Gone Home -- Review (PC)

Released: 2013. Developer: The Fullbright Company.

It is becoming increasingly easier to look at contemporary gaming at face value and bemoan the lack of inspiration. Indeed, the apparent obsession with ‘Triple-A’ titles – with shooting, with killing, and most other elements that are usual relevant within Halo or Call of Duty – does little to endear gaming to a larger audience (beyond young males, in any case). However, no matter how bad things look, no matter how many violent shooters are premiered at each year’s E3, there are always games out there that can restore our faith. There will always be games that remind us of why this medium can continue to inspire and excel without being constrained by big publisher requirements. Gone Home is one such title.

Because Gone Home is an indie title it does not need to adhere to the ‘guaranteed sales success’ formula of larger games. Of course, Gone Home is not unique in this regard; indie gaming is probably the strongest it has ever been for a long period. However, Gone Home is worth particular attention because of its unique draw, and the way in which it executes this unique element through the narrative and gameplay structure.

Your journey begins here.

Essentially, Gone Home can be broken down into a game about audio-logs, letters, notes or anything else of that nature that you would typically collect in other games. The Last of Us leaves scribbled notes scattered throughout the world to add context to Joel and Ellie’s adventures. BioShock, meanwhile, utilises audio-based devices that relay character’s thoughts through vocal expression. A large portion of games employ these ‘extras’ in attempts to add further layers to the environment and atmosphere experienced by the player. Where The Last of Us or BioShock centre around exploration, puzzles and combat, and relegate letters and audio logs to extras, Gone Home instead shuns the conventions of combat or mechanical puzzles to focus primarily on letters and notes.

The player takes the role of Katie Greenbriar, a young American woman who is returning to her family home after travelling around Europe. The house is empty when Katie arrives and so she must explore the mansion to figure out where everyone is and what has transpired. In this respect, a mere crumpled note discarded in a bin is effectively Gone Home’s bread and butter. Reading month-old correspondence between Katie’s mother and her workplace is your main purpose, for there is no combat and no puzzles here.

Each room presents new information to progress the narrative.
Such information can take the form of notes, discarded letters, and other objects.

A routine quickly develops after you acclimatise to Gone Home’s structure. You will open a door to an unexplored room, search for a light-switch, and begin scrutinising the surroundings. Almost every item and physical thing can be interacted with, no matter how mundane or completely pointless it may seem. Draws, cupboards and fridges can be opened and shut; pens, cans, cups and books can be lifted and thrown; you can also put tapes into cassette players or listen to vinyls played on record players. Such depth is appreciated but the game never manages to achieve that feeling of the home as having being lived in, mostly due to its rigid videogame ascetic. Furthermore, the calculated placing of notes and relevant items was always going to look beyond the realms of plausibility due to the nature of the game. It is much easier to organically place notes and objects in games where they serve as extra context setters. Gone Home, though, necessitates that the player must see and interact with relevant materials and so their placement is more awkward. This awkwardness certainly shows throughout.

Gone Home is set in the 1990s, and in that regard it feels wholly authentic. From the grunge-rock music Katie’s sister, Samantha, listens to on her cassettes, to the lack of mobile phones and reliance on using typewriters for sending letters, the aura of the ‘90s is exact. Of course, being set in such a period also allows the developers – The Fullbright Company – to remove the obvious solutions access to the internet would otherwise provide, should such an event occur today. Weirdly, the lack of internet provides an eerie sense of freedom, but also fear, another theme the game undoubtedly revels in. The rooms are mostly dark before you switch the lights on and the mansion itself is very old; the floorboards regularly creak while the thunderstorm outside ensures you remain constantly anxious. The atmosphere is, in this regard, well developed.

Gone Home relies on charm and '90s trends to add colour to its setting.

Of course, all of the developer’s efforts put into the design and layout of the mansion, the amount of notes, books and letters, and the atmospheric tension would be for nothing if the central narrative itself was weak. Indeed, the very design of Gone Home constitutes that the story must be of good quality or else the whole game falls flat. You would be, essentially, playing a game about reading fictional notes and opening virtual cupboards for no other reason than gameplay. If that were the case then Gone Home would be a huge waste of 2 hours and a chore to play. Fortunately, the layer of care and attention put into the narrative along with some excellent writing ensures that the experience is worth it. The writing successfully sets out a gripping and believable story, one with characters that you grow to care about despite the notion that you might never meet them, and one that deals with mature issues in a way that other games would – and do – cause embarrassment over. Furthermore, the voice acting ensures that the writing is effectively delivered with the voice actress for Samantha being particularly superb. Samantha’s voice can be heard when you discover relevant letters, notes or objects. The genuine emotion in her voice and delivery of her lines makes each extract a treasure to behold. Hearing the next chunk of Samantha’s diary serves as the core incentive of Gone Home’s progression; her dialogue is poignant enough to ensure most will play to the end. The Fullbright Company also ensure that each written piece of information oozes with levels of believability and charm: Samantha’s school essays with little doodles, formal letters with business logos and professional wording for dad’s work correspondence, and fancy joined-up writing with flower-laced borders on a letters from a friend of mom’s.

Gone Home is a game about reading notes and piecing together a large jigsaw. It is ultimately successful in this aim through a gripping narrative and an undeniable layer of charm and passion evident within the game’s many notes, letters and diary entries. A mechanical and rigid ascetic – which lends itself to Gone Home’s chosen engine – somewhat dampens the allure of the game, as do instances of design that are not natural or believable. Nobody would ever leave notes of relevance scattered in such a manner that they could only be discovered in a certain sequence (unless they were being facetious!), and let us not even get started on combination locks. Regardless, as a game about collecting letters, notes and physical objects – as its primary driving force – Gone Home could have been a disaster. Good writing, superb voice acting, and excellent attention-to-detail, however, ensure that Gone Home stays long in the mind even after reaching the ending credits.

8/10