Tag: gone home

Gone Home Review

Gone Home, at first, seemed like a horror game to me due to the eerie setting. Its nighttime, raining, and all the lights in the house are turned off. Its a perfect setup for a horror game, but it wasn’t. I went through the game in the beginning and learned that it wasn’t very scary, but you do walk around and learn more about your, Katie’s family. You quickly find out from the beginning dialogue that Katie has a mother, father, and a sister named Sam. There are other characters like Oscar, Katie’s great uncle, and Lonnie.

Even though there is only one “real” character in the game, the game creates personalities for the other people mentioned throughout it. The only other character to actually talk through messages and notes is Sam. The game makes Sams persona up as a sort of tomboy. She likes boyish things and activities, but she is also confused about her sexuality because of Lonnie. The checkpoints throughout the game all lead to how and why Sam left home to run away with Lonnie. Even though Sam isnt present, the player can still feel emotional when reaching the end of the game due to the crisp emotional messages read by Sams voice.

Gone home did an excellent job creating character without characters. It is beautifully designed with an almost realistic art scheme, and has several in-depth stories to uncover throughout the house. Though it could be frustrating sometimes to pickup or read everything, Gone Home was a pleasure to play.

Gone Home reflection

 

“Gone Home“, Wikipedia the free Encyclopedia,                       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_Home#/media/File:Gone_Home.png

Coming back from Europe, Katie informs her family she will soon be home but when she arrives, nobody seems to be there for her. Alone, immersed in the dark, in front of a locked door, I slowly look around me to find a way to enter. Rain pouring accompanied with thunderstorms, I am slowly intimidated and hesitant in advancing. As I open the creaking door, suspense builds up and I become startled and nervous for what is to come next. I am intrigued to find no furniture which only feeds my curiosity in trying to understand what happened. Thunder resonating in the whole house, I slowly advance through the house and find messages from Sam.

Learning that she had a rough start in her new high school and that she is interested in a girl, Sam tries to reconnect with Katie through her journal. What was also interesting was to have Sam read it to us, the tone really influenced the text, we could almost feel her emotions. As a consequence, I also felt involved on a personal level. By looking through the whole house and searching through personal items, I felt plunged in their lives, especially Sam’s. While she is sharing her struggles and her thoughts, we can relate to her in many ways and thus we can develop empathy for her.

The date shown at the beginning of the game. June 7, 1995 and specific items such as cassettes and large televisions contribute to the setting of the time period in which the game is established. Furthermore, the time period is maintained throughout the game by making Sam’s relationship with Lonnie harder than it can possibly be today as we can sense that her parents feel much more concerned for her. In addition, we can find references specific to the 90s such as X-files.

Sam’s creativity can be seen from her composition books where she draws which may display just how much Sam and Katie are opposites. While Katie’s trophies are displayed in the living room, there is no sign for Sam’s achievements. Furthermore, we can slowly begin to piece together that their parents’ marriage is falling apart as we find several books about couple’s therapy. In addition, we can realize what people can face where they moved in a new house. The fact that we learn that people define this house as the “psycho house” only troubles us more and feel uneasy.

Overall, I lived a new experience through this game as I developed empathy for the whole family. As the story was unfolding, I could relate to all the character’s struggles which made them almost come to life.

Gone Home

With rain, thunder, and dim lights, Gone Home gives off an initial tense mood. During the first five minutes of the game, I walked around the porch trying to figure out what I was expected to do. All I knew was the date and time: June 7, 1995 at 1:15 AM. Then, ten minutes later when I finally found the key of the front door, I was able to go inside. When I walked through the door, everything was dark and at that moment I regretted my decision to play the game at night, alone. Whenever I walked into a new room, I would turn all of the lights on because for the first hour of me playing the game, I was waiting for something to jump onto the screen and scare me. As I stood in the foyer, I was a little annoyed. This was like no game that I’d ever played before. I had no gun and no zombies nor army men were trying to kill me. My first reaction to the game was boredom. I knew, however, that my task for the night was to play through the game, so I proceeded to play.

I walked around the foyer and as I opened all the drawers, I started finding letters and listening to voice messages. This is where the game started appealing to me; I was starting to understand what I had to do. I walked from room to room, picking up crumpled up papers and unlocking safes. I started finding secret passages and my Gone Homeinterest in the game grew. I wanted to know what was going on between Sam and Lonnie, and every time a journal entry came up I would become even more engaged in the game. I thought that the journals were an essential part of the game. Gone Home did a great job at transmitting what the characters were like and what was going on between them. Sam, for example, is a teenager who is into punk music and video games. Through journal entries and crumpled papers, we find out that Sam is a lesbian and is currently going through a rough time with her parent’s acceptance of who she is.

In the end, I didn’t quite catch was going on with Sam and Katie’s dad, but I did catch on the fact that Oscar had abused of their dad. This is one of the reasons why this game is interesting, not everyone has the same experience while playing it. I, for example, am sure that I missed some of the clues that were about Sam and Katie’s father which is why I wasn’t too clear on what his occupation was or why he wrote the books that he did. However, to my surprise, I ended up enjoying the game, at least more than I thought I would.Gone Home

Gone Home

With rain, thunder, and dim lights, Gone Home gives off an initial tense mood. During the first five minutes of the game, I walked around the porch trying to figure out what I was expected to do. All I knew was the date and time: June 7, 1995 at 1:15 AM. Then, ten minutes later when I finally found the key of the front door, I was able to go inside. When I walked through the door, everything was dark and at that moment I regretted my decision to play the game at night, alone. Whenever I walked into a new room, I would turn all of the lights on because for the first hour of me playing the game, I was waiting for something to jump onto the screen and scare me. As I stood in the foyer, I was a little annoyed. This was like no game that I’d ever played before. I had no gun and no zombies nor army men were trying to kill me. My first reaction to the game was boredom. I knew, however, that my task for the night was to play through the game, so I proceeded to play.

I walked around the foyer and as I opened all the drawers, I started finding letters and listening to voice messages. This is where the game started appealing to me; I was starting to understand what I had to do. I walked from room to room, picking up crumpled up papers and unlocking safes. I started finding secret passages and my Gone Homeinterest in the game grew. I wanted to know what was going on between Sam and Lonnie, and every time a journal entry came up I would become even more engaged in the game. I thought that the journals were an essential part of the game. Gone Home did a great job at transmitting what the characters were like and what was going on between them. Sam, for example, is a teenager who is into punk music and video games. Through journal entries and crumpled papers, we find out that Sam is a lesbian and is currently going through a rough time with her parent’s acceptance of who she is.

In the end, I didn’t quite catch was going on with Sam and Katie’s dad, but I did catch on the fact that Oscar had abused of their dad. This is one of the reasons why this game is interesting, not everyone has the same experience while playing it. I, for example, am sure that I missed some of the clues that were about Sam and Katie’s father which is why I wasn’t too clear on what his occupation was or why he wrote the books that he did. However, to my surprise, I ended up enjoying the game, at least more than I thought I would.Gone Home

“Gone Home” the walking simulator story

The sound of rain and thunder struck fear into my heart as I searched around the front porch in the dark, looking for the key to get into the house. I was engaged, excited for the haunted house ahead, wondering what kinds of things would jump out at me as I walked around. Shortly after finding the key and making my way into the house, I realized that I had probably misjudged the intentions of the game. “Gone Home” is an interesting walking simulator in which the audience is told the story of a family with a lot of the same problems that an average family faces. Marital issues, betrayal, molestation, and gender identity and sexuality issues, are all among the list. Despite not actually meeting any of the characters, they are all fully developed by the end of the game using a variety of techniques.

 

“Gone Home” establishes character through notes and other more discrete messages left throughout the house, along with a series of audio logs left by the protagonist’s sister, Sam. The audio logs are placed strategically around the house to help keep the player on track throughout their quest to find out what has happened while the protagonist, Katie, was away on her trip to Europe. They provide details about the backstory of Sam’s life while Katie was away and about the development of her new love interest, Lonnie. Interspersed between the audio logs are little bits of backstory such as, letters from the parents, awards on the shelves, or cassette tapes with Sam’s preference in music, punk rock. One critique I have of the game is that, despite completing the game, I feel like there was more backstory that I was missing. There were many questions that I was left with at the end. What happened to the uncle? Is the house actually haunted? If there were answers to these questions I did not have them answered when I played through the game. Having more clear objectives would have made it more obvious where the answers to these questions were and would have made the game more enjoyable.

 

I felt a range of emotions while playing this game, from boredom, to excitement, to sorrow. At first it was excitement. I get to play a video game for homework? How awesome is that!? Then, excitement turned to boredom while I walked aimlessly about the house without knowing exactly what I was supposed to do. After that there was a mixture of excitement and boredom but ultimately the game ended in sadness. The last letter to Katie from Sam was particularly heart wrenching for me. As the youngest of 3, I know what it is like to have your siblings go away; to college, to live on their own and create their own lives. It is never fun to see the people you love go away, even if you know that they are doing what is best for them. The realism of this game made it very different than any other kind of game that I have ever played. Usually what I look for in a video game is action and adventure, but this took a twist on the traditional kind of video game and was more of an interactive story. Overall I really enjoyed playing “Gone Home” because it introduced me to a different way of thinking about video games as a way to express ideas and feelings, and to analyze them the same way you would a novel or a work of art.

Gone Home Reflection

Gone Home is nothing like any game I have ever played before. When I play a game, I usually know the main quest of the game from the start. In Gone Home, however, the player is never directly told what the main objective of the game is. One simply has to find the quest for himself/herself using clues found in Katie’s (the narrator and the player) house. The game starts when Katie comes home from a trip to Europe.  The setting reminded me of the movie Clue. Katie’s house had a creepy setting in a sketchy mansion in the woods in the middle of the night. One major difference between Gone Home and Clue, though, is that Katie was alone. Sam, Katie’s little sister ran away, and Katie’s parents are on a trip to get marriage counseling.

A  difference between Gone Home and many other games I play is the games slow pace. When I plays games Call of Duty or The Fast and the Furious, the players are encouraged to move as fast as possible and to focus only on completing the task at hand. When I played gone home, however, I walked at a slow pace analyzing every detail ranging from the father’s works of literature to Sam’s punk rock cassette tapes. As I played the game I got to learn more and more about Katie and her family.

I especially enjoyed learning about Sam’s struggles to fit in and to hide her relationship with Lonnie. I was able to see Sam as a struggling teen, trying to fit in and receive comfort from anywhere she can. I think that Sam may really like Lonnie, but Sam is primarily using her for comfort. Sami seems to think Lonnie understands her, and that Lonnie will comfort her more than anyone else (especially since Katie has been gone for an entire year). Sam manages to hide this from her parents and in the end, runs away with Lonnie. Even though I see why she ran, I think it was a mistake. She met Lonnie less than a year ago and they have no way of surviving long term.  I also don’t know if Sam would stay with Lonnie once she could use Katie for comfort.  I hope Sam and Lonnie come back home in the near future. I enjoyed analyzing this game and look forward to examining more in the future.

 

Gone Home

After being away from home after a long period of time, coming home one would experience of warmth, joy and excitement. However when Katie(the player) comes home from a study abroad program, we are presented in front of a empty house that is dark, eerie, and even a tad scary. The game did give off a scary vibe, but as the game progressed, it was not as scary as I thought it would be. Since I played as Katie, I had to go through every step with her, and I felt possible emotions that she might have faced if this were a real life experience.

When the game first started, I did not really know what to do. I was actually really confused as to what the objective of the game was. After like messing around with the game, I finally figured out how to use it. I personally really enjoyed the game. Though the process to uncovering everything was a little tedious and repetitive, the outcome I thought was satisfying. The game touched on topics such as homophobia, infidelity, and sexual abuse. I cannot say I relate to these topics, but the topics itself was a huge controversy then and all are still today. It allows for discussion to occur when a simple game like Gone Home simply just touches on them. I find this to be really important to integrate learning aspects and controversial topics into the games.

I also feel like the experiences and hardships some of the characters face internally can be relatable. Such as Sam’s struggle to find her sexuality and feel acceptance. At some point in life, everyone has struggled to figure out their “identity” or has had an aspect of them that was not accepted by everyone. This is one of the many characters that faced some sort of hardship that we could relate to. Each character was established relatively well in the game to the point where I felt like I knew their whole life story.

Overall, the game was very interesting to me. It was one of the first games I have played and actually could relate to it to some extant and find meaning to it.

Gone Home | Through the Eyes of Another

Horror game? This isn’t a horror game, right? After frantically pausing the game and Googling the genre of the game-which turned out to be adventure-I resumed with more confidence. Even though the dark rooms and creepy music quickened my heart beat in the beginning, I became curious as to why I was exploring this seemingly abandoned house. Through digging around, I discover I’m Katie, a 21 year-old study abroad student visiting her home.

Through investigating further into notes and clues hidden within the house, I learn of her family which entails, Katie’s mom, dad, and little sister Samantha. Their stories are told piece by piece with every new note and audio recording I come across. The chilling clips of audio engross the audience into a new dimension and the still pictures scattered about come to life as the details of Katie’s family are recounted.

The house appears as if everyone has their own quarters-Dad has his study, Mom has her art studio, and Samantha spends her time in her room. This can be linked to the gap between the family members as you come across their stories. Originally, I felt empathy and concern for the seemingly discord relations between the family members and even Katie for having to discover this truth. However, as I concluded this adventure I found closure of believing that the parents are working their marriage out  earnestly and that Samantha has found true happiness with her partner Lonnie. My play through of Gone Home was one of curious intent and fascination that I thoroughly enjoyed through Katie Greenbriar’s eyes.

Gone Home | Through the Eyes of Another

How Gone Home redefines perspectives and narration

When you dropped into a game in media res its hard to get your bearings what to do and what your task actually is. Combined with the creepy backdrop of an old mansion and earth shattering thunderstorm, when I first started the game I was immediately overwhelmed and originally thought this was some indy horror game where there’d be multiple jump scares. I started off hesitant not knowing where I should go literally feeling the gloomy ambience rattle through my bones. However, within 10-20 minutes I had finally gotten the hang of exploring the house and finding clues to pice together the story of Lonnie and Sam. Not only does this game challenge the LGBT issue head on, but introduces a unique narrative where we continue to dive into the emotion of Sam, the protagonists little sister.

Upon revealing the first couple of audio clips the user got the sense that Sam was a typical 90s teenager. She was into the new video games, rejected the ideals of her parents, and was obsessed with grunge a punk rock. However, what really sheds light on her situation is when you start to infer that Sam is lesbian and has feelings for her best friend Lonnie. This quick;y explains why Sam had all these girl magazines scattered around the house and why she thinks Daniel is so weird even though he probably was a nice guy who enjoyed playing nintendo. It was entertaining to see the love story develop between Lonnie and Sam and also how they snuck around in order to see each other. At the end true love prevailed cause even with the disapproval of Sam’s parents and the stigma with LGBT couples at the time Sam goes off to live with Lonnie. IT brings relevance to a large issue but also reintroduces that not long ago the LGBT was really discriminated against.

What also has to be said about this title is the idea of perspective as we, the user, construct the narrative of the game. It reminded of classic noir films of finding clues, similar to the directing style of David Lynch. In video games the protagonist the user controls already has a general sense of self and the user simply watches without control. However, Gone away puts the digital protagonist in the shoes of the user or vice versa as both people are in the same situation. Neither the user nor protagonist know anything about the relationship and it takes both people in order to uncover the mystery.

 

 

Gone Home: digging through the dirty laundry

The first seconds of Gone Home made me regret playing it at night, for the game instantly created a spooky atmosphere. In fact it reminded me of another game, Slenderman, a game that took away my sleep for many nights. Thus I turned on all the lights in my room and wrapped myself in a blanket before I could continue. However as the game progressed, no monsters, cursed dolls or slender people jumped out of the closets. Instead what the game was full of was the dirty laundry of a family living in the house.

The game kicks off with a woman calling her mother and saying she will come home late from the airport. It took me a while to understand that the whole game is presented from that woman’s perspective. She returns home (I guess this is why the game is called Gone Home), only to find it empty. However as she goes around she sees small pieces of evidence that show what happened while she was away. The final picture does not seem bright at all. Each member of her family has a lot going on and there is a huge question whether the ‘family’ even still exists. The members do not seem to care for each other and are caught up in their own business which turns the game from scary to bitter and sad.

The sound effects and poor lighting do a great job of creating an uncomfortable atmosphere. However as you get used to it the excitement withers away. After a few rooms the only thing that kept me going was the question: will I find a corpse of her sister somewhere in the house? Yet nothing as atrocious appears within the game. Thus after a while all you do is examine various items that belong to family members and put together a picture of what happened while the woman was away.

Overall I would say that this game has a great start as it creates a lot of confusion and a great spooky atmosphere. Yet this does not last long and the process of going through the game becomes repetitive. I would say that the most interesting point made by the game was the showcase of how much our personal belongings represent our lives. Of course most of the items found in the game were diaries, journals and recordings, which gave a pretty easy explanation of the situation. However there were many small things that help create the big picture and putting all of them together made me feel like a detective. However I at the same time felt uncomfortable in intruding the other people’s business and learning all of their dirty secrets. Thus I would say that if you like puzzles and watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians, this game is for you.

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