Sights & Sounds
- Visually, the technical aspects of Gone Home aren't going to wow the modern player, but what do you really expect? It's a decade-old indie title
- What it's depicting is more interesting. Although it's just a family house in the Pacific Northwest in the mid-90s, it felt very realistic and lived in
- Maybe it's nostalgia clouding my mind, but walking around the house felt calming. Although the game's story tries at various moments to make the player feel unsettled or anxious, I was just having fun walking around munching on 'member berries
- I really enjoyed the music, which is littered around the house in the form of playable cassette tapes. I had a good time breaking up the creaks and groans of the old house with a din of grungy female-fronted hard rock
Story & Vibes
- Although this game has been out for a decade, it would be a disservice to spoil anything outside of the narrative set-up. In broad strokes, you're a teenager who has just returned from a long trip to Europe. You arrive from the airport to find the place empty. The game's story revolves around searching the environment to figure out what happened to everyone
- As I mentioned above, the game really tries to highlight and enhance the sort of anxieties someone would actually feel in that situation. Where is everyone? Did they forget I was coming home? Are they safe? Am I going to open a closet to find their bodies and an axe-wielding maniac?
- You'll eventually figure out what happened by finding notes left by your sister and paying attention to the other notes, scribbles, magazines, letters, and brochures scattered around. I love this kind of progressive, self-paced storytelling that lets the player put the pieces together. I did do things massively out of order, but that's part of the fun in games like this
- I enjoyed how all the house noises worked to amp up some of the creepiness. It was unsettling to be poking around the basement of a supposedly empty house and hearing the floorboards above your head start creaking
Playability & Replayability
- While you'll usually see tags like "adventure" or "walking simulator" applied to Gone Home, those labels downplay its investigative aspect. You'll be digging through every drawer, trash can, and closet to find clues and notes
- That isn't to say that "walking simulator" is inaccurate, though. You still mostly just walk around and click on things. Think of What Remains of Edith Finch, but with one central puzzle instead of a collection of smaller ones
- Ultimately, there's not much replay value in a game like this unless you're trying to collect every achievement. Once you piece together the story once, there's not really any mystery left to uncover
Overall Impressions & Performance
- As I played through the game, I found myself wondering why user ratings are so middling on Steam and Metacritic. Looking into the matter reveals a lot of attention from the "not a game" crowd and anti-LGBTQ+ trolls, so those can be safely disregarded as meritless opinions from meritless people anyway
- The actually valid criticisms appear to deal with the limited gameplay variety, lack of replayability, and short runtime at its price point. I'd actually agree with those sentiments. Compared to other 1st person adventure games, Gone Home is a little barebones with respect to actual content and gameplay
- Ran perfectly on the Steam Deck
Final Verdict
- 7/10. I'd recommend picking this one up on a sale for the heartfelt story if you can find a good price (the game is only 2-4 hours long). Sure, other similar and more recent titles are a bit better (What Remains of Edith Finch, Firewatch, Road 96, etc.), but Gone Home was a bit of a trailblazer and is worth your attention
- Visually, the technical aspects of Gone Home aren't going to wow the modern player, but what do you really expect? It's a decade-old indie title
- What it's depicting is more interesting. Although it's just a family house in the Pacific Northwest in the mid-90s, it felt very realistic and lived in
- Maybe it's nostalgia clouding my mind, but walking around the house felt calming. Although the game's story tries at various moments to make the player feel unsettled or anxious, I was just having fun walking around munching on 'member berries
- I really enjoyed the music, which is littered around the house in the form of playable cassette tapes. I had a good time breaking up the creaks and groans of the old house with a din of grungy female-fronted hard rock
Story & Vibes
- Although this game has been out for a decade, it would be a disservice to spoil anything outside of the narrative set-up. In broad strokes, you're a teenager who has just returned from a long trip to Europe. You arrive from the airport to find the place empty. The game's story revolves around searching the environment to figure out what happened to everyone
- As I mentioned above, the game really tries to highlight and enhance the sort of anxieties someone would actually feel in that situation. Where is everyone? Did they forget I was coming home? Are they safe? Am I going to open a closet to find their bodies and an axe-wielding maniac?
- You'll eventually figure out what happened by finding notes left by your sister and paying attention to the other notes, scribbles, magazines, letters, and brochures scattered around. I love this kind of progressive, self-paced storytelling that lets the player put the pieces together. I did do things massively out of order, but that's part of the fun in games like this
- I enjoyed how all the house noises worked to amp up some of the creepiness. It was unsettling to be poking around the basement of a supposedly empty house and hearing the floorboards above your head start creaking
Playability & Replayability
- While you'll usually see tags like "adventure" or "walking simulator" applied to Gone Home, those labels downplay its investigative aspect. You'll be digging through every drawer, trash can, and closet to find clues and notes
- That isn't to say that "walking simulator" is inaccurate, though. You still mostly just walk around and click on things. Think of What Remains of Edith Finch, but with one central puzzle instead of a collection of smaller ones
- Ultimately, there's not much replay value in a game like this unless you're trying to collect every achievement. Once you piece together the story once, there's not really any mystery left to uncover
Overall Impressions & Performance
- As I played through the game, I found myself wondering why user ratings are so middling on Steam and Metacritic. Looking into the matter reveals a lot of attention from the "not a game" crowd and anti-LGBTQ+ trolls, so those can be safely disregarded as meritless opinions from meritless people anyway
- The actually valid criticisms appear to deal with the limited gameplay variety, lack of replayability, and short runtime at its price point. I'd actually agree with those sentiments. Compared to other 1st person adventure games, Gone Home is a little barebones with respect to actual content and gameplay
- Ran perfectly on the Steam Deck
Final Verdict
- 7/10. I'd recommend picking this one up on a sale for the heartfelt story if you can find a good price (the game is only 2-4 hours long). Sure, other similar and more recent titles are a bit better (What Remains of Edith Finch, Firewatch, Road 96, etc.), but Gone Home was a bit of a trailblazer and is worth your attention
3 Comments
@RedBackLoggd, I don't know if it's really a spoiler (you can cross reference your luggage tag with your mom's calendar to figure out where your parents probably are), but I've taken out that sentence just in case it's giving something else away.
I still think this game has some appeal outside of 90s kids due to the interesting narrative device, particularly people who enjoy exploration gameplay and "breadcrumb" storytelling. As for the societal issues, I think it's pretty clear from some of the Steam Community posts and Metacritic reviews that despite increased civil liberties and legal protections, there's still a noisy contingency who may ironically have a 90s mindset in that topic. As in most cases in the US, social equity lags far behind legal equality.
Other than that, I think that the central anxiety of being entirely alone and unable to communicate with anyone might be a hard idea for younger people playing this game to wrap their heads around. We live in an era of easy and instant communication thanks to the internet being in our pockets at all times, so this is a fear that I don't think many people born since 2000 have grown up experiencing.
I still think this game has some appeal outside of 90s kids due to the interesting narrative device, particularly people who enjoy exploration gameplay and "breadcrumb" storytelling. As for the societal issues, I think it's pretty clear from some of the Steam Community posts and Metacritic reviews that despite increased civil liberties and legal protections, there's still a noisy contingency who may ironically have a 90s mindset in that topic. As in most cases in the US, social equity lags far behind legal equality.
Other than that, I think that the central anxiety of being entirely alone and unable to communicate with anyone might be a hard idea for younger people playing this game to wrap their heads around. We live in an era of easy and instant communication thanks to the internet being in our pockets at all times, so this is a fear that I don't think many people born since 2000 have grown up experiencing.
I actually didn't know you could do that haha, but it's certainly a bit of work compared to just knowing from the get-go if that makes sense. I thank you regardless for the change.
That's an interesting take, and certainly the game found an audience beyond 90s kids so you could be onto something. I still do believe that it'll be very hard to fathom why the game works unless you were in that era: the idea Riot Girl being inherently appealing to teenage girls, as you wisely pointed out the lack of cell phones/social media meaning people could genuinely disappear and you would have no idea what happened, the use of journals to record deep thoughts, and of course the big thing (yes, as you said, equality lags behind in places, but it's a minority issue now compared to back then where it was a majority issue).
But anyway, I don't mean to turn this into a debate because ultimately you wrote a great review that will hopefully expose more people to the game so they can give their own takes.
That's an interesting take, and certainly the game found an audience beyond 90s kids so you could be onto something. I still do believe that it'll be very hard to fathom why the game works unless you were in that era: the idea Riot Girl being inherently appealing to teenage girls, as you wisely pointed out the lack of cell phones/social media meaning people could genuinely disappear and you would have no idea what happened, the use of journals to record deep thoughts, and of course the big thing (yes, as you said, equality lags behind in places, but it's a minority issue now compared to back then where it was a majority issue).
But anyway, I don't mean to turn this into a debate because ultimately you wrote a great review that will hopefully expose more people to the game so they can give their own takes.
RedBackLoggd
3 months ago
But yeah, outside of that, great review as usual, though I'm curious if you think this game has any appeal to people who grew up outside the 90s because it really is wrapped up in that decade, not just in the pop culture references but the societal issues as well.
And yeah, I have no idea what the developers were smoking charging $20.00 for a 3 hour experience. I think that's what killed it's reputation amongst online purveyors.