Smushi Come Home

I have a soft spot for the games that arrive without fanfare and just quietly do everything right, and Smushi Come Home is exactly that kind of game. Developed solo under the name SomeHumbleOnion, it premiered at the Wholesome Direct and landed with an almost suspicious amount of goodwill attached - the kind that usually turns out to be hype and evaporates on contact. It did not evaporate. What you get is a small, unhurried 3D platformer-adventure about a mushroom snatched by a bird and deposited in an unfamiliar forest, who has to charm, help, and traverse their way back home. The premise is gentle to the point of being a bedtime story, and that is precisely its strength. The moment-to-moment movement is where SomeHumbleOnion spent their craft. Running, gliding with a leaf, climbing, and swimming all feel genuinely good - the kind of locomotion you use even when you have nowhere specific to be. There is a stamina system that echoes Breath of the Wild, and glider upgrades make air travel progressively smoother and more joyful. The forest is split into distinct biomes - cozy woods, tropical water areas, caves - and each one has its own personality and cast of creatures. A snail who studies local fungi, an insect merchant who sells trinkets, a lizard guarding a tunnel with a food demand: the NPCs are charming one-liners rather than deep characters, but they fit the register of the world perfectly. Quests are light - fetch this, find that, help me with a small puzzle - and the Mycology Journal that fills in real-world mushroom lore as you explore is a delightful touch that shows the care underneath the cuteness. The game also carries a Mycology Journal that logs real mushroom species as you discover them - a tiny educational sidebar that never feels like homework. Obstacle courses, gem collecting, and a handful of light platforming segments round out the activity loop. None of them will challenge a seasoned player, and that is a deliberate design choice rather than an oversight. There is no fall damage, no combat, no fail states of consequence. An accessibility toggle eases the timed obstacle course if needed. The controls are precise enough that the low stakes never tip into feeling pointless - the world rewards curiosity and careful exploration rather than skill expression. The honest caveat is runtime. A straightforward playthrough takes two to three hours; a completionist sweep of all 25 achievements lands around four to five. The brevity is real and worth weighing. Some Steam community voices note the short runtime feels stretched against the price at full cost, and that feedback is fair. What softens it is that the game knows its length and does not pad: every area is dense with secrets, fungal species to log, hat cosmetics to unlock, and collectible gems to mine using a tiny hex wrench repurposed as a pickaxe. Nothing outstays its welcome because nothing is allowed to linger too long. The soundtrack, ambient and warm, sits just beneath conscious attention - the sort of score you only notice once the game ends and the silence feels different. Smushi Come Home sits comfortably alongside A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game as a specific sub-genre of indie that prioritizes feeling over friction. If that lineage resonates with you, this belongs in your library without much debate. If you need fifty hours of content to feel satisfied, this is the wrong mushroom entirely. For everyone else - especially anyone burned out, burnt through, or just wanting a game that treats them gently - this is one of the more quietly nourishing things SomeHumbleOnion has made, and SomeHumbleOnion is, as far as I can tell, one person.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Smushi Come Home.