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Gone Home | My So Called Life + System Shock | BUY THIS GAME NOW IT IS OUT
TychoCelchuuu
PIGEONRegistered User regular
PIGEONRegistered User regular
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5KJzLsyfBIWhat is Gone Home?
It's 1995. You come home from a year in Japan to find your family's house seemingly abandoned. A note taped to the front door, from your younger sister, tells you not to poke around trying to find out what's going on. Obviously, you go inside and try to figure out what happened. That's the game.
So It's a Horror Game? A Monster Ate Everyone?
No, it's just a game about exploring and about piecing together a narrative by looking at the sorts of items that people use to live their lives. You can pick up items, look at them, put them back down, move them around the house, and so on. The game is not full of puzzles or linear sections - you go wherever you want in the house and find (or fail to find) whatever parts of the story that you end up finding, although you do have to find ways to open a few locked doors. There aren't multiple endings, but there are multiple middles, because there's so much stuff that no player will find everything on their first playthrough. What happened? Why? What kinds of people are your family members? What kind of person are you? You'll learn more (or less) about this depending on what you find and what conclusions you draw.
What Kind of Wacky People are Making This Game? It Doesn't Have Any Guns, For God's Sake!
Gone Home is a product from the Fullbright Company, a game development studio started by Steve Gaynor, Johnnemann Nordhagen, and Karla Zimonja. They worked on BioShock 2 and were also responsible for Minerva's Den, the pretty fantastic BioShock 2 DLC. Here's a really interesting stream where Steve Gaynor plays through Minerva's Den and talks about it.
Additional Information
- Rock Paper Shotgun Wot I Think (They like it)
- Dev blog with stuff like:
- A post about the 'modifiers' in the game
- A post about the game's soundtrack
- Article about the development studio that made the game, The Fullbright Company
- Polygon Review (10/10)
- Giant Bomb Review (5/5)
- GameRanx (?) Review (10/10)
- Paste Magazine Review (9.5/10)
- Joystiq Review (4/5)
- Game Informer Review (8.50/10.00)
- Edge Review (9/10)
- Digital Trends Review (5/5)
- Kotaku Review (It made them cry)
- Culture Mass Review (10/10)
- Game Front Review (90/100)
- Gaming Trend Review (95/100)
- Tech Hive Review (5/5)
- Eurogamer Review (6/10)
- IGN Review (9.5/10)
- PA Report Review (A "must play")
- Giant Bomb Quick Look
- "Why I Like Gone Home" by Anthony Burch, games writer
- Creative Restriction and the New Realism
- Spoiler free Errant Signal video on the game although he recommends playing the game before watching the video
- Rock Paper Shotgun interview with Gaynor and Part two
- Impressions on Rock Paper Shotgun
- Preview by PC Gamer's Tom Francis
- Rob Zacny's hands-on at PCGamesN
- Eurogamer preview
TychoCelchuuu on
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edit: Like, they've mentioned a presumed lack of the supernatural in this game. Just make it about a person (me) going home and having the house be abandoned. That's all I need.
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OK just kidding I know nobody reads the OP. But yes there is zero supernatural stuff in the game.
why then would you ever play it
supernatural stuff is tits
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
I wonder how they are going to pull off tension and forward mementium without horror.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
WOW
PS:The game is interesting by the way
That's not really a comforting thought if they're trying to go for non-supernatural, non-creepy.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
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edit: okay ignore what I wrote below, the game is confirmed to have no enemies or any other characters you interact with or anything like that. Thank God. It's a legitimate narrative experience, not a "don't get eaten" simulator. Exactly what I want. Anyone who wants their fill of first person horror exploration will get to play the Amnesia sequel coming soonish. Gone Home is for those of us who want '90s nostalgia and interactive storytelling in a medium where most game developers can't see past the barrel of a gun when it comes to what they think a game should have. Here's the quote from their Facebook page: *******
Nothing I've seen about the game so far suggests that anyone was eaten by anything. If I had to guess I would say it was some sort of normal, real life drama, not something supernatural. But that's based entirely on what has been revealed so far and on what I'd prefer to be the case. If there is any supernatural stuff, they're hiding it 100% (because we've had zero hints of it).
Moreover, everything we have seen suggests that there was some kind of entirely normal drama that caused your family to pack up and leave - the game is going to be character and story driven based on the things you find (which suggests a grounded story that the player discovers organically rather than something driven by a malevolent force that pursues the player), the game ends when you decide to leave the house (what kind of horror game is it if you can just leave? I guess it could work, but still...), the game is based on finding and examining stuff in the house to piece together what happened and the game is very careful to make sure you feel like a normal person walking around a normal house (they added a way for you to place an item back the way you found it, for example, because playtesters felt like jerks when they were moving everything around after picking it up) which is hardly the sort of thing you'd have the time or inclination to do if a monster was trying to eat you, and although the house has a spooky, forlorn atmosphere, the screenshots seem to me to suggest mystery, intrigue, exploration, and a muted sadness rather than "this will scare the shit out of you."
They've said there won't be puzzles, except maybe a couple "find a key for this door" sort of things. A game without puzzles with some sort of supernatural monster would be sort of weird - you'd just shuffle around the house trying not to get eaten, I guess?
Of course, I might be wrong. But I'd be sad if I were wrong. If this just turns into some kind of "there's a monster in the house" game then I don't know if I'll be so excited about it. Gone Home, as I picture it, is one of the few games that takes seriously the idea of creating an interesting, emotionally compelling narrative that is told entirely through player agency and interaction. There aren't any cutscenes or quick time events or dialog trees where you select a response and hope your character says the right thing. It's all about learning about what happened to your family and learning about the kinds of people they are and the kind of person you are based on what you can infer from what you find. That's novel and that's interesting and not a lot of games do that. What's the last first person game you played that wasn't either about shooting people or solving puzzles or leveling up? What's the last time a game put you inside a character whose job it was to learn? That's what's unique about Gone Home and I don't want it to turn out to be some kind of Amnesia-but-without-puzzles game.
Gone Home will feature music from Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile.