Gone Home has a very clear goal in mind, and its focus is unwavering, constantly reinforcing its ideas with the precision of a sharp knife.
You are Kaitlin Greenbriar, coming home from a year long excursion across Europe. Bags dropped and ready to reunite with your family, you are greeted with a letter from your sister, Sam, saying she has run away and that she doesn't want to be found. As you enter the house, you find it’s empty with no one to answer your questions. The rest of the game involves just you in the house trying to find those answers.
We spend so much time shooting monsters in spaceships that a setup like this is almost refreshing, as if we’re hungry for something new, something low-key, something average. Gone Home takes a swift left turn and presents us a world that is challenging and intriguing in places we never thought were. The Fullbright Company explores the beauty of the mundane in their debut project with exceedingly successful results.
Gone Home looks at all of the expectations one might have of a video game and decides that none of that is actually important -- what’s important is a full realization of the game’s world and it doesn't matter what needs to be done to achieve this. The thing about about Gone Home is that it’s hard to call it a video game by modern terms, not because it is one of those “non-games” per se, but because approaching it with the jargon we regularly use is sort of a disservice to what it is -- and ultimately what all games could be. If you were to call it a puzzle game, you’d be wrong. Puzzle games have a certain connotation behind them, and Gone Home barely scratches the surface of what they do. And you can’t necessarily call it an Adventure Game either, because its mechanics only share bits and pieces of what define that genre as well. Really, the only thing you do is walk around and explore the environment.That’s the only mechanic. But that’s what’s makes everything so effective because it doesn't approach game design with genre expectations in mind. Never once does it say that you need to click a dialogue tree, or jump a platform, or shoot something, or even solve a puzzle. Instead, the focus of Gone Home is on exploring the world.
And it is absolutely relentless in its attempts to convey this place to you.The house on Arbor hill is filled with bits and pieces that were left behind by the Greenbriar family, each one injects new life and color into the world. From cassette tapes, to porno magazines, every item has a deliberate objective and, once found, shines light on the Greenbriar’s story, eventually transforming the empty abode filled with a thick sense of dread to a warm household that’s full of life and love. The Greenbriar house over time felt increasingly more populated because of how well the characters’ personalities and stories come through the environment. You could feel the room fill up as another letter from your sister was being read to you. And this is deliberate too, because of the generally familiar locale, were able to imagine the interactions of these characters vividly as we observe mundane objects in the environment. The Fullbright Company exploits the familiar setting to let the player piece together the images themselves. Ostensibly, there isn't much going on but found within those little items are bountiful depths of exposition that can easily be lost if ignored.
That’s the most interesting thing, though. If you sweep past most of the game’s surroundings, the story points here can easily fall flat. Like real life, if you choose to ignore certain details you will ultimately be left out. Gone Home makes it the player’s responsibility to experience the story through investigating and observing on their own initiative. That’s not to say it doesn't try to encourage you with the game’s atmosphere: It gives you little to nothing in terms of context at first, intriguing you to do the detective work. The “horror” you feel in Gone Home is a slightly deceitful tool enticing you to investigate further. But ultimately it’s still up to you whether you soak in the full beauty of the Greenbriar’s home -- and the people within it -- or not, to which the game says “So be it.” It’s brave in a sense that it refuses to hold your hand, as it would be a detriment to the overall narrative.
After completing Gone Home there’s a strong sense of fondness that you get after participating in its universe. It makes you feel apart of the family, and by the end you’ll find yourself wishing it wasn't over. The writing is so endearing and so touching that it’s hard to let go of your new second home. The story it tells is a relatable one -- a real one -- and you have to actively invest in it, which makes the payoff so much more powerful. By the end it didn't feel like I played a game, it felt more like I walked into my old home and learned a lot of new things about my family. Gone Home is simple, and that’s where the beauty is. The Fullbright Company did something amazing by making a game that wasn't plagued by the feature-focused mindset that we commonly see in game design. It’s a game that works because no one came into it thinking they had to adhere to a certain criteria. Gone Home had a story to tell and it just so happened to be told in an interactive way.