Welcome Home

Welcome Home is an original game idea for a first-person shooter with rougelike elements. The game is split into 7 ”arcs” which act of episodes that consist of large levels, that end with a boss. The player controls Ishen Matthew as he fights his way through a monster-infested mansion. The seven arcs are “Prologue“, “Get This Party Started”, “Heckish Hallways”, “Bul-Let’s Do It”, ”Mr. Fat Cat Himself”, and “Finishing Run”.

Gameplay
The game is rougelike, meaning when the player dies in an arc, they restart at the arc’s first level. Once they respawn, they lose the temporary pickups, but will respawn with permanent pickups in inventory.

Arc 1 levels
1: The Party

2: The Storage

3: First Encounter

Arc 2 levels
1: The Guest Halls

2: Song of the Pots

3: Le Human Soufflé

4: Horn-headed Horror

Arc 3 levels
1: Great. There’s Blood.

2: Pool Party Massacre

3: Gore Garden

4: The Raveyard

5: The Party Pooper

Arc 4 levels
1: Freezy Reception

2: Flamey Reception

3: Amusing Misfortune

4: We Need Guns!

5: U dig?

Arc 5 levels
1: Dues X Machinea

2: It Had to Be a Water Level

3: The Jungle Outlook

4: Honey, I shrunk the Protagonis!

5: Micro Mega-monster

Arc 6 levels
1: Glass Windows stained with Guts

2: Attic Attack

3: The Big Cheese’s Lair

4: The Tycoon Tyrant

Arc 7 levels
1: A Poor Man’s He**

2: Monster Mash

3: Punishment is Needed!(final boss)

Weapons
Each weapon has unique stats, and are either permanent or temporary. If the player dies, they lose their temporary weapons, but keep their permanent ones.

(T) stands for temporary, and (P) represents permanent weapons.

(P)Dagger: Melee weapon. Starts the game with this in tow.

(T)Sledgehammer: Melee. Can knock enemy corpses into other enemies.

(P)Pistol: Starts with this in tow. Has low fire rate.

(T)Revolving Hand Cannon: Lower Fire rate, but is strong.

(P)Plasmic Shotgun:Found in Arc1,Lvl2. Fires a thermal blast.

(T)Basic Shotgun: Fires a spread of bullets.

(T)Double Shotgun: Twice the range and firepower of the Basic Shotgun, but longer reloads.

(P)Bolt Rifle:Found in the Guest Halls. Large range, high-power headshots. Long reloads.

(T)Sniper Rifle:Stronger Bolt Rifle, accompanied with zoom scope.

(P)Assault Rifle:Fires a steady stream of bullets. All-around stats. Found in Song of the Pots.

(T)Submachine Gun: Faster Fire rate than the AR.

(T) AK-47: Stronger than the SMG, with slightly slower fire rate.

(P)Tether Cannon:Fires a laser that will stay locked on the target. Found in Great. There’s Blood.

(T)Quantum Pulser: Tether Cannon, but stronger.

(P)Grenades: Throws a simple grenade. Given to player after First Encounter.

(T)Grenade Launcher:Fires sticky grenades.

(T)Bazooka:Fires a homing rocket.

(T)Portable Missile Silo:Fires 15 mini-missiles that home in on enemies.

(P)Single-barreled Chaingun:Fires bullets rapidly. Found in Dues X Machinea. Does not require reloads.

(T)minigun:Faster spin and fire rate, but weaker.

(T)MEGAGUN:Slower spin rate, but is stronger.

(T)Oblivion Cannon: Charge to Fire. Destroys every enemy in a large radius.

(T)Unholy Gun:Fires a devastating blast. Infinite ammo. Only used during the final boss.

Plot
The protagonist, Ishen Matthew, is a man with anger issues and constant stress who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Over many years in his life, he has tried lots of therapy and anger management, but to no avail. One day, he gets an invitation in the mail from the spoiled kid from his middle school, Terrier Tycoon. Tycoon is inviting many of his childhood friends to his party, located at his large mansion on the countryside. Ishen’s therapists recommend that he attend this party to relive stress. He travels to the Western Coast and meets his classmates from middle school. Tycoon appears, saying that his father, Mr. Tycoon, had died and handed the mansion to his son. The party ends, but no one can leave the mansion due to terrible weather. Tycoon lends all the houseguests guest rooms elsewhere in the mansion. They all go to sleep, but Ishen can’t.

He goes to get a drink somewhere, but hears noises in the halls. He grabs a dagger hanging on the wall as an ornament to use as a weapon. He goes to the end of the hallway to find a monster carrying an unconscious houseguest, which notices Ishen. Using his dagger, he kills the monster and takes the houseguest’s body with him. The houseguest also has a gun, which Ishen takes. After killing more monsters with the pistol, he jumps down the laundry chute, which goes to the basement of the mansion. There, the survivor Ishen rescued rests in the laundry room, while Ishen roams about. There, he finds a hidden lab, with a note saying that the owner of said Lab predicted that a monster infestation would occur, and also states that any survivors who find the lab should take one the Plasmic Shotguns to use as defense to fight the monsters. Ishen takes one and finds a key that unlocks the door to the first floor. On the first floor, he fights more monsters and rescues some servants of Tycoon, being terrorized by the monsters. Ishen rescues them and takes them downstairs. One of them has a Plasmic Shotgun, and says that he is Dr. Hippocampus, Tycoon’s mansion scientist, who created the Plasmic Shotgun, and other weapons found across the mansion. He says that the monsters found roaming across the mansion have built a nest somewhere high in the mansion, and fears that Tycoon is in mortal danger. Ishen is willing to help, but he needs special equipment scattered across the mansion. Hippocampus gives Ishen some hand grenades to assist, and says that a safe way to reach the top of the mansion is through the kitchen. And so begins Arc 2.

Ishen must reach the kitchen through the Guest Halls of the mansion, located on the second floor. After he finds a Bolt Rifle, a Gun that literally shoots thunderbolts, and reaches a pottery studio, infested by slug monsters. The pottery studio has an elevator that goes to the Guest dining hall, which connects to the kitchen. After fighting his way through the dining hall, he enters the kitchen and confronts the Behephoment, a large goat monster, wearing a chef uniform. Ishen kills him, and exits the kitchen through a broken window, which leads to the greenhouse, beginning arc 3.

Ishen has to go through the greenhouse, which has some Butler corpses lying around. Ishen finds Tycoon’s private swimming pool, and fights through the monsters, reaches the courtyard garden, and finds a tunnel that goes to the backyard graveyard, infested with monsters hosting a disco party. Interestingly an Ishen’s part, he finds the dug-up grave of George Tycoon, and shrugs it off, reaching the heart of the graveyard. At the end, he confronts the Grim Raver, the DJ of the party. He destroys the Raver and enters a cavern, covered in ice, beginning arc 4.

After spelunking through both the frozen and fiery caverns beneath he finds more survivors and an elevator that easily leads to the basement of the mansion. There, he Re-meets with Dr. Hippocampus, who says that he both needs the elevator key to reach the highest point in the mansion, along with another useful gun, which resides in the mechanical chamber below the basement. But in order to go there, he must Re-trek through the caverns to reach it. There, he confronts the Diagaen, a strange monster the likes to dig tunnels. After slaying it, Ishen uses its dismembered claws to dig a tunnel to the mechanical chamber, starting arc 5.

In the machine rooms below, he finds the singe-barreled chain gun, a deadly weapon guaranteed to help him. Now, he needs the elevator key. He slips through the waterways, which has been acting as precipitation for an underground rainforest. There, he finds a shrinking machine, which makes him uber-small, confront minuscule monsters, and Microscopic Nightmare. Killing the Nightmare causes a hidden cabin used by Tycoon himself, which contains the Elevator Key.

In the start of arc 6, Ishen reaches a stained glass window hall with window portraits of the Tycoon family. There are more Butler corpses scattered about the surrounding area. Afterwards, Ishen reaches the storage of the upper mansion, infested with monsters. Afterwards, he reaches the abode of Tycoon himself, covered from hallway to hallway with monsters. He reaches Tycoon’s bedroom, where he is standing beneath a large doorway made of a strange substance from the ceiling. However, preventing Ishen from reaching the owner of the mansion is the reanimated and mutated remains of his father, George Tycoon. After destroying the zombie, Tycoon is seen hovering into the opening, where Ishen soon follows by climbing a rope up the tower of the mansion, starting the seventh and final arc.

He scales the monster nest, and reaches a boss gauntlet afterwards. He then reaches the top of the tower, with a throne room filled with egotistical portraits of Tycoon. Tycoon himself is found sitting in front of a large machine, filled with blue wisps of Fire. Tycoon stammers to see Ishen there, while Ishen himself is relived yet suspicious. Ishen wonders why Tycoon wasn’t scared of the monsters, and decided to enter the monster nest instead of fleeing. There, he comes with a conclusion and tells Tycoon about. He claps and appraises Ishen’s intelligence, saying that he is correct. Tycoon is, as it turns out, a monster. He shows Ishen the machine, saying that it is an “essence liquifying machine”, which takes the essence of humans into edible sustenance for the monsters to eat, as human essences in the recent years have been very corrupt by human greed, and therefore inedible. He also said his family wanted to try to be human, and see where it would end up. He was the only one in his lineage that despised the humans. He knew, to save his people, he had to invite many people he knew as children to lure them in the mansion, and eventually kill them, stealing their pure essence. He takes a bottle of the liquid essence and holds it, saying that he never saw the appeal in human essence. He chugs the bottle, transforming him into a demon, one of the highest ranking monsters there is. He says the human essence is truly a wonderful thing to taste. And he says we wouldn’t mind trying one raw... from Ishen’s body. He creates an evil gun and turns his fancy cane into a pitchfork, and the fight begins.

The two endure in battle for while, eventually knocking Tycoon’s gun out of his hand and using it against him. After his health is reduced to zero Tycoon taunts Ishen, saying that monsters don’t truly die forever, and that he is leaving monsterkind to doom. Ishen ignores this, taking his Unholy Gun, and shoots Tycoon, killing him and causing his corpse to disappear in flame. At that moment, all the monsters have disappeared, and miraculously, Ishen’s anger and stress have seemingly disappeared. The survivors leave and the mansion is closed by the US military for investigation. All is as it should be, and Ishen is now living a near anger-free life.