Gone Home

I do not really understand why this product is associated with the category "adventure games". There is no real puzzle to solve, one only wanders in an empty house while a story unfolds, triggered by minimal interaction with the environment (to be fair, you also have to find out two combinations, but that's all for the puzzle department). All the touches which might seem to allude to something dark and dangerous (the empty house at night, the hidden passages, the occult symbols, the references to the crazy relative) resolve to nothing. At the end, you realize you could have achieved the same experience by tiding up your own apartment/house for two hours with an audio book in the background. I understand that there are people who appreciate a product like that, but do not call or present it as a game, this is simply misleading.

The technology in this game is not bad at all. Its stable, the audio is good with great voice acting and the interface is fine. The puzzles are not too bad, but its none too challenging. I thought it could have been better, but there is no replay to this game. Its not really a game but more an interactive story... However, the story is not that great. I was hoping for more. I think if you watch a lets play of this game, its about the same thing. Its also very short.

More like a light switch flipping and audio log listening simulator.

In Gone Home, you search an empty house and look for clues as to why is it empty. The visuals of this game are nice and they won't insult anyone. If anything, they invoke quite a lot of nostalgia for those who lived in the 1990 and can remember all the stuff in the house. Plus you can interact with almost every object so, maybe you can get a kick out of throwing stuff around. The game also manages to create a feeling of mystery which is, sadly, completely wasted. Voice acting ingame is nothing to write home about but, since there is only one person speaking through 99% of the game, its fine. The story is pieced together from diaries, audio tapes and sticky notes, which is fine, but the problem is the story itself. *SPOILERS AHEAD* It solely depends on your view of homosexuals. If you are an extremely conservative person, or a person of deep religious conviction, it may stirr something within you. Same goes if you were ever a victim of prejudice against said people. Other than that, the story is boring and the praise it gets is solely derived from the fact that it deals with gay people. Make it a straight couple that has difficulties being together and it really has nothing to it. *END OF SPOILERS* In the end, this game should have been a short novel and it would have been better off that way, since anything besides the weak story has no need to be there. The two stars are for the visuals and the 90's feel, and an additional one for the, albeit wasted, atmosphere.

I thought this would be a good mystery but it's a waste of time and money. Another game I bought and deleted being unable to get going with the oh so slow controls! How tedious and I never got past the front hall. Really, GOG, please test these games out before selling them as quality games.