We live in a time where the lines between different forms of media is increasingly blurred, where you can watch television on your phone, where movies play out more like a video game, and video games are increasingly presenting strong narrative alternatives to films and even books. When delivering a story, and choosing what narrative platform to deliver it on, the question must be asked: What can I do to take advantage of this medium that I couldn’t possibly do anywhere else? How can I create a unique experience that wouldn’t be possible in any other way?
Gone Home is a game where I truly believe the developers created a story that couldn’t have possibly unfolded as an hour long prime time drama or even a short novel. It’s not the richest gameplay experience, but it’s certainly a narrative that could only be experienced as a video game. The story to this game is essentially what you make it, what you choose to uncover, it’s relatively linear but requires the player to really pay attention for the full experience.
The game dumps you into the shoes of Katie Greenbriar. She’s returning to her family after a one year long vacation to Europe, to their recently moved into house of 1 Arbor Hill. All you find waiting for you is an empty house and a cryptic note from your little sister, Sam. The remainder of the game is then figuring out the mysteries behind the disappearance of the home’s inhabitants and your sister’s past year.
Defining the genre of this game is perhaps ruining a bit of the surprise, it uses some misdirects and clever sound design to influence your mood. It’s more a small exploration game, not far off from games such as Myst. The physics are well thought out, objects have weight to them making for one of the more realistic “feeling” first person adventures I’ve played, a small but great moment for me was flipping around a cassette case to read the playlist on the inside cover. It’s the little things.
Gone Home makes for a very convincing recreation of 1995, while the game has a few made-up brand names it also references movies, television shows, music and video games at the time. The puzzles aren’t especially difficult, while keys to other areas of the house and Sam’s more important diary entries are difficult to miss, especially if you go through the game with a bit of obsessive compulsiveness like I did. The game keeps you on track, it’s more up to you to enrich this experience, making a left turn down the empty hallways instead of a right turn, rifling through old books and magazines to get a deeper understanding of the Greenbriar life over the past year.
This is why I say it’s a narrative that couldn’t have happened as anything but a video game. You have the core mystery, but to truly get the most bang out of this game you need a sharp eye, to be willing to rifle through every box, drawer and backpack, and to simply pay attention and connect your own mental dots. A den isn’t just a den, it’s a den filled with empty shot glasses and bottles, dad’s really been having a rough time. The main storyline is fairly quickly decipherable, it’s the way in which the developers play with the experience that makes it worthwhile.
Game re-play value is questionable. If you’re like me and pretty anal about exploring everything, there’s little reason to go back. It does offer a few game modes to slightly adjust the experience, but even with that once was enough for me. For such a narrative experience some parts of it feel game-y, such as locking doors just for the sake of locking them.
With a $20 price tag it’s tough to say whether you should drop your money right now or not, it’s also a very short experience with me clocking in 90 minutes even with being thorough. Ultimately I enjoyed it as a story I couldn’t have been able to experience as anything else. If I’m watching a movie, you can’t speak to the director after and have him tell you “Well to really bring the whole thing together you should have been looking at the post-it-note on the refrigerator 20 minutes in”, in that same respect far too many visual novels could easily just be a novel, and so it’s difficult to justify why it’s a game at all. So just as an example of effectively using a medium, I believe Gone Home nails it, it’s necessary for this to be a video game. I would also like to see what fledgling studio Fullbright Company has to offer us in the future, now that their first game is out the gate and they’ve already shown themselves to be competent in game design and story telling.
