A follow up to Neko Secret Room, Neko Secret Homecoming is more of the same only more confusing and creepier.
Ok, this is the story. Are you ready for this? For some reason, an anime cat girl heard a rumor about the location of a secret anime factory. So she takes a bus to a mysterious abandoned town because I guess busses have planned, recurring trips to abandon areas. When there, she finds lockpicks and is tasked with breaking into every home in this abandoned village. Each of these nearly empty houses contain a safe which must be cracked. Inside these safes are nothing more than non-interactive rubber ducks. However, a few of them will contain a digit to a four-character code to the anime factory door. Once you find and enter the code, this anime girl gains access to a house with a bathtub that serves no purpose, a dart board in which the AI bot will smoke you every time, a changing room that also serves no purpose, and a computer in which simple puzzles can be completed. In summary, nothing makes sense.
When the game begins, there is no objective or indication on what it is you are supposed to be doing. If it wasn’t for the pink-glowing floating lockpicks, I would not have known that I was supposed to collect and then use these things. Stranger yet, when you find a locked door, the game doesn’t even explain how the unlocking process works. The same goes for opening locked safes – you just twist the analog stick until it unlocks. There isn’t even a way to lose.
Looking beyond these odd gameplay choices, venturing through this mostly abandoned town is actually super creepy despite playing to upbeat poppy anime music. In fact, if this exact town was placed in a Silent Hill game and put to its creepy demonic soundtrack, there is no question it would fit perfectly for a horror game setting. The insides of each house might be totally empty except for one piece of furniture oddly placed in the middle of a room at an angle. Clearly something happened to this city, something not good. However, the creepiest part are the lone police officers just roaming the city. There are a couple non-verbal villagers sitting in the diner but these cops are just roaming the streets, watching an anime girl break into every house and being perfectly okay with it. Also, your playable anime girl is just that – a weirdly animated anime girl. But the few villagers and cops are composed of a jarring blocky design that looks like they were ripped directly from Drunken Fist 2: Zombie Hangover. Everything about the entire presentation is so odd and random, as if assets were taken from a bunch of different games and just placed here.
Once you manage to break into the anime factory, another anime woman is just waiting there for you, because, that isn’t creepy at all or anything. Then, the middle of the room has a bathtub in which you can take a bath, again, just right in the middle of the room. Not in an actual bathroom or anything. With this other anime girl just sitting right there.
Then, off to the side is a dart board in which you can play a game of 301 against one AI bot (no other dart games are available). However, the AI bot hits perfect 60 points almost every throw and will smoke you every time. This mini game doesn’t serve a purpose and was implemented into the final product as a bullet point on the back of the box.
The meat of the gameplay comes from clicking on the computer in the middle of the room literally right next to the bathtub. Segmented by several anime girls, there are a couple dozen puzzles to put together with the goal of forming a picture. Complete the picture to be rewarded by being able to see the picture. There are three puzzles per girl with the first one being fully clothed while the last two get more revealing, each growing in complexity. Thankfully, the game saves after each completed puzzle so you do not need to replay these tedious puzzles if you wanted to revisit these anime babes, a feature that was sorely missing the original release.
Unless you are a 14-year-old boy who managed to download this game without his parent’s permission, Neko Secret Homecoming is a baffling gaming experience. Nothing here makes any sense and the payoff of seeing a picture of non-animated topless anime girls do not justify the time and effort it takes. The extras, like darts and playing dress up, also are not fun and venturing through this creepily abandoned town is unsettling. Let’s be honest, this game will be downloaded for anime boobs but there is no denying the baffling and nonsensical gameplay surround it.
SCORE: 3.5/10
Not As Good As: visiting your favorite adult website
Better Than: waiting for the next Silent Hill game (breaking into this empty town is so creepy!)
Wait For It: the next Neko game with some actual polished gameplay
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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