Gone Home

[Gum]

http://thefullbrightcompany.com/gonehome/
By the Fullbright Company


Introduction
Gone Home is an exploration game which takes place in a Portland, Oregon home in the mid 90's which is empty. You take place as a 20 year old girl named Kaitlin Greenbriar who upon return on an vacation in Europe, she finds that her family is missing from her home.

Plot
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD
From Wikipedia.

On June 7th 1995, Kaitlin Greenbriar returns home not long after midnight on a stormy night after a year long around-the-world trip. She spots a note on the door from her sister, Samantha, telling her to not go looking for answers as to where she is. Upon returning home, Kaitlin realises nobody is home, not even her parents, so she investigates the house to find out where they all are. Through a series of letters written to Kaitlin in a journal from Sam over the year Kaitlin was abroad, Sam and her family moved to a large house. Sam then went to her new school and was eventually recognised as "The Psycho House Girl" after a man, who would be known as Sam's great uncle, once lived there before he died and everything was left to her father, even the house. During her first few weeks at school, Sam would spot a girl in senior year, sometimes dressed in an Army uniform. Unfortunately, Sam never really had any chances to speak to her. Sam once had a friend named Daniel, who was her neighbour before they moved, and Sam explains she was only his friend for his Nintendo games but realises she really should call him at some point about it.
Sam eventually gets to talk to the girl in the army uniform, named Lonnie, who has always wanted to see "the Psycho House", to which Sam obliges and invites her to come over the next day. Sam really feels like she's made a friend she can feel normal around. They share activities over the months, such as hair dying and watching Pulp Fiction. They eventually begin to form a strong relationship, with Lonnie claiming that Sam looks beautiful. After they watched Pulp Fiction, they shared a futon around a friends house. The lights went out, only for Lonnie to put her arm around Sam and tell her she likes her. Sam feels the same way but cannot bring herself to say anything afterwards. A few days later, Lonnie visits Sam in her home, but it's a weird encounter. Lonnie obviously feels uncomfortable about whatever is going through her mind, and kisses Sam. It's there that their relationship begins to bloom as they become girlfriends in secret.
Meanwhile in the family, as Katie looks through her parents things, she finds old books her dad, Terry, wrote and published, and learns how he had received great reviews but poor sales. The novels were based around the assassination of JFK and how the lead character knows the truth and must stop it. With that, his publishing firm drops his stories, but eventually they too fizzle out of business. Terry eventually gave up writing altogether, suffering from a brief writers block.
Sam and Lonnie become closer than ever, and they even began organizing ghost hunts around the house for fun. However, 2 months later, as Sam was beginning to make preparations for college in a creative writing course, Lonnie reminds Sam that she's shipping out on June 6th. Sam realizes she doesn't have long left with her, and Lonnie tells her they need to have as much fun as they could until then. After a while, Sam got into some trouble at school, and a lot of the time, Lonnie defended her over it all.
Sam's parents try to talk to her about her behaviour, and Sam eventually tells them of her and Lonnie's relationship, to which they put it down as "a phase", not believing and accepting that Sam is gay and says that she "just hasn't met the right boy". A few weeks later, Daniel visits Sam at her house to pick up his long lost Nintendo games. Sam feels sad about their old relationship and how they stopped being friends. She also explained about her fathers problems and her problems with Lonnie, to which Daniel gave her a hug and said that everything would be OK.
48 hours before Lonnie's departure ended up affecting Sam a lot. She wished she could go with Lonnie, but knew she couldn't. They spend one last night together and told each other that it would be the happiest night of their lives. For a while, they had fun, but eventually began crying after Sam claimed she wouldn't be able to live without Lonnie.
Sometime during that year, Terry received a letter from another publishing firm, telling him that they wanted to republish his 2 books under a new cover. Terry gleefully accepted, and even began to write a new mstar fishcript set 20 years after the second book, to which he eventually hoped the new publishing firm, which was only set on republishing old books for now, would release it. It is also explained that the reason the parents were not home is that they were on an anniversary trip, due to return home the next day, although a brochure for a Couples Counselling getaway taking place during the same period as the anniversary can be found.
The next morning arrives, and Lonnie is gone. Later on that day, Sam finds messages on the answer machine from an upset Lonnie. The phone rings a third time, to which Sam only just manages to answer.
Lonnie explains that she just couldn't do it and got off her bus to basic training and ran away. She asked Sam if she was up for running away with her, where they'll find a place of their own, to which Sam agrees. She packs up her things and drives to pick up Lonnie. In her final words, Sam apologizes to Katie that she can't see her in person, and hopes that Katie understands why she ran away once she reads the journal. Her final words are "I love you so much Katie. I'll see you again... someday. Love, Sam".

Why are you talking about this game?
If you're a crazy fan of indie games, you can see this has been blowing up all over the news. It even got a better score than The Last of Us on some gaming websites.
Yup, higher score than The Last of Us.
It even got an editor's choice award on Gamespot.

What I think
This game is setting the new standard for story-telling games, this is proof that there can be games with no gameplay at all and still be good.
I love the little details, to the art design, to the little fun 90's references like the SNES and certain movies on cassette tapes throughout gameplay. And when you complete the game, you feel empty, thinking what happened. You are like, so empty.

DISCUSS THIS GAME.

[Ad Bot]

[Unwritten Calender]

looks like tons of fun, i can clearly tell by the pictures and visuals

..at least give a link to the website or something
i know i can google it but topics like these should have the luxury of that

[Gum]

looks like tons of fun, i can clearly tell by the pictures and visuals

..at least give a link to the website or something
i know i can google it but topics like these should have the luxury of that

done

[Quote Story]

Is the game really that good?
On Metacritic, the user reviews have 17 good reviews, 4 mixed, and 17 bad reviews.

[Ceist]

Is the game really that good?
On Metacritic, the user reviews have 17 good reviews, 4 mixed, and 17 bad reviews.

the game is great. i love it. it has a really sweet story.

[Aniken 911]

This game is very much worth the 20 or so dollars for it. Trust me. The story is amazing.

[Tomcat]

On the other hand, I've heard it called "Gone Homo" by various other sources and that it has a stuffty and cliche story with only about an hour of gameplay. Is that true?

[MegaScientifical]

CinnamonToastKen has a video on it that's like 52 minutes long, although as a video it probably has cuts.

[Tomcat]

SPOILERS - Browsing the internet has given me the impression that it's a stuff game interactive story.
[SPOILER]It seems pretty obvious to me those very positive reviews are mostly explained by the Anitas in game journalism today, sadly.
The main reason : in this game, the homoloveuality of Sam -the teenager- is almost entirely irrelevant. Her love story is touching, even moving at times, but aside from the fact that her parents might get angry, had she been straight instead of gay, everything could have gone exactly the same way.
Sadly, the homoloveuality in this story is plain useless, and there merely to say "look, we have homoloveuality in our game". It isn't "shoved down your throat", but since it has no meaning, doesn't actually personalize Sam nor Katie -which is the character you portray, yet is even less constructed and personalized than Sam-, doesn't make the story move forward nor goes through the "process" of a homoloveual going through this "discovery" -shame, surprise, being excited, experimental, etc.-, it has nothing to do there.
In a way, it isn't even "wrong", since it's basically going through this with a "it's life, that's nothing but life"; but it's interesting only when it's your life or someone you're close to's life... life your sister. Since you play Katie, you SHOULD care about Sam's whereabouts, but... the developers gave no stuff about Katie, so why should we feel like we "are" Katie ourselves ? And if we don't care about feeling the way Katie does, why should we care about how Sam feels ?..
Homoloveuality in this game is basically useless and brings nothing.

$20 for a 1 hour interactive story? HAHAHAHAHAHA-
you're kidding, right?
right?

Persona 4 had a better story and it's a forgetin' Japanese game from 2008.

[Gum]

added poll

[Tomcat]

Change the poll. It isn't a game.

[Gum]

Change the poll. It isn't a game.

too bad

it is.

[Tomcat]

too bad

it is.

GG, even wikipedia doesn't agree with you. It's an interactive novel.

It's a cliche love story that's getting a ton of praise just because it has lesbians. It truly deserves the title of Gone Homo.

[Gum]

GG, even wikipedia doesn't agree with you. It's an interactive novel.

It's a cliche love story that's getting a ton of praise just because it has lesbians. It truly deserves the title of Gone Homo.

and jeez stop ranting we get it, you dont like it.

[Tomcat]

"first-person interactive story"

It's a stuffty story that barely qualifies as a game that merely gets AWESOME reviews because video game reviewers want to appear intellectual and caring social warriors. The writing is fan-fiction quality lacking subtlety or good overarching themes. Topping The Last of Us isn't hard because it (referring to Gone Homo as IT) looks more intellectual without having any actual substance, 'n video game "journalists" gobble that stuff up.