Category: Student Posts

Gone Home is a good game which combines “room escape game” and “plots game” together. The music and the sounds of light create a lonely and little scary setting. Also, the visual effects are both captivating and creepy. After I finished reading the green book(the last scene) on the second floor, I realized that I could have “win” the game in just a few minutes. However, the purpose of playing this game is not “win”, which means get to the final step. Instead, the core of this game is to discover the stories behind each person.

When I was dropped in front of a locked door in the beginning, the horrifying lightening, background music and setting made me think it was a horror game, in which maybe the family members have died in the house. Thus, I turned off the music and sound effects. However, as I picked up things and got more familiar with the setting, I started to consider it as a discovery game. Therefore, I was assuming that the end of the game is that the family members prepared a big surprise for Katie to welcome her back. As I stepped into the house, I barely see anything. I turned on the lights and found that I was locked out by doors on both left and right sides. So I was eager to find the keys to go to the next step and see what was going to happen. During the process of finding keys, I discovered letters, radios, and postcards. I started to forget my mission of getting through the game. Instead, I engaged in reading pieces of story and evidences of what has happened during the last year. The first-person perspective really had me immerse in the scenario. Through all the letters and pieces of evidence, I gradually knew the personality of all family members and stories behind them. The major story is about Sam, Katie’s younger sister. Sam found herself fall in love with a social girl, Lonnie. Sam’s parents were against the inappropriate relationship. And through the letters written by Sam and Lonnie’s photo in Sam’s bedroom, I saw that Sam was struggling with the society (including school, peers,and parents) and was wondering whether this relationship had a future. In the end, Sam eloped with Lonnie.

While the player plays as Katie, the story itself is really about Sam’s life over the last year. At last, I understand that the title of the game should be “GONE HOME”, rather than GO HOME. The harmonious  family was torn to pieces and GONE, maybe forever. Thus, what I learned from this game is that in our lives, we need to understand and forgive our family members, which leads to a long-lasting happy HOME.

When my character first walked up the stairs to the mansion, where most of the story takes place, I legitimately thought that I had stepped into a horror scenario. This is partly because of the very peculiar art form, semi-realistic but with a some characteristics of cartoon work, and partly because of the noticeably dramatic lighting as seen in the living room above. As you can see, the artist for the game utilized a photorealism for textures, but stuck with a low polygon count for the actual models. The result is an effect that has to deal with the uncanny, which is to say, it is not necessarily scary, but definitely unsettling.

The story is fantastic. I think the producer had a very solid vision for what he wanted to do with this game. I think the details used to further the story were extremely well placed and meaningful for providing information to the player. I think that the storyline was itself intuitive and accessible but was not built upon simplicity. Overall, then, this work should be placed on a relatively high pedestal, right?

Here is where I find the game lacking and this derives mostly from a comparison with other “video games”. The gameplay is focused almost entirely on the plot, no doubt about that. No story, no “Gone Home”. My problem is that with such an emphasis on the plot of the game, and with such a narrow focus on the ultimate message, the player is only given the illusion of any sort of freedom. Sure, we can walk around anywhere we want, but there is only one way to progress through the game: finding the logical order of notes and journals so that the narrator will continue to tell the story.

There are also some design issues that, compared to other games, Gone Home does poorly. We are presented with only three interactions: walking, picking objects up, and putting objects down. In some sense, these actions may seem repetitive because the character is in a very small space (a house) compared to other games that use scale as a hooking factor. The physics engine that is used to calculate pathing for objects while thrown is heavily inaccurate and feels clunky. The game, lengthwise, is extremely short, about an hour and a half for new players and offers no repeatability since the story remains the same. For twenty dollars, Gone Home offers little to justify its price.

In the end, however, the game seems to hard to push forth its agenda onto the player which limits the developer’s ability to put the player in a position of power, resulting in an intriguing situation but ultimately dull gameplay experience. In some cases, and I certainly agree with this, Gone Home could be called an “interactive cinematic” rather than an actual video game.

The video game “Gone Home” starts off by showing an image of a big house, which turns out to be the house of the narrator, located in between trees. This image of a grand house reminds me of typical haunted houses full of mysteries that we see in scary movies. If you take a look at the image more carefully, you can notice that there is only one room with the lights turned on. The low, heavy background music plays a part in creating a creepy mood. The time and the background cannot be neglected. It is 1:15 in the morning, and the narrator has come back from the Europe trip. In the background, there is a heavy rain and thunderstorm, a great setting which creates a heavy, scary and covert atmosphere. I would not be surprised if the ghost or zombie comes out of nowhere during the game.

This game is peculiar in a sense that it is the first person narrator but in a confused manner. There are many first person narrator games out in public, but majority of them, as far as I know, have clear instructions and can be easily followed through the written message or the verbal voice. Though there are written messages and the verbal voice in this game, they are not as clear as other games I have played. Also, the “instructions” or clues you can get are not given, but from the various things the narrator picks up as the narrator moves around. To illustrate, when the game first started, the narrator was standing in front of the door of her house; I was confused with what to do with the narrator. The narrator was in the closed area, and the way out was through the door, but it was locked. I did not know that I had to look for key until I actually found it, because there wasn’t any message or sign to look for the key. Normally, most games I have played give direct hints about what to do in the beginning. The only message we get in the very beginning in “Gone Home” is the letter from Sam posted in front of the door which says do not look for Sam herself. Unclear instructions challenge us in a sense that we do not know how the plot of the game will unfold. It enforces us to pay attention to all the details of the game we encounter.

Even though the only message in the very beginning tells us not to look for Sam, it arises enough curiosity for us to put ourselves in the shoes of the narrator and continue searching for clues to find Sam. In fact, there is another mystery within the mystery, bringing us to delve into what really happens to Sam. In general, “Gone Home” is the type of game I have not played before. Though unclear instructions are challenging, I found it intriguing; I was surprised by myself that I was so immersed in the role of the narrator looking for Sam.

Returning home after a year around Europe, only to find…?

When Kaitlin Greenbriar comes home after traveling for a year in Europe, she is greeted with a massive thunderstorm, an empty house, and a note from “Sam” taped on the front door. The player beings playing knowing little about Katie herself, other than the information printed on her passport. Further investigation (aka snooping through personal files, newspaper clippings, cassette tapes, secret passages, etc) gives more insight on who she is– a track star, a check-plus student, and a trouble-free daughter– as well as more knowledge on her family members.

As an interactive game, Gone Home does an excellent job of relaying information to the player. Through various letters from publishers, the player, along with Kaitlin, learns that Terry Greenbriar, Kaitlin’s father, is a well-known writer who wrote about the JFK assassination. And through meticulous speculation, the player can find Terry’s secret man stash. But it turns out that everyone in this family has something to hide. Letters from her roommate way back when show how Kaitlin’s mother, Janice, might be in a relationship with someone named “Rich.” Kaitlin’s younger sister, Samantha, however, holds the biggest secret.

The main mechanism used to introduce Samantha is a voice narration of her diary addressed to Kaitlin which establishes a strong sense of character for Sam, even though we never meet her in person. Other clues around the house affirm type of person she is: an imaginative writer, a sassy teenager, a rebel. Perhaps the most profound part of the play-through was discovering the relationship between Lonnie and Sam. Never once did Sam explicitly mention being a lesbian, but her actions and the clues she left behind (the notes they scribbled together, Lonnie’s recordings, the leftovers of their secret ghost hunts) all point to her feelings for Lonnie. A small, but prominent detail is the heart-shaped necklaces Lonnie and Sam bought. It first appeared as a scrap of paper in the basement, but developed into a picture of the two of them holding their necklaces, to the end credits with the pieces of their necklaces connected to each other. Although one may not expect much from a first person narrative game, Gone Home develops an unpredictable story that warms the heart of the player.

A telephone message was heard at the beginning of the game that a twentyish women Katie is going to fly home tomorrow. The message let us built a little background for the game and set ourselves to be the role character, Katie.

The story was set in 1995 and Katie went home and accidentally found out that no one is at home. The only things that  given are the identity document of Katie and a note left on the door by Sam. The notes said never try to find her and she and I would meet someday. My first thought was that Sam was in trouble, such as being kidnapped or being threatened by some bad guy. I found the key of the door in the storage box outside the door.  There is no dialogue or conversation in the game so I was totally lost in the first. After working around the house, grabbing the stuff and reading the notes that scatting in each room or on the floor. I began to draw a blurring picture of the family. Because there is no pre-information given, I tried to check each article that came up with. The house was big that contains two floors and appear in a vivid design. I have to open the light before I can see clearly the arrangement of the room. 

The weather in this game was set to be heavy storm rain and the music was also scary. When I walked around, I can hear my footsteps which often made me anxious, thinking of something or someone would show up in a sudden. I think this is a great way to keep game players concentrate in the whole game.

Sam, my sister, her journal was also gone along the game. The voice would emerge whenever I found something related or important. The journal was between Sam and her “friend” Lonnie. She described the relationship between Lonnie and herself in details. Sam developed a relationship with Lonnie but was not supported by our parents, leaving her in disappointment and depressed. As I rambling in the  house and glean information from small things, such as postcards, books, letters and so on, and hearing Sam’s journal, I came to realize Sam hide her secrets in the basement, where we used to play when we were young. Founding the key and discovering the secret passage, I finally read the notes Sam left that she was in an elopement with her girlfriend “Lonnie.”