Culture

Rating: 9.5/10

As gamers we have become used to associating our games with grandiose situations and spectacular premises. From protecting the universe from alien threats to fighting dragons and other mythical creatures, we have the pleasure and privilege of living out some of the most amazing scenarios that have ever been conceived. This can make our own lives seem very mundane, unworthy of the same attention we afford every aspect of the games we explore. But does that make it so? The Fullbright Company, a four-person independent game-developing team from Portland, has just released a game that pushes the limits of what is possible in terms of both video game narrative and exploration, using only you and an empty house.

The Fullbright Company was formed by three developers who worked on the Bioshock franchise. Bioshock games famously employ alternative methods of storytelling in the form of discovered documents and audio logs that allow you to learn more about the world, the characters and the story. With Gone Home, the Fullbright Company wanted to take the techniques that Bioshock had taught them and put them at the centre, rather than the periphery, of the game.

The only thing I can safely tell you about the story is the premise. You play a 20-year-old woman who has just returned from a year long trip around Europe. In the year that you have been away your family has moved into a new house. You arrive at this house for the first time in the middle of the night, during a thunder storm, to discover it empty. The goal of the game then becomes discovering where your family is and what has happened in their lives while you’ve been away, relying entirely on the information you glean from exploring the house.

It is important that this is all you know about the story going into the game, because its intensity and thrills derive from the discovery of this information. Though the game has one main narrative thread, through your exploration you will discover sub-plots that are beautifully crafted stories in their own right and yet interact with, and inform, other aspects of the story in ways that will leave you breathless.

While exploration has played a hand in many great games, by making it the central focus the experience is heightened tenfold. Suddenly every shadow is a potential secret, and discovering any piece of the puzzle becomes an absolute victory. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that even though the game involved no enemy fire or traps behind locked doors, the play was incredibly exhilarating.

The reasons for this lie in the conventions themselves. While the game tells a very down-to-earth, human story, the Fullbright Company has used gamers’ expectations to make it exciting. This is largely achieved by the rapturous thunder storm that rages outside and makes you jump every couple of minutes with a fresh peal of thunder, but the game has other surprises up its sleeve as well.

Gone Home combines many gamers’ innate desire to explore with a beautifully written and artfully executed story. As you explore you will uncover multiple narrative threads which unravel and interweave with a finesse usually reserved for genres that have been through a decade’s worth of trial and error. The Fullbright Company, however, has managed to conceive, implement and master an idea in one fell swoop. Your time with this game will make you look at your own life with renewed respect and wonder.