Gone Home

Gone Home is primarily a game of exploration, played from a first-person perspective yet featuring no combat whatsoever. You take on the role of Kaitlin, an American girl in her early twenties who has just returned to her family’s house after travelling for a year. There’s seemingly no-one at home, though, and you have to find out why. That is as much plot as I’ll mention in this review.

Your brain knows this isn’t a real place, but it also knows that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth exploring.

The meat of the game is searching each room of the house for information and clues, often found by rifling through drawers and cabinets. The detail is sometimes dizzying and always striking. Handwritten notes are just that – jotted down on paper and then scanned-in. Assuming you’re playing with decent graphics settings and at a high resolution, the game is frequently photo-realistic. However, the genius isn’t in the fidelity of what you’re looking at; the personality that these inanimate items convey is crucial. In Gone Home simple notes uncrumpled from the base of a bin might make you feel like you want to cry, which is pretty special. The game never makes hunting for answers seem like a chore. For some, it might be a sort of voyeuristic thrill that carries them from room to room but for me it was the simple joy of prodding at such a densely authentic virtual place that was so rewarding.

Beyond the stunning environmental detail, both the lighting and sound design contribute subtly but considerably. Understated yet wise design judgement is in evidence everywhere. Particular attention has seemingly been paid to predicting players’ paths through the house, with certain objects naturally drawing your gaze depending on which door you enter a room from. Clearly, there must be contrivances. Lightning conveniently claps at suitably creepy moments, and some older documents seem more than a little out of place sat atop piles on busy counters. Concessions to function over form don’t break the spell, though. Your brain knows this isn’t a real place, but it also knows that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth exploring.

As mentioned, I won’t say anything more about the nature of what you’ll discover searching the house. I will say that the destination is well worth the journey. Sometimes games come along that mark a line in the sand and change things. Some people are saying that about Gone Home but I think it remains to be seen just how influential this game can be. Perhaps it will open the commercial door for similarly ambitious and mature games to hit the shelves that are compelling through nothing more than atmosphere and narrative force. Or perhaps it’s destined merely to be a fondly-recalled curio that wanders into your idle mind in a few years time. Either way, it’s difficult not to love it in the here and now.

It will take most players around three hours to complete, with some potentially drawn back in to find anything they missed. If the premise sounds intriguing, and you’re comfortable paying the current price of just under £15 for that much lifespan, go for it. However, don’t assume that because this is an indie game you’ll be able to run it on a low-spec system. This is a relatively demanding game, chiefly because it is dripping in high-res textures, so you’ll need a decent rig to maintain a playable frame rate.