Home Safety Hotline Review (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, & PC)

Home Safety Hotline has been out in the wild for a while now, but only for PC owners. Now, console gamers can have a taste of the analog horror game that brings to mind fascinating folklore and retro humor. At first glance, it may seem like a game that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Playing the role of a hotline operator is, after all, not the most enticing way to lure fans of simulators. Still, there is something special here, which every gamer ought to give a fair chance. We’ve combed through all you can expect in the game and summed it up for you in our Home Safety Hotline review below.

Get Cracking

Home Safety Hotline’s premise kicks off pretty easily. You’re a rookie hotline operator who works for the titular Home Safety Hotline service provider. Your job is to receive calls from all sorts of folk who are experiencing some sort of problem at their home. After listening to their description of the issue, you’ll flip through the company’s database and look for the solution. Based on how accurate your solution is, you’ll have made your supervisor happy and have the pleasure of retaining your job. Failure to provide an accurate solution, and well, you’ll have to bear the disappointment of callers and your supervisor, and at a certain point, you may even find yourself out of a job.

It’s a very straightforward gameplay loop that gradually picks up pace. At the start, you’ll receive calls that describe everyday problems like termites or mold. The database will only have a few entries. So, scrolling through the documents to find the correct solution is easy enough. It can be a little awkward scrolling using a controller, as the original game first launched on PC platforms. In fact, the screen uses a mid-90s Windows PC, complete with frames that induce nostalgia and grainy images and videos. You can tell that a lot of the controls will probably work better with a mouse and keyboard, thanks to lots of actionable buttons. 

Still, all you have to do once you receive a call is scroll through the documents. You’ll go over them one by one, reading through the descriptions of all the different problems that may come up at home. Once you arrive at a solution, you’ll click on it, after which the database will respond with a “submitted successfully” notification.

Stand By

Every day brings its own problems. You’ll respond to callers’ needs, hoping that the solution you provide is the correct one because you don’t get feedback on your progress right away. Only at the end of the day will your supervisor call you, not particularly happy with your accuracy score for the day. Sometimes, you may have angry callers reach out to you who haven’t been pleased with your service. At times, it’s difficult to know where exactly you went wrong. You could remember the angry callers and the prompt they gave you. But oftentimes, you’ll have responded to numerous queries enough to have difficulty pinning down the ones you might have gotten wrong. 

It’s in that aspect that the difficulty becomes a little inconsistent. At times, you’ll receive queries that are so easy that there’ll be no doubt in mind about the answer. However, others can have you scrolling through the database, hoping to find some sort of connection or keyword in the caller’s description. Some queries are simply too complex to figure out. On the one hand, it can be exciting to try and find the most accurate solutions. However, once your shift is over for the day, and angry callers and supervisors start to call you to berate you for failing to meet the accuracy requirement, it can become frustrating. 

Worse? Your accuracy can be so low that you have no choice but to repeat the level. Then you realize that the calls aren’t randomized. So, you have to listen to the same calls in the same order, hoping to identify the ones that you botched and figure out the correct solution for the consecutive run.

Cat Got Your Tongue

However, the inconsistency in the difficulty is soon reprieved by the shift from everyday household problems to the paranormal. Soon, you begin to receive calls that describe strange phenomena. Meanwhile, the database is populated with more fascinating folklore and horrific creatures. Scrolling through the paranormal stuff like Bed Teeth is exciting as you dive deeper into their folklore. As the callers continue placing vague issues, your job is to comb through all the fascinating analog horror to meet their needs. Thanks to some immersive voice acting, you really pay attention to the freaked-out calls coming in. Some callers will describe strange events that carry you through to the end of the roughly three-hour playthrough.

But once you reach the end and are still craving to comb through more supernatural lore, you can always jump into the Seasonal Worker DLC. It adds roughly 60 to 90 minutes of gameplay. Moreover, you can unlock extra bonuses, including five “computer version” tracks, an artbook containing higher resolutions of the creatures you encounter, and even details about the development of the game. Speaking of tracks, the audio is top-notch. The “hold” tune, particularly, is pretty intriguing compared to the usual monotonous tracks in real life. Meanwhile, the visuals are pretty nostalgic. You can tell the developing team placed a lot of focus on presentation, ensuring that they nailed the retro aesthetic perfectly. 

It All Started When…

Unfortunately, the stellar presentation may have led to the story taking a back seat. Throughout your playthrough, you receive calls about all sorts of problems, from the mundane everyday life stuff to the paranormal. However, there seems to be no connection to the calls that tie your playthrough with a bow. Independently, the calls are intriguing as you indulge in deductive reasoning to solve your callers’ problems. A dumpster was found knocked over in the middle of the night. Sounds like a raccoon. Hoards of trash were found outside the house, from scrap metal to used syringes. Sounds like the horde, an invisible and odorless supernatural entity that invades people’s homes and collects large quantities of household refuse. But what connects the two? For now, nothing. 

There is a lost opportunity to weave a captivating, overarching story. The developing team could gradually piece together the shift from the normal to the paranormal. Moreover, you’ll receive cryptic emails and videos in between shifts. And while they can be pretty engrossing, some comedic, they bear no connection to the story. Besides the lack of a connecting plot, it would be nice to have a search bar in the database. This can allow you to quickly look up information without having to scroll through every document. Perhaps you can search for a keyword that stood out to you and narrow down your response from there. While a search bar may make the puzzles easier, if implemented well, it could create a more seamless control system. That way, you waste no time rereading information you’ve already looked through.

Do Over

The calls themselves can be pretty funny, yes, even the ones that berate you for poor service. Different callers have outstanding personalities, some of which are memorable. Moreover, the calls add to the sense of dread looming in the background. They unravel tidbits of creepy and mysterious information. Some won’t even have questions for you, only aim to scare the crap out of you. At the very least, you do enjoy immersive and entertaining calls that pretty much make up the meat of the game. But on the flip side, once you’ve completed your playthrough, there isn’t much incentive to jump back in for multiple runs. One run-through is enough to get the most out of your time here. If anything, when you’re forced to replay a level due to failure to meet the accuracy requirement, it can become frustrating to redo the same calls over and over.

Verdict

So, should you play Home Safety Hotline? Absolutely. It’s a pretty quick game that only takes roughly three hours to beat. The playthrough time is perfect as you enjoy the more entertaining bits of the game before it starts to overstay its welcome. This isn’t just a simple call center simulator, but rather one that builds up from everyday mundane issues to solve into the more paranormal stuff that throws you off your game. The calls can be pretty cryptic, pushing you to really think through them before providing a solution to the caller. 

All the while, a creepy and mysterious vibe looms in the background that envelopes the entire experience in an overall captivating tale. However, there are still a few Is that need dotting. For one, the story is lacking with disconnected bits and pieces that could have been better if they had been more intertwined. Moreover, you may find a single playthrough is enough to get the most out of the game, with very little incentive to jump back in for multiple runs. Overall, though, Home Safety Hotline provides an entertaining romp with retro charm that every gamer can take out for a spin.