Year after year indie games are growing in popularity and competing with the biggest names in the industry. Whether it’s through their gameplay or story mechanics, indies are challenging what players consider the core values of games. With The Fullbright Company’s Gone Home, players are treated to a distinctly unique experience that creates some of the best characterization seen throughout all of gaming.
Set in the mid 90’s and told through the eyes of an eldest daughter returning home from abroad, players are dropped off at a house to discover a family’s inner workings through their various notes, letters, mix-tapes and keepsakes. Like a child visiting a friend’s house for a sleepover (with the permission to rummage through their drawers) players are able to put together these familiar objects and ideas to discover both the environment and the ways in which the family relates to one another without ever speaking to one of them. The narrative spins a deep tale of love and integrity, using these concepts to show where one finds themselves in them can have lasting effects on those they consider closest to them. The house itself also delivers a unique sense of tension, almost purposely hindering the will to continue discovering just what has been happening inside it’s walls.
Whether you consider it a game or an interactive art piece, Gone Home delivered an experience that was greatly missing in the vernacular of gaming.
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