Weird music, along with intermittent bursts of thunder, Gone Home made my flesh creep when I first entered the game. As I cautiously opened all the wooden doors, fearing that dreadful creatures might suddenly appear, what jumped into my views were in fact letters, newspapers, piles of books, and bottles, pill cases, etc. Crumpled paper randomly thrown beside the wastebasket, video tapes labeled by names of films(?), lying there were just things so normally seen in everyday life.
Yet as I explored further, I realized that those I regarded as “normal things” were not normal at all. The letters, books, and small pieces of messages, were snippets of information which indirectly guided me towards the truth. By picking up randomly thrown paper, ejecting tapes of loud musics, little by little the figures of missing characters had been vividly completed. The books never sold, the message taped on the back of the book, the letters congratulating promotion, creepy drawings pasted on walls, and puerile handwriting on torn pages, together depicted the whole picture of the gone characters. They never showed up, but we peeped through the stories of their lives by observing what they left.
I guess this is what is unique about Gone Home: the way the game illustrates a rich story by providing scattered information, allowing us to piece together the plot, and at the same time fully immerse ourselves in the context.
As Sam’s voice, filled with sincere emotions, revealed her best wishes to Kate, I had to say this wasn’t a scary game at all. Contrary to the spine-chilling music and sound effect, Gone Home is a rather moving and warm story, but it wouldn’t be that moving if it wasn’t me who discovered it piece by piece.
PS: As someone who has been barely exposed to American culture, it was great fun discovering an American house in the 1990s. I feel like I know more about the culture after I played through the game.
