Number 38: Gone Home
Gone Home is a polarizing game; when it came out, people argued whether it was even a game or not. Critics of the game derisively called it a “walking simulator,” a term which has since been co-opted and become one of my favorite genres. The game centers around exploring a home and looking for clues as to the whereabouts of its inhabitants. You play as a college girl returning to her family’s new home after a year overseas. No one is home, but there’s a note on the door from your little sister saying “We’ll see each other again one day; don’t come looking for me.”
From there you’re walking through a huge empty house at night during a thunderstorm, looking in drawers and listening to answering machine messages trying to figure out where your family is while hoping for the best and expecting the worst. The developers did a great job of making the house feel like a real, lived-in pace. There are hand-written notes stuck to the fridge, empty pizza boxes in the living room, and shoeboxes of old photos and postcards.
Gone Home felt like a slow burn horror game for awhile. You’re not sure what has happened to the family, and you are exploring an unfamiliar old house during a storm at night. Lights flicker, lightning flashes outside the windows, and the sound of rain is your constant companion. There’s even a spooky basement. I spent the first half of the game waiting for something to jump out at me every time I opened a door. Gone Home actually made me jump at one point when, going up the stairs from the basement, a light fixture hanging from the ceiling briefly looked like a figure at the top of the stairs.
You begin to discover that each member of the family is going through their own shit; the lion’s share of the story relates to Katie’s little sister Samantha, who has been having trouble adjusting to life at her new school (the family moved here recently, after her great uncle bequeathed this house to her father Terry). Terry is a struggling author whose troubles seem to have worsened since moving to the new house. Katie and Samantha’s mother Janice is having some romantic feelings toward a subordinate at work.
The main story beats belong to Samantha, and that’s whose story first comes to mind with Gone Home - rightly so. But there’s an awful lot in the margins of Gone Home, details that would be very easily missed; this is not a game to run through.* I’m mostly referring to Terry’s back story here. It’s obvious to anyone who played this game that Katie’s father is a not-terribly-successful author who penned a short series of novels revolved around the JFK assassination. One might find a critical letter from Terry’s father after the publication of Terry’s first book and assume that his father’s disapproval might be responsible for Terry’s struggles.
What you may miss is the history between Terry and his late uncle Oscar, whose house the family now resides in. Oscar molested Terry at a young age (right around the time of the JFK assassination) and spent the rest of his life in isolation, trying unsuccessfully to make amends. This information isn’t all in one place, nor is it plainly spelled out. You have to piece it together from letters, news articles, and journal entries scattered throughout the house. It’s entirely missable and its absence wouldn’t be conspicuous if you happened to not piece this together. It’s this sort of optional content that I love in games, an experience where digging deeper rewards the player with a greater understanding of the game world.
The star of the show here, though, is Samantha’s story of being the outcast new kid in town, befriending and slowly falling in love with the rebellious punk rock girl at school named Lonnie. The writers did a masterful job of capturing the experience of falling in love for the first time - the uncertainty, the nervousness, the all-encompassing fire of it, and the depths of despair at seeing it drifting away from you. All this is done through excellent writing that feels honest and not condescending, and some fantastic voice acting. Gone Home managed to make this 40 year old father of 3 tear up over the story of a high school girl discovering love and finding her own sexuality.
There’s heartbreak in this story for sure. It’s there in some degree with every character in the game.** But there is hope and redemption here too. We learn that Terry and Janice are away on a couples counseling retreat working on their marriage. And we learn at the end what became of Samantha; much to Terry and Janice’s dismay and denial (another expertly written bummer in this game is Sam’s parents insisting that she is simply going through a phase, hasn’t met the right boy yet, and that she simply doesn’t know WHAT she wants) Lonnie and Samantha fall in love, but it’s short-lived as Lonnie is due to ship out and join the Army after school is out.
The final area you visit in the game is the attic, and the signs leading you there suggest that you might find your little sister’s body there. I hesitated at the foot of that ladder for a long moment before confronting the scene. This is where you learn that Lonnie got off the bus to basic training, called Sam, and they ran off together. I’m not ashamed to say that this made me full-on ugly cry, sitting alone in the dark at my PC after the kids had gone to bed.***
I’ve avoided the dreaded old “Can video games be ART???” topic. Semantic discussions are boring as shit, and what art is and what it means is different for everyone. I know that Gone Home (and Journey before it) made me feel things in a way that no other medium has. It was a special experience that I will never forget.
* Unless you’re after that achievement ** Except for Katie, who we know little about beyond “She was a model student” *** And again days later when I found the soundtrack and saw the track titled I Said “Yes”