Return to Nebraska in Three Fourths Home
One man’s game about a single phone call
They say you should write about what you know, so Zach Sanford wrote Three Fourths Home, a deeply personal game set during an hour-long car ride, which explores family, adulthood, nostalgia and loss. “Development started after some unfortunate events forced a move from Minneapolis to Nebraska,” says Sanford. “In the process of this upheaval, I had virtually all of my game development tools and work stolen (laptop, hard drives, notebooks etc), so working on Three Fourths Home meant that I had to start afresh.” A little like his protagonist, Kelly.
Holding the gamepad’s right trigger advances her car, releasing it stops the engine. You can idly click the headlights and wipers on and off, and tune into a tinny tape deck. While driving, Kelly holds an extended conversation with her mum, dad and younger brother on the phone.
When your mum says, for instance, “You got your father to leave the house? Color me surprised,” you can choose to say either, “It took some convincing,” or “He insisted.” It doesn’t result in multiple endings—this isn’t that kind of game—but it does create agency. Choose the former and you’re essentially painting the dad as a hermit; pick the latter and this is a dad who’s undergone a sudden change of character.
For Sanford, there was something unsettling about moving back home after a few years away. “How everything seemed like it was the same on the surface but, when you start to dig down, you realize that the fundamental components of your family’s relationships have irrevocably changed. At the same time, your own role in the family, and in the world, has changed. You are no longer someone that is really deemed worthy of being taken care of.”
The setting of Three Fourths Home is just as important as the sentiments invoked. Flat, monochrome Nebraska is a striking, almost hypnotic location, with its colorless cornstalk rows and regiments of wind farms spinning in silent unison. “I’ve heard it described by friends as a sort of leash—a place that a lot of people leave, but ultimately end up back in for whatever reason,” says Sanford.
So what’s next? Sanford’s head is, he tells me, filled with nebulous blobs of ideas. The most formed so far is The Succession, a sci-fi affair influenced by films like The Machine and Alien, but devoid of dialogue.