise indeed for a game, not my cuppa but I'm sure there are those that it will appeal to.

I think it's a great idea. Of course, I thought I Am Bread and Octodad were cute ideas, too. It seems to me the real trick is making one of these cute ideas into a game someone would like to play for more than 10 minutes. Making it an RPG, instead of a physics game, is a decent start for me personally.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Wait you're not the developer are you Ripper.

Nah, just messing about. I can't really see doggie trash-sniffing simulator finding its way into my backlog.

My daughter has been after this game since its first announcement. Nice to see there's some progress; from what I understand it's way behind schedule (it was meant to be finished at the end of 2016).

There's a nice video and description of what it's aiming for at its Kickstarter page. Essentially a "dog in the city" sim, but there's a lot you can do with that. It's a cute idea, not sure what the disparaging remarks are for. It's not trying to be the next big CRPG or whatever.

Originally Posted by Shagnak
My daughter has been after this game since its first announcement. Nice to see there's some progress; from what I understand it's way behind schedule (it was meant to be finished at the end of 2016).

There's a nice video and description of what it's aiming for at its Kickstarter page. Essentially a "dog in the city" sim, but there's a lot you can do with that. It's a cute idea, not sure what the disparaging remarks are for. It's not trying to be the next big CRPG or whatever.

So my remark was disparaging. Good to know.

Originally Posted by Ripper
Nah, just messing about. I can't really see doggie trash-sniffing simulator finding its way into my backlog.

Shucks it would of fit your avatar, and be perfect irony.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
So my remark was disparaging. Good to know.

Do you need a dictionary?

Relax I love to joke & pick on comments. Nothing new really. Anyway if a game called goat simulator and all those handheld pet games can sell their has to be a market.

Originally Posted by Ripper
I can't really see doggie trash-sniffing simulator finding its way into my backlog.

Heh, it sounds bad when you say it like that. Now I'm totally going to buy this game Day 1, no matter what it turns out to be.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Relax I love to joke & pick on comments. Nothing new really.

I have two sick kids home for the day and I'm slightly grumpy. Apologies.

Anyway if a game called goat simulator and all those handheld pet games can sell their has to be a market.

I know what you mean about the "handheld pet games" (my daughter has quite a few), but I wouldn't put goat simulator in the same pile. That game is nuts! (my boy loves it not surprisingly)

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
Now I'm totally going to buy this game Day 1, no matter what it turns out to be.

I'm with you on that (well, due to my daughter's demands of course)
BUTT SNIFFERS UNITED!

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
Heh, it sounds bad when you say it like that. Now I'm totally going to buy this game Day 1, no matter what it turns out to be.

In fairness, I've just now looked at the KS, and it seems like it could be a proper game. I was just reacting to the newsbit here, which has some rambling about a dog repeatedly raiding the fridge, and some videos (without sound) of sniffing different types of trash in the gutter.

Does she meet a good boy?

Thanks for the news about this game, Silver. Just like Shagnaks daughter I have been interested in this game from the beginning. I have been hoping for a good implementation and a financial success. I think it is great: playing a game from a non-human PoV, in a realistic way. Apart from the unique experience it is a good way to educate people about animal behaviour and about thoughtless but harmful aspects of human behaviour towards animals. They are not things.

Dogs love to EAT stinky carcasses and chew on dog shit and they love to roll in stinky carcasses. So the developers will need DOGS to play this game.

I don’t know about the chewing on dog shit, but apart from that, yes, I do hope the devs won’t make some Disney version of nature.

My dog is usually very civilized, but, if she discovers fox poo, she will immediately roll in it. There is nothing that will her discourage her from this practice. My only guess is that it is part of a tactical ploy to ambush the foxes at night. It requires an urgent and often inconvenient doggie bathtime.