Gone Home

"Gone Home" was a really interesting game. It's what one might call a narrative exploration game. I'd never played one of those before, but for those who don't know what that is, it's a game where there are no enemies to fight, merely a space to explore, and a story to uncover.

You are a 21 year old girl, Katie, returning home from a year long trip to Europe. Your family has moved to a new house since you've been away, and when you arrive there for the first time, no one's home, and your sister has left a perplexing note on the door.

As you make your way through the house, you'll find notes and clues that you can piece together to figure out where the hell everybody has gone to. Like I mentioned, there are no enemies to battle in this game, there's no beasties going to jump out to scare you, but the game still manages to keep you on edge at all times. Making your way through this eerily empty house while a thunderstorm rages on outside, you fully expect something to be lurking in the shadows. Every dark room or area I entered, my first priority was to find a light to turn on. Every creak of the house kept me on high alert.

And it's surprising how compelling a game that's based on simply reading bits of paper can be. As you explore the house, you'll start getting a sense of who each character is and hypothesizing on what happened. Those hypothesis will probably be wrong, and you might get them wrong a couple times as this game is quite good on playing with your expectations.

"Gone Home" is a fairly short game, being only a couple hours long, but you'd do well not to rush through it. Entire character storylines can go over your head if you don't piece together all the data that's available. Take your time, explore everything thoroughly, and enjoy the interesting experience that these developers crafted.