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In horror, locations relate to trauma deeply, and this game plays with those motifs in a down to earth way. When the player unlocks the basement of the house, they finds the belongings of late uncle Oscar Masan. The room physically and literally represents the past that Terrence has suppressed. In the corner, there is a painting of his father that has been purposely damaged, perhaps by Terrence.
It’s a personal kind of horror that has resonated with a lot of players. The initial concept for Gone Home was for the player to explore a smart house that included a central artificial intelligence running everything with robots running around to complete tasks. The player would have been able to change the state of the house through their actions; Gaynor compared this idea to a non-combative System Shock game. This created the focus of the game as being "no other people, no other characters, you in a single environment".
[Game Theory] The Real Horror Story in Gone Home
Gaynor stated that Minerva's Den was more focused on environmental storytelling than action-driven gameplay, and set the approach and necessary design elements they needed for Gone Home. Gaynor also considered the approach that Looking Glass Studios used for developing immersive sims. Gone Home was praised for its storytelling and immersive atmosphere, with the game taking players on a slow-burn emotional story. Of course, a title that starts with players exploring a large, empty house on their own envokes any number of horror tropes. It's also set in 1995, so the house is full of nostalgic throwbacks and nods to shows like The X-Files. It builds up a feeling of quiet dread and suspense as Katie forms a picture of what happened to her family, but it's ultimately revealed there are no ghosts or escaped serial killers hiding in the dark.
But i guess to actually answer your question no it is not really a horror game, although there are some mildly scary parts. Gone Home is a walking simulator developed by Fullbright, and first released on PC, Mac, and Linux in August 2013. In Inside’s secret ending, players find themselves in another bunker and must power down one of the mind control helmets by pulling its plug. After this, the boy loses his free will and falls into the same position as the other mindless drones found throughout the game. The safe contains Oscar’s old medical supplies, and a note adressed to his sister begging for forgiveness for a “transgression.” Word of God says he abused his nephew, Terrence, who is also Sam and Kate’s father.
The decade in review
Wandering through the room, the player explores documents of Uncle Oscar that explain that he once owned a pharmacy store, which he sold for a symbolic amount of money. In a locker, the player finds a letter dating from 1963 that speaks of a family argument. Oscar begs to his begs for forgiveness, and explains that he has sold his business so he would not be led into temptation. That's interesting how the exact same thing got opposite reactions. For me, the horror elements put me on my toes for fifteen minutes or so, but it when the game pulled the curtain back, it put me at ease that nothing scary was going to happen. It's a weird trick, I can see how it would backfire.
For instance, height measurements which suddenly stop. A broken toy on the floor that suggests a child has been in the basement. It’s quite clear what the transgression was.
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Both its story and its design (it’s not a game, they said) came under criticism. Due to both the atypical nature of Gone Home and its narrative centered around LGBT issues, it became a central point of discussion at the onset of the Gamergate controversy in August 2014. Critics countered that these elements are part of considering video games as an art form, demonstrating how the medium is changing. After Dear Esther’s release in 2012, the name and genre were resurrected, and a wave of walking simulators followed. Games like The Stanley Parable, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Firewatch, Virginia, and What Remains of Edith Finch poured out of indie gaming studios faster than the mainstream gamers could play them. A few years later, this wave of walking simulators culminated in the ultimate high-concept and literal walking simulator, Death Stranding.
Gone Home was acclaimed upon arrival in 2013 but is it technically a horror game? The game has been ported to consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One. You know from the letter on the door that Sam’s missing, and Katie’s parents aren’t home, either. There are no jump scares, nothing lurking behind locked doors or sharp corners. It’s a game of emptiness, of voids that can’t be properly filled. This was likely a case of the Raiders' easing him back into action because even on fewer snaps, Waller still ran more routes (27-18), saw more targets (3-2), and had the better fantasy day with 48 yards and a touchdown.
It concisely and sincerely unravels the life of a queer teenager and a family and community that doesn’t understand her. It’s a personal kind of horror that has seemed to resonate with a lot of players. Fullbright also received some criticism from players from focusing on LGBT themes at the expense of other story elements. In the wake of this, PAX announced that it would establish Diversity Hubs at its future events for "attendees to find information related to issues surrounding women, LGBTQ, people of color, disabled people, and mental health issues in gaming". For example, if I pick up a paranormal story, and it turns out to be SciFi, it could be the greatest story of all, but since it isn’t the genre I was expecting, it’ll throw me off, and it just becomes frustrating. Agents often say stuff like “Know what your genre, and be true to it – don’t try to pass it off as something else, or you’ll just disappoint your readers.” – I think this goes for video games as well.
Many spaces are related to Samantha, the rooms upstairs and the attic that we navigate to, are the main story as it were. The basement, which is literally the undercurrent and subtext, is all Terrence. I love how the game not only plays with narrative theory, but even embodies it by connecting certain spaces and directions to particular plot lines and characters. On 7 June 1995, 21-year-old Katie Greenbriar returns home from overseas to her family's new home in fictional Boon County, Oregon. Her family consists of her father, Terry, a failed writer who makes a living reviewing home electronics; her mother, Janice, a wildlife conservationist who recently got promoted to director; and her 17-year-old sister Samantha . Upon arriving, she finds the house deserted, much of their possessions still in moving boxes, and a note on the door from Sam imploring Katie not to investigate what happened.
But home is also where domestic violence and abuse happen – a place that is impossible to escape from. When I replayed Gone Home, I did so with this theory in mind, and ended up agreeing with this reading. In the basement, near the locker, a player can find hints of the abuse.
What Remains of Gone Home is a horror-escape game that requires you to find all various items to get out of the room as soon as you can. To unlock the secret ending, players will first need to find and interact with all the secret orbs in the game. Inside has a total of 14 orbs, the last of which can only be accessed after players find all other 13. It takes around five hours to complete, though players may find reason to play again if they miss any secret areas or want to revisit the narrative mystery with a fresh perspective. Oscar betrayed that relationship in some fashion, and tried to make amends by gifting his home to Terrence and isolating himself from the world.
They'd tense up around each corner and after opening each door, just waiting on the scare. This is the kind of horror I love, where the fear gets turned on it head. The house really isn’t haunted and the questioning leads to love the characters thought impossible. They said that there was a creepy environment in the game. I've seen gameplay of it so that I could see if it was worth buying but it was extremely unimpressive.
Katie arrives at night during a thunderstorm to find a note written by her younger sister Samantha, the main POV vehicle for the narrative, attached to the home’s front door. The note is devoid of details, but it clearly shows something has gone wrong. After finding the front door key, her grand homecoming is met with darkness and an eerie silence. I had heard nary a word about the game’s plot, much less the massive cultural impact it has had. I fired it up, and immediately, a voicemail played over a black screen, setting the stage for this reverse Odyssean quest.
What is the ending of the game Gone Home?
In the dining room, the player finds a copy of an unfinished manuscript of The Accidental Warrior, a sequel that Terry has apparently been working on. In the green house, Terry has set up a new office and the player can examine notes about the new project in the rain. We find out that In The Accidental Warrior, John Russell does not have to save the president but himself. What this tells us is that Terrence works through his trauma as a survivor in his writing.
It’s easy to look past old games like Gone Home nowadays because there are 50 million more just like it that are better, more diverse, more artistic, and so on. However, those games may not have had the platform or proof of concept to be greenlit if it weren’t for this trailblazer. The stories being told are becoming more inclusive, more thoughtful, and more creative. As the technological barriers for entry continue to diminish, the medium is opening up exponentially. You actually need to get to the room behind the door using a secret passage in the basement, which will already be opened.
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