Ever so often the Indie game scene throws us a game that is more of an “experience”. You’re not focussing on points or creating surreal environments. No, you want to tell a life like story. Something as real as your high school crush. Something emotional and straight in your face. But what is “Gone Home” exactly???
It’s NOT a horror game??
Well when you boot up the game and look at the title screen there’s an old mansion under the dark sky. You are dropped in its entrance hall and soon you discover you are locked in this house that is apparently yours. So you just came home from a year studying abroad in Europe and you were expecting your parents and sister to open up the door for you since it’s pouring and thunder is deafening your footsteps. Very strange… It looks like you’ll have to find a key to enter the house. But is it a good idea to enter at all?
You will feel like an old perverted voyeur sometimes when looking through your teenage sister’s room
To be honest, when you start off playing the first few minutes going from room to room it feels like a classic ‘escape room’ topped with some old school horror sauce. You immediately activate these audio logs that originate from your sister’s diary. They talk about her hard life in this house you and your parents moved to and some say it is haunted by an old family member. And everything, EVERYTHING points to that direction. every time you stay put for a few seconds you can hear weird cracking and other eerie sounds coming from behind you.
Adding to this creepy atmosphere is your dad’s stuff, he is this Illuminati theorist/writer that is obsessed with 90ties UFO sightings and he is totally into x-files and Kennedy assassinations. He even wrote some fiction novels on the subject of a time traveling hero. Has he been kidnapped along with the rest of your family? One of the questions that came to mind… but surprise; it’s not a horror story at all?!
Now nobody likes spoilers, right? So what the story is really about I will not tell. I mean it is a very strong emotional story and it is told in this great way of putting you as the player to figure out how the different clues link up to one big story that is so real, eye-watering and heartwarming at the same time. I call it a great story told through the gaming medium.
Prepare to read ingredients from everyday items
Graphically the game is quite good, there no super fresh art style but I mean there’s a ton of details, sometimes it feels like they just scanned real life things into it. There this attention to detail like a hot water boiler where you can read the finest print on the stickers stuck onto it. I’m the guy that likes to read all these so I had my cup of tea. Sound wise you feel like you really are trapped in a house in the climax of a dark storm. A TV warning about some code red storm in one of the rooms. The creaky noises… They all add to this weird atmosphere.
| The good: | The bad: |
| + Fantastic story build up | – no real replayablility |
| + A life like experience | – too short for $19.99? |
But something is still wrong for me. Though it is a great story and few games had me smiling with tears in my eyes by the end, it is… a very short game. I spent 3 hours max and I’m the dude taking his time strolling around looking for stuff. There’s even an achievement for clearing the game under 1 minute… Yes there is. For the current pricing of 20 bucks there could’ve been more content. At least two stories with two different houses. In terms of replayability there’s only food for trophy/achievement hunters. Despite the strong storytelling I don’t feel like I will replay the game tomorrow. Maybe when I grow old and find this old box with my ,by then ancient retro PS4 in it, maybe I will be surprised again by this great story. But until then I feel like there could’ve been more content for its price point.
2.5 out of 5
