Gone Home

I had some pretty high expectations for this game. The rain and thunder gives the game a creepy atmosphere and the fact that every now and then the floorboards creak and lights flicker giving one the impression of somebody sneaking about is quite awesome (and scary). However, upon completing the game in 2 - 3 hours, I have quickly realised that this game is misleading. The fact that before you even walk through the door and there is a note from your sister claiming she has left home gives you the feeling of loneliness. But that fizzles out when you discover why she left. You also discover your parents aren't home either. Again, this is not due to some dramatic reason. This game is great at making you believe there is crazy stuff going to happen, and, for some reason, sets up a suspenseful atmosphere. But none of this was intentional. The thunderstorm outside is purely for auditory purposes. The creaky floorboards don't mean a thing and when you find out that your sister is in search of ghostly activity, it fakes a sense of being watched and turns out to not accommodate the story at all. The delivery of the story is actually rather good; whenever you find a clue as to the whereabouts of your family, you are played a snippet from your sister's diary. This is the key aspect of the game. You are revealed how your sister was feeling. The voice acting is brilliant and the quality of it is consistent. There were one or two cliche "rebel American teenager" moments, but overall it's what pushes you to find out more. There are some good graphical options like "Ambient Occlusion" and "Anti-Aliasing", but I don't see the point for a game that literally needs to render a house. Just a house. For a game that thrives in the little details (literally soda cans have ingredients stamped on the back) and its success in setting an atmosphere, albeit pointlessly, it could do well to have a sequel. But for £12.29, it is not worth this price by any means. Pick it up at a sale. 5/10

The decision whether to purchase Gone Home might seem tricky based on its polarizing reviews. Here's what you really need to know about it to make your choice: 1) It's a game but it doesn't fit into many conventions of games, even adventures. The experience is closer to a novel, movie or back-to-back episodes of a quality TV show. If you get engaged with those means of storytelling, you'll be engaged by Gone Home. 2) Similarly, it tells a compelling story but relies on your attention and involvement. You receive fragments of the stories, but the game is structured to allow you to decide the significance of what you have discovered and read. This isn't the game to buy if you need your text to tell you what to think. (To define what that means: if you disliked the ending of Lost because you didn't get all the answers, you will be frustrated by Gone Home) 3) It utilizes tropes from haunted house and horror stories. That doesn't mean you're going to love it if you're a horror game fan; since most horror gaming relies on jumps and scares rather than tropes. Tropes are the setting and context: it's a dark, foreboding space where your imagination fills in many of the gaps. The closest comparison I could make is to the early stages Robbing the Cradle level in Thief: Deadly Shadows. That level relied extensively on horror tropes to build up a sense of tension and dread, before becoming something different in its second half. It's not a spoiler to suggest that Gone Home plays out its tropes in a different way, but it constantly succeeds in grabbing your imagination. I love Gone Home; I think it's the most compelling game experience of the past few years. It is, indeed, quite a short game but that's an important point in its favor. It has been carefully, and specifically designed to be a complete exploration of the story at hand. Perhaps that's why journalists and writers have been more spellbound than traditional gamers? It's an astounding piece of interactive fiction.

It's really hard to review this game without spoiling most everything, but if you have not had a chance to play this yet, do so! It shouldn't take more than a few hours, and I highly recommend getting immersed in it at night for the full experience. That said, the game really should be $10.

While there aren't really many traditional "puzzles" in "Gone Home" I found that I didn't miss them. It is a real achievement that the Fullbright Company was able to create a game that feels engaging without a traditional mechanic outside of exploration. Honestly, as someone who was fascinated by the world of "Myst" as a kid, but who never had the patience for the sometimes arbitrary-seeming puzzles, I think there should be more games like this. If gaming is really about becoming other people and exploring what that's like, or going places you could never go in reality, I don't see why it should be any harder to imagine yourself as a young woman coming home to an empty home than it is to imagine yourself as a "chosen one" running across walls in Ancient Egypt, or whatever. There's a lot that is really valuable in "Gone Home," if you give it half a chance. In contrast to most games that I play, which can sometimes feel like they are sapping my life (like Civ 5, or TF2), I actually felt refreshed after playing. There was a moment that made me jump out of my chair and turn my computer off—and while its memory "charges" the rest of the playthrough, "Gone Home" isn't a game about jump scares. It's a simple game about family drama, very elegantly executed. If you're a bit of a voyeur and you like snooping through people's houses (and if you love nineties girl/garage punk), you will love "Gone Home."

This one is difficult to talk about, because I feel that anyone who plays it should do so with as little knowledge about what they are about to experience. You play as Kaitlin Greenbriar, fresh off the plane from Europe. Your family moved while you were away and you arrive at your new home in the middle of the night without anyone to greet you. The house is yours to explore and piece together what's happened while you were away. I would advice anyone who plays this for the first time to dim the light, grab a bowl of snacks and something to drink, and keep other distractions to a minimum.