The Fullbright Company - 2013 - PC
The pitch for Gone Home is that you’re a college aged kid coming home from a long study abroad trip. It’s the early 90s, before cell phones or the internet, so your only recent communication with your family has been mainly letters and postcards. When you arrive home, your house is empty and your family is missing, so you have to explore the house for clues as to where they may be. When I heard this pitch, I was super excited to play the game because it sounded narrative focused, which I always like, and it was also interesting to me to design a game purely around the mechanic of searching a house. Unfortunately, I was a bit dissapointed in the execution of this mechanic after playing the game.
My main disappointment with this game is that, every time you find a clue as to where your family is, the game starts a voice over clip and spells out to you exactly what the game wants you to know after discovering the clue. I think it would have been way more powerful to let the player examine each object and determine for themselves whether the object is relevant to the story and let the player construct the narrative for themselves. I think it would give a sense of discovery and accomplishment that isn't really present in the game as it stands now. You kind of click through each object in each room until you find one that triggers an audio clip, and then just repeat the process for each room. The developers could have still saved the audio clips for the end of the game for a bigger impact. Right now, when the player reaches the end of the game, it just kind of ends unceremoniously and awkwardly.
It’s a bit difficult to talk about this game without spoiling anything, but people who have already played this game should know what I mean. I’m a bit torn on Gone Home because I recognize that it’s a very important and progressive game, but at the same time I feel that there are a lot of execution flaws with this game. Gone Home is starting to get a lot of attention and win some awards, which is all good, but I feel like some of the love this game is getting has to do with the subject matter in the game and not necessarily the game itself. Again, people who have already played this game will know what I mean.
The writing in the game is mostly solid for a video game, but that unfortunately doesn't say much. But there were a few gripes I had with the storytelling. It’s probably pretty hard to write solid and well defined characters around the mechanic of discovering objects in a house, but I found that I never got a really good sense of the player’s parent’s characters. They felt flat and undeveloped. Maybe this was on purpose, but I think it would have helped the overall narrative to flesh out these characters a bit more.
Summary:
As negative as I sound about this game, I would still recommend this to people who like narrative focused games. Just be aware that it’s very short; I finished it in one sitting. It’s also a very personal and intimate game from a storytelling point of view, so don’t expect something light or humorous or action packed. Your enjoyment of this game will probably depend on how much this game “works” for you. I don’t think this game really “worked” for me, but I really hope more games like Gone Home get made soon, if that makes any sense
My main disappointment with this game is that, every time you find a clue as to where your family is, the game starts a voice over clip and spells out to you exactly what the game wants you to know after discovering the clue. I think it would have been way more powerful to let the player examine each object and determine for themselves whether the object is relevant to the story and let the player construct the narrative for themselves. I think it would give a sense of discovery and accomplishment that isn't really present in the game as it stands now. You kind of click through each object in each room until you find one that triggers an audio clip, and then just repeat the process for each room. The developers could have still saved the audio clips for the end of the game for a bigger impact. Right now, when the player reaches the end of the game, it just kind of ends unceremoniously and awkwardly.
It’s a bit difficult to talk about this game without spoiling anything, but people who have already played this game should know what I mean. I’m a bit torn on Gone Home because I recognize that it’s a very important and progressive game, but at the same time I feel that there are a lot of execution flaws with this game. Gone Home is starting to get a lot of attention and win some awards, which is all good, but I feel like some of the love this game is getting has to do with the subject matter in the game and not necessarily the game itself. Again, people who have already played this game will know what I mean.
The writing in the game is mostly solid for a video game, but that unfortunately doesn't say much. But there were a few gripes I had with the storytelling. It’s probably pretty hard to write solid and well defined characters around the mechanic of discovering objects in a house, but I found that I never got a really good sense of the player’s parent’s characters. They felt flat and undeveloped. Maybe this was on purpose, but I think it would have helped the overall narrative to flesh out these characters a bit more.
Summary:
As negative as I sound about this game, I would still recommend this to people who like narrative focused games. Just be aware that it’s very short; I finished it in one sitting. It’s also a very personal and intimate game from a storytelling point of view, so don’t expect something light or humorous or action packed. Your enjoyment of this game will probably depend on how much this game “works” for you. I don’t think this game really “worked” for me, but I really hope more games like Gone Home get made soon, if that makes any sense
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