I played Gone Home, released by Fullbright in 2013, on my PC.
[There are spoilers for Gone Home in the paragraphs below]
The really cool thing about this game is that the story is the mystery. You’re trying to figure out what happened or if anything happened by playing the game. The actual gameplay itself is rather straightforward, as I believe is common for mystery games like this: you go into an area, look around, and pick stuff up until you figure out how it relates to something in another room. Unfortunately for games in this genre, it’s often hard to tell when you’re on the right track, or getting close to a good clue, as there’s little immediate feedback from learning things. Gone Home has the clever solution of playing journal entries from your sister when you pick up certain objects in the house. This is a pretty great solution and helps with gameplay in a couple ways. Not only does it signify when the player is looking in the right places, but it also gives incentive for picking up objects that you might otherwise leave alone. And even more than that, it gives a clear and obvious storyline for the player to follow, which adds to the one that is developing from the objects around the house.
The story develops in a couple different ways. As the player explores each room, they can find a variety of things that tell them about the family. The first set of open rooms are kind of slow moving, and can be a little frustrating, as mentioned before, because it’s hard to tell what the “right direction” is. However, as you collect information and can start opening new rooms, the story starts to move, and can keep you engaged that way. For example, there were two points in the game where I was wandering aimlessly and unsure what to do: at the beginning and before finding the first secret room. With a little patience and a lot of picking up random objects, I eventually found more rooms to move into.
I liked that there were two modes of storytelling in the game. The journal entries that play tell a tale of the player’s younger sister starting in a new school, making new friends, and in the end getting and almost losing a girlfriend. The rooms tell a different story, about a family slowly falling apart (from what I can tell). Unfortunately, you don’t really get a resolution for any of the storylines about your parents or about the house because the audio plot is the main focus, and how the game progresses. I’m a little sad that there isn’t a clear resolution to either of the other plots, but since the game is relatively short, I wasn’t too invested in the other plotlines.
I have a couple of thoughts about this game that I wish were different. The first is that it’s really dark, and there were points where I had trouble seeing objects or doors because there just wasn’t enough detail on the screen. The second is maybe intentional design, and just a personal preference, but there are so many objects that are interactable that I got a little overwhelmed. I felt like it was a bit too much because it made me feel like I had to interact with each object just to make sure it didn’t have story relevance.
Gone Home is a wonderful mystery game that gives you a well designed story with enough layers to make it easily replayable and interesting all the way through. Each room is well designed and helps contribute to the overall narrative, while still being relatively easy to navigate.
