Virtual Journal #14: Go Home Dizzy
Tag: Virtual Journal »
Summary
Go Home Dizzy is a cute little mobile game that will casually spin on my phone for eternity.
Content
I feel like I’ve always been late by a few generations when it comes to trying out mobile games. For a long while, I was stuck with playing the usual Snake game on the Nokia 1100, then after switching phones, it just turned into… a slightly better 3D Snake.
Mentioning Go Home Dizzy as the best mobile game has somewhat become of an inside joke in the family, as it’s one of the mobile games that I’ve only ever played. It accompanied me as I killed time during long travels, or when waiting by the stairs between college classes.
Even after years of experiencing a bunch of new games on the phone, its easy-to-understand mechanics and simple visual charm still holds a special place in my heart.
The game greets you with a splash screen illustration that’s drawn in a realistic, high-resolution style—which somehow fits the game, the more you look at it—along with a very catchy beatboxing track that’ll be stuck in your head for days.
You guide your infinitely-spinning little character through the grassy plains, dashing towards enemies and avoiding their dangerous weapons and projectiles to get home safely.
Along the way, you can upgrade things like your weapon’s length, the number of items you can hold, or your life points, at the cost of your enemies’ bones.
As you can’t control your character’s spinning motion, tricky situations can sometimes appear. Having to frantically tap to make your character dash repeatedly to the screen’s edge was always a fun thrill.
It took me a few runs to realize that you can hold your input to dash farther, which can change how you play quite a bit.
One small thing that I wish the game had was a pause button during a run. The only way to pause the game was by entering an upgrade screen when you encounter them, which meant that a lot of my runs had to be cancelled whenever I had to suddenly do something in real life.
I suppose it’s fine either way though, as a run doesn’t really take too long.
Certain conditions would unlock character heads and weapons, like reaching certain scores, clearing runs, or simply looking for them. Some of the designs were cute!
After unlocking them all, I kind of wanted a way to make my own custom heads to play with, haha.
There are also quests that you can complete for bragging rights, as well as a hard mode which introduces new enemies, if I remember correctly.
The game’s difficulty was perfect for me: It wasn’t too hard, but careless moves at the beginning can still make you lose.
It feels good when you can clear hard mode in one try once you remember the enemy patterns, even when you haven’t played for months.
I’ve barely touched games that are strictly mobile-only since the COVID pandemic started, but I still do a run from time to time.
I don’t think Go Home Dizzy is available on the usual app stores now, probably due to the cost and/or many policy changes throughout the years, but I hope it comes back in some form someday.
Luckily, I still have it in my phone, so I can keep spinning around at home (without the “being dizzy” part).