In an attempt to get some of the dust off of my writing abilities, I wanted to do a quick post on a little game I played recently, and very much enjoyed, called Late Homework! A small indie horror game but one that is very much worth your time.

Jumping right into things, Late Homework is a short horror game with some very clear inspirations from the classics! The game even starts with the warning you’d always see when booting up any horror game from the PS1/2 era. After gushing about how they nailed the menu sound effects that sound like they are right out of Silent Hill, you can start the game. You play as Haneko, a cute cat girl heading to school after hours to get an assignment she forgot that needs to be completed. We’re introduced to her and the set up in general as she rides the bus to school and texts her Mom who is really worried about her as of late, saying how she’s been rather detached and unfocused lately. Once you arrive at school, you quickly find out the front door is understandably locked and you need to find a way in. This is where the game’s tutorial starts!

This intro exists to help you get familiar with the controls and mechanics you’ll be using to get through the game. This is also where we find out that the game has fixed camera angles and tank controls, my beloved! So yeah, if it wasn’t clear before it should be very clear now that Late Homework is emulating that old school survival horror feel, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially since they nailed it. I’ve talked before about how it can sometimes be hard to nail that feel with fixed camera angles and tank controls. It’s a lot harder than you’d think to capture that feel you get from Silent Hill and Resident Evil. But Late Homework absolutely does just that! The controls feel tight and responsive, even when the game shifts to an over the shoulder angle which is does pretty sparingly but still. You can also hold a button to give yourself a first person view, something I felt would kind of break the game feel but actually works out pretty well while keeping things scary!

Back to the actual game play though, we need to find a way inside the school. Like I said, this intro mainly exists to teach us the basics while still giving us some good scares! Going around the school, we learn about picking up items and keys. This is important to note since you don’t have a traditional inventory system. Instead, you can carry one item and one key at a time. While this might sound kind of cumbersome, I never ran into a point where I found a key while still holding another key. The game is structured in a way that really helps avoid that problem! Speaking of problems, getting into the school! We obviously need a key but getting that key is a bit of a trip. At the very start, there’s a key stuck in a vending machine, so getting a coin makes the most sense. How we get that coin does take a bit though! But again, this is more about teaching us the basics than making much sense overall. Throughout this early quest we’re introduced to some story bits too. Namely that the school has a massive sink hole problem and that there is a missing girl. A missing girl that was described acting very similarly to Haneko… Not only that, we’re given very brief glimpses at something that might be lurking around the school! Despite all of these major red flags, Haneko continues and eventually finds herself in the school. And is instantly locked in due to the school’s security!

This is where the game properly starts. We’re given a number count in the corner of the screen, letting us know how many assignments we need to get, and we’re off after unlocking one last door and picking up the map!

So that’s the basic set up and premise of the game. Haneko has to collect all ten assignment pages while avoiding the monster lurking the school’s halls and open the front gate. Simple enough! Which is how it’s designed to be. As I’ve been saying, Late Homework is a short and simple game, but still a well made and fun game too! It really is just about getting those ten pages and leaving, there’s only one floor of the school to explore as well with a handful of rooms, a lot of which have locked doors. Of course it’s not as simple as running to each page, some require a bit of puzzle solving to get to and there is still that monster lurking the halls.

The puzzles in particular is where I feel Late Homework truly shines. While there are obviously only a few, the ones that are there are really well made! If I had to pick a favorite there is this one involving a locked box and a video with a cypher. I’m not going to go into great detail and spoil it, but the way all three pieces of the puzzle interact is super well done! It’s not overly obvious what needs to be done and how each piece is connected, but it’s also nowhere near convoluted enough to get frustrating. It’s clear to me the developer of this game, sodaraptor, really understands puzzles! One of the most frustrating things about solving puzzles to me is when I’m left wondering if I’m missing something, like a piece of information, that is required to figure out a puzzle. I never ran into that problem in Late Homework! This made every puzzle solving experience very fun and kind of cozy in a weird way despite the context of it all. It also helps that I never had to worry about the monster killing me during these puzzle solving moments. Which I guess might make the game less scary, but I’ve always hated when horror games have enemies in puzzle solving areas.

Speaking of the monster! When I said they roam the halls, or hall more accurately, I meant it. That’s the only place you are at risk of being attacked. Due to all the sink holes randomly popping up, making the school unstable at best, the second floor is completely off limits. The whole first floor is a circle with there being a center court yard area and rooms around it. In this circle, the monster is constantly stalking. Even when you aren’t in the hallway, it’s moving! This makes moving around from room to room very dangerous, especially since the monster kills you instantly if it touches you. Thankfully, you are able to tell where the monster is based on the noises it makes and that static on your screen. So it’s at least easy enough to know when it’s decently safe to leave a room if there isn’t any static when you stand near the door to the hallway. And honestly, at first the monster isn’t too hard to avoid! As long as you’re careful when leaving a room and use that first person perspective to look down the hallways, you can avoid it easily enough. This changes however, when you get half the pages you need and the school starts falling apart! The hallway becomes far more narrow now and you don’t have access to the stairway doors that would magically teleport you to the other side of the school. Not only that, it feels like the monster notices you far more easily during all this. This section is where all my deaths stem from. Now normally deaths like these wouldn’t be a problem in a horror game. They would be set backs you’d want to avoid but going back to a checkpoint or save point wouldn’t be that big of a deal. That’s not the case here though! You see, Late Homework only gives you three lives. And while I’m not the biggest fan of this, it’s also not as bad as it sounds.

Like I’ve been saying, Late Homework is a short, small game. Not including the tutorial area, my first playthrough was only around an hour long, and that includes my deaths and the time it took to figure out the game’s puzzles. The game is meant to be played in a single sitting and doesn’t even have a save system. Meaning you truly do need to finish it in one go! Again, I don’t think this is too big of a deal in the long run though. I’d obviously have a bigger problem with all this if the game wasn’t so short but since it is designed to be this way, it works! That being said, I’m still not a big fan of the three lives system. While it wouldn’t be too hard to get back to where you were on a run, especially since you can skip the tutorial section entirely, it adds tension that isn’t the fun kind. I feel like saving the lives system for the game’s hard mode would have been better overall! But that’s a very small gripe in an overall great game.

And that’s exactly what Late Homework is! A great game. It’s short but still really well made. If you enjoy some classic survival horror puzzle solving, a pretty great story, and the general vibes of Silent Hill, I highly recommend giving it a go! There are a few minor bugs and glitches here and there, especially with the camera, but nothing that really hampered my experience. On Steam the game is only $6 at full price, an incredibly fair price in my opinion for this type of game. I’m also really hoping we get more games like this from the developer! They clearly understand that classic survival horror feel so getting a fully fledged survival horror game from them would be a dream come true!

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Interested in checking out Late Homework? Enjoy any other small indie games? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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