Hermit Home Designer

Hikikomori-themed designing game

Created by an indie developer named Ryan Nein, Hermit Home Designer or also known as Yamasen-Chan's Hermit Home Designer is a point-and-click game. Here, you will aid Yamasen-Chan—a hikikomori type of person who lives in isolation and never leaves home—in designing her home stylishly at the same time patterned with her comfort zone. You will be given 6 unique homes to design all throughout the game and there are over a hundred items to embellish Yamasen-Chan's home with.

Gets odd as you proceed

This game presents a complete visual novel narrative to you that starts off as normal as you select objects and place them around her apartment. You will be able to put it to your desired position but afterward, she will give some remarks on it and you have to follow it, of course. The more you get further into the game, the more her house choices will be weirder and more deranged for you to accommodate.

The bizarre atmosphere will totally flip the mood and the unsettling feels will start to kick in for some. Although, the developer emphasized that it contains no horror game element. The only thing that gets disturbing is Yamasen's house choices as she seeks more secluded and isolated accommodations. Frankly, the main goal in this Japanese hermit simulator is to achieve true isolation.

This visual novel game does an excellent job at unraveling the story through each brand-new home that Yamasen-Chan moves into. The flavor text of the various objects you'll use to furnish the houses are impressively done. The game plot is probably unusual but, it is one of the major reasons why it is fun to sit through and play. Unfortunately, though, you can't rotate items here which can sort of cause you frustrations.

Strange but highly-enjoyable

Regardless of its gameplay and plot getting weird as you go further into the game, Hermit Home Designer is still a visual novel adventure that is fun to play. You will be interested and fully immersed with Yamasen-Chan's character and how social anxiety basically consumed her that she decided to live inside her own mind instead of actually living in the real world. Although, there's some item rotate option lacking, this is still highly recommended to play.