HOMEWRECKERS

HOMEWRECKERS is a subversion of the decoration / management game genre.

The mechanics — the literal “system” by which you are scored — encourage you to keep building the home to serve exclusively yourself / match a heteronormative, nuclear-family structure, so that those who prioritize getting that which is typically associated with respect and high performance in the context of games (ie. a high score) will also end up with a home that most closely resembles the societal expectation for this type of private space. Likewise, the home decor catalogues you receive all feature advertisements to continually reinforce the idea of the home as somewhere for you and your husband (the target audience for these catalogues is housewives!) to enjoy complete safety and freedom to raise your family and live how you want to live. 

The narrative, meanwhile, runs counter to these mechanical elements, encouraging you to practice the “queer art of failure” instead, getting a lower score as you instead transform your private dwelling into a public space / pseudo-safe house within a Montreal that remains unsafe for queer people to live as they are. It is your choice whether or not to invite most of your potential “guests” into your home; your choice how you treat them if you do. 

Regardless of what choices you make, however, the illusion of your home as a private, safe space is gradually peeled away over the course of the game as the boundary of your home is shown to be prone to breaching / already compromised in several ways, both in obvious and innocuously mundane (read: insidious) ways throughout the game. The game always culminates in your home — including, notably, your room, which no one else ever enters throughout the entire game even as you do accept guests — being invaded by police at the end, representing a total breakdown of the private sphere and all that it offered.