What's better than beautiful polygon dog adventure Home Free meeting its Kickstarter goal? The fact that it's now coming to PS4. Fully funded in just five days - and with a soundtrack so bouncy that I'm listening to the trailer right now - Home Free is the story of a lost dog finding a way to survive in a procedurally generated city.
"It currently seems like we’re living in the golden age of video game dogs: the dog in COD: Ghosts, DD in MGS5, and Dogmeat in Fallout 4," explains developer Kevin Cancienne on the PlayStation Blog. "And there have been a few games, over the years, where you get to play as a dog: Cult favourite A Dog’s Life on PS2, of course. You can even briefly control Chop in GTA V. And Okami has a special place in my heart (OK, technically Amaterasu isn’t a dog, she’s a mythological wolf sun goddess. But still)."
Cancienne has been working on Home Free for two years and it combines a procedural city engine and a local multiplayer game he'd been working on called Dog Park. "I was interested in making a game where you’re basically just a dog, seeing the world from a dog’s perspective," he says. "A game where you can run, jump, wrestle, tackle, and sniff butts. That’s why I started by creating Dog Park for NYU’s No Quarter Show in 2014. I wanted to create a game about the sheer joy and physicality of dog play. "
"But ultimately, I had something bigger in mind. The idea of being a dog in an open world city game seemed like something I had to pursue. A dog can’t steal a car or shoot a gun, but has to use its instincts to survive in an environment that wasn’t built with canines in mind." Inspired by the cityscapes of Jet Set Radio and even Katamari Damacy, Cancienne wants us to get truly lost in each world but eventually find a way home.
With a release date marked for November 2016 now its met its Kickstarter goal, Home Free already looks ridiculously exciting. Canine out of ten? Right? Right...
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