[Game Review] Gone Home

Note: This review contains spoilers!


The walking simulator is a contentious game genre.  Descendants of the Adventure game, walking simulators usually create a narrow path for you to follow as the environment lays out plot details obvious as billboards or a voice over spells out someone's internal crisis or some such thing.  For most, it isn't a game, it's a ride.  Games such as Jazzpunk play with this formula to give you at least some interactivity or to wallpaper the level with jokes and references, but if there is no objective or system to play, then there is no game and therefore no reason for it to exist for a lot of people.  Objective seems to be the opportune word here: what counts as an objective and what doesn't?  After all, the objective of a walking simulator is to get to the end, to find the notes that tell the story, and to experience the story.  There are many shooters that virtually disallow death on normal difficulty by making it insanely easy to recover, implying the whole objective of the game is to walk to the end of various hallways and experience the set pieces.  When you consider some people think Gone Home isn't a game but Uncharted (great game series in its own right) gets to count themselves in, you realize that the inclusion of the death state and a couple easy targets to click at are all a game needs to be considered a game.  Basically, can you fail?  But then there are also puzzle games.  Myst is the game most like the modern walking simulator, in my opinion, and Myst is a puzzle game with no fail state other than to stop playing.  In Myst, however, the game gives you an indication that the puzzle has been solved.  The game tells you you've done right, unlike any personal real life puzzle you'll ever find.  In Gone Home, the puzzle is solved in your head.  Walking simulators are games where the objective is to present you with an artistic shape of things: to follow a character's struggle, or their relationship to someone else, or to otherwise explore some story or conflict through environment alone.  Done wrong, and this can be one of the most boring genres of games out there.  Done correctly, however, and the unique experiences only games can provide come together to create something interactive, but not in the traditional sense.

In Gone Home, you play as Katie Greenbriar, home from traveling abroad after college or between semesters.  Only, home isn't exactly right.  Your family - father Terrance, mother Janice, and sister Sam - have moved into your great uncle's old house in Oregon.  When you arrive at the foreign abode, you see a note taped to the door from your sister Sam, apologizing she couldn't see you, and that one day you will see her again.  She tells you not to tell mom and dad what you find inside.  This ominous beginning starts the personal journey of Sam, your younger sister who comes to terms with her sexuality with a girl named Lonnie, and the struggles she faces as she tries not to make sense of how she feels, so much as how she can express how she feels in the ways all teenagers do.  Sam isn't the only one with stories to uncover, as documents, letters, and objects swollen with meaning and implication begin to shape a household of people each dealing with their own issues of growth and connection.  Terrance is a failed author, having written two failed books about a time traveling agent who must stop the assassination of JFK, and is getting tired of his job as a stereo reviewer for an audiophile magazine.  Terrance's detachment from his work has gotten him in trouble with his editor, in trouble with his alcohol consumption, and has alienated his wife Janice.  Janice is doing well at her job as a forest ranger in Oregon, but the distance between her and Terrance is beginning to take its toll, especially as a new ranger, the studly Rick, has transferred to her station to help with a controlled burn project.  Janice exchanges letters with a friend of hers, talking about her percieved connection to Rick, a conflict that mirrors with her many failed attempts at engaging with her husband.  Even the story of Terrance's Uncle, whose house they've just moved into, comes into focus, implying a dark past that involved Terrance and may be contributing to his sudden sinking away from his family.  Sam's story is the central pull to Gone Home, but the periphery stories create layers and overlap that both enhance and contextualize it.

Sam's story shares two traits that mirror that of her parents': her falling in love with Lonnie and her apparent gift at writing.  Sam's writings litter the house, underneath couches, in folders, or hidden away in closeted Lisa Frank-styled binders that provoke a more feminine image now left behind.  She can be sardonic, such as her bloated essay on sexual reproduction (Katie's from her high school years, by contrast, is the model essay, with only pertinent information and dry style), or they can be deeply expressive, such as her reoccurring story about a pirate captain and her first mate, a man turned to a woman who is her best friend.  The most prominent writing of Sam's is her journal, left for you at the end of the game.  Throughout, however, in a non-linear twist, you will hear excerpts from the journal directed at you when interacting with objects, letters, and pictures scattered around the house.  She remembers moments where she felt fear and tension over wanting to overflow with expression, of wanting to say something but never being able to, or moments of deep connection and the marvel of feeling it for the first time.  It's powerful coming-of-age stuff, and it creates an immediately relatable tether between you and Sam, regardless of who you are or your orientation.  I'm a straight male and I knew exactly those feelings she expressed, regardless of their context.  Sam's father is the opposite.  He is a failed writer, and his writings are decidedly strange, not so expressive, but rather repressive.  In Terrance's novels, the protagonist goes back in time to stop a horrible event, something with much darker connotations as you learn of his Uncle and what his actions could be.  While the game never outright says so, it is heavily implied that the Uncle molested Terrance.  The Uncle was the owner of a local pharmacy, one that is said to have been popular with kids for its soda fountain.  The Uncle also sold the pharmacy to his assistant for an extremely low sum, which the assistant said was between him and the Uncle.  The Uncle also writes to Terrance's mother about "staying away from my temptations", but wishing to see his heir (Terrance) again, as a man, and to apologize.  So, it doesn't exactly give much wiggle room for interpretation, and more importantly, it shows Terrance with a past he may be less than prepared to confront.  Terrance does get a redemption, however, his books being republished by an outsider art publisher that inspires him to return to the book series, only this time the subject being about the protagonist confronting himself rather than being the hero saving the day.  Terrance's struggle with writing is an odd contrast to Sam's seemingly effortless creativity and expression.  Terrence has notes littered around for his various books, criticisms from publishers and his father, where Sam has pieces of easily understood (if unfinished) writings all over the place.

Sam may be more immediately able to express herself, but it doesn't seem to help her any.  She struggles with person-to-person expression, second guessing what Lonnie may be feeling and hating herself for not saying enough when Lonnie is absolutely clear with her.  When Lonnie and Sam do finally get together, it becomes this blissful haze for a moment before Lonnie reveals that she wants to join the military after high school, following in the footsteps of her family.  Interestingly, Lonnie is anti-authority and a fan of riot grrrl bands and 'zines, about the harshest contrast to military life as possible.  Sam feels the same, and realizing that this amazing person she's fallen in love with will be gone for years fills her with dread and melancholy.  Janice is in a much different, yet structurally similar arch.  With her husband becoming more and more distant, she's trying to spark any kind of fire with him best she can.  Her planner shows cooking classes, ballroom dancing events, and other couples engagements - always canceled.  Terrance just won't take, and she laments over it to her friend, who encourages fantasies about Rick until Terrance can come back around.  Rick has the same interests as Janice  - even taking her to the Earth, Wind, and Fire concert when his out-of-town girlfriend says she doesn't want to go - and Janice is implied to have taken a flirty stance with the whole dynamic.  Janice acknowledges Rick has a girlfriend she's never met, but seems to marginalize her position between them more and more.  That is, until she gets the invite to his wedding.  The calendar has written in red that they are going to have to miss it, so she can go on a couples counseling trip with Terrance.  The timing was more than likely hastily chosen, because it overlapped with your coming home - something you wouldn't have thought would be forgotten.  Janice may not have gotten quite the redemptive ending she needed, but she is taking the healthy steps towards coping and improving things, something Terrance may be more receptive to now that he has returned to writing novels.  Sam, on the other hand, is in the difficult position of dealing with her first major loss, something she is not at all well equipped at doing.  Sam is lucky (or unlucky, as it may turn out), because Lonnie decides last minute not to join the military, and the two run off together, with just Sam's notebook left behind for you as a confession.

Gone Home accomplishes the above story - and much more - with a very simple mechanic: walk, read, and examine objects.  It's the walking simulator basics, but in a game where exploring the history of the house's inhabitants is the focus, anything else would be a distraction for the sake of being "gamey".  The game is about environment as storyteller, allowing objects to give you the necessary information in order to piece things together.  Books on how to revitalize your sex life as a couple can be found in the parent's room; a painting with Terrance's father is missing a cutout where the face is; pins, cassette tapes, and 'zines made by Lonnie and Sam can be found strewn about in hidden rooms and hallways behind secret doors, places they made their refuge; objects imply and contrast, creating character and place all at once.  Gone Home isn't what some people traditionally call a game, but to consider game's as something other than participatory art with a series of qualifiers is starting to draw lines that really don't need to exist, especially when it means marginalizing something so expressive as this. 




9.0