Adventure Gamers - Forums

I finished this game yesterday, and I enjoyed it. Also, lately i have been enjoying shorter games, as those are the only games I can play and not make my wife or newborn daughter angry :p
[spoiler]I enjoyed Sam’s story, and the end was satisfactory, though a bit anti-climatic.
Gamewise: in order to not miss anything, i carefully picked up anything, examining it thoroughly, and I checked every spot while crawling. I was kind of disappointed this didn’t yield anything useful. No real sleuthing was required unfortunately.
Also, I hoped for more interactivity: that you could play more records, read actual books, play actual games, etc. Those would have been nice added features.
I totally missed the whole abuse thing with Terrence. I thought the letter in his uncle safe referred to that his uncle was his real father… To be honest, this side story is a bit to much for me: unnecessary. http://clockworkworlds.com/post/58411117679/the-transgression-you-can-do-better
The ghost-house, witchcraft, Ouija board, satanism spin to Sam’s story line was also a bit off in my opinion.
And finally, when I went through the house later in the game, it was funny to see what mess I made. Her parents must be totally annoyed when they come back from their trip [/spoiler]

I found Eurogamer’s review of Gone Home summed things up best. The world which Fullbright Company created is the best part of Gone Home. The story feels less interesting than the way in which the game tells the story and the house which you inhabit for the game’s 2 hour duration. Even though I appreciated Gone Home and felt very involved in the game from start to finish, I felt it had issues which stood out.

I think the problem is that the story essentially guides the narrative but the exploration is the key part and as such the real story is you exploring the house, not Sam’s situation. The dilemma is that they co-exist and kind of move in and out of being attached and detached.

In the closing moments where the game becomes story focused, you realise the story has always been secondary to your experiencing of it - which naturally comes through exploration and your interaction with it and that becomes effectively zero when the big reveal takes place. As such, it can’t help but feel like a let down because the actual content of the story was never a key part of the experience.

I think I appreciated Gone Home most of all for its world-building, themes and story-telling but not the story itself. It’s a very interesting game though and well worth checking out.

Half a price on Steam now. Bought. Can’t wait to try it out this weekend, probably don’t have time tonight or tomorrow .

Played it through and had a hard time deciding if I should give it a 4 or 4½. In the end I decided to be generous. Reading this thread from the start I realise I missed some things, didn’t even notice a safe . Am I blind?

I was also very interested in the subplots, might have another look around to find out the things I missed and perhaps use the commentary at the same run.

Anyway, if Dear Esther had Gone Home’s interactivity, it would have been a 5 star game for me. Just walking around and not being able to even collect those ‘journal pieces’ was bit of a letdown for me, even thought I’m not exactly one crying out for complex gameplay. To the Moon also got 5 stars from me. Personally I found that story a bit more moving and of course I’m a sucker for scifi. Gone Home could’ve been a 5 star game even with the current subject and setting, they worked really well, in the end I just felt that I still wanted something more.

Kurufinwe - 13 February 2014 05:43 AM

I’m currently playing Gone Home (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I’m late to the party), and it’s making Steam get very judgemental about my gaming.

who would have guessed Steam had such a sense of humour.

Just checked my own tag recommendations, unfortunately they are quite sensible and not the slightest bit funny, though with a notable lack of the word “adventure”.

I’m two years late, but I finally got the game (thank you, wilco!!!), and I found a couple of hours to play it yesterday.
Unfortunately, I was so maniacally thorough that “a couple of hours” weren’t enough. I spent a little over 4 hours to finish the game, and consequently only went to bed at 2.30 am on a work day.

Anyway, I love the game! It’s a very touching story with a surprising amount of depth if you put in the effort of piecing it all together. That’s actually quite astonishing for a game that consists almost entirely of looking at scraps of paper lying around.
But I loved finding out as much as I could about the characters, and not just about Sam, but the parents as well.

All the clues are intricately laid out throughout the house, and the only thing that could give me pause was the fact that we encounter most of these clues somewhat chronologically. That means these people have scraps of paper lying around for months. Slobs.

It also showed me how much OCD I actually have. All the rooms were tidier when I had passed through (no more markers lying on the floor, no more glasses overturned, a lot of the trash put together, and all the lights turned off and all the doors closed). Apparently I’m more of a neat freak than I thought. Which is odd, because I’m not a neat freak at all.

When I found a note that scolded Sam for leaving all the lights on, and saying she’s “as bad as her sister”, I wanted to add “as her sister used to be”.

Despite the game keeping me on my toes with the horror setting and the noises (and the single weak jump scare), it’s above all a story about love that engrossed and made me feel. In fact, seeing the red in the bath tub made me go “oh, no” before I noticed the cause, and I absolutely DREADED going up to the attic after the final couple of notes. I was relieved with the ending, and I’m keeping a positive outlook on the entire aftermath. With Katie present, the parents can be eased into the idea of their daughter being lesbian more (and Sam will be backed, which is important too!), the parents themselves are obviously getting their own relationship back in order, the dad’s found his drive to write again (and is using it to work out the issues that haunt him from his past), and I’m absolutely convinced that Sam and Lonnie will come to their senses once they sleep on it, and will be back the following day.
Well, that’s how it plays out in my mind, and frankly, imo the story deserves it…

The game also comes with the bonus of having terrific voice acting (Sam’s diary entries are top notch!), and just walking through the house and seeing all the 90s references nearly made me waxing nostalgic. Having spent my own teen years in the 90s, this game provided a real blast from the past!

Superb game!



And as far as the discussion about whether or not this is a game goes: instead of defending that this is in fact a game, I’m now more prone to simply ask “does it matter?”.

This is just a simple story, told superbly.



As an aside: it kinda also drives home exactly why I liked the PDAs in Stasis so much: I just love the backstories!