PAX East: Shumi Come Home Entangles You With Its Multifaceted Gameplay And Charming World

For players itching to enter a new world with its own confident protagonist and relaxing universe, SomeHumbleOnion’s Shumi Come Home is the answer to your quest. For being a ‘Breath of the Wild clone’ tossed at it effortlessly is unwarranted. Certainly, inspiration in some of its gameplay could be spruced from the Nintendo title with stamina for instance, but that comparison does not hold water. In fact, storytelling proves to say otherwise.

The playable mushroom protagonist identified as a “Shumi”, the last of a past mushroom species, happens to be quite the opposite compared to The Legend of Zelda’s Link. While not talking only when spoken to, the character’s tone might surprise you.

While I wouldn’t call our fungi hero a narcissistic in particular, it certainly does not care so much for what is happening. Simple interjections & responses of “what” and “why” does come off rude nonetheless. But it is a fresh of breath air. In fact, I encourage this and welcome it. Walking into Shumi Come Home, I did not expect much from the protagonist and more the gameplay. Howbeit, I found to enjoy that Shumi is being irritated on this new task.

But the gameplay does come hand-in-hand with the new world to explore. At least the demo given on the show floor, the light-hearted forest is a relaxing venue. The platform gameplay is what sold me alongside Shumi’s attitude. Alongside the remarks, the ability to explore was driven by the simple mechanic to mount on the wall and scale. When performing a jump on a wall, Shumi will hook on the surface and can jump off. Comboing this with the platforming exploration made the demo memorable.

Outside of the simplistic improvements on traversal, the remainder of the demo is as you would expect. Collecting green orbs to use as currency and purple to purchase unique items to dress Shumi. Most of the experience is interacting with the world.

You can wishlist Shumi Come Home by heading to the official Steam page here.

Shumi Come Home is listed to release sometime in 2023 for PC & Nintendo Switch.