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Gone Home is a game with a fairly intriguing if faintly familiar premise. You play a girl who's come home from college to find her house is empty, despite having warned her parents of her impending arrival. There's no-one home to greet her - what on earth's going on? Is she really home? Did some nightmarish force take her parents away? Was she dead the whole time and didn't know it?
The answer to all those questions is a resounding 'no'. Because, despite sounding like a survival horror or Amnesia style spook-em-up game, Gone Home is nothing of the sort. Instead, it's a game about families and the issues that can divide a family. And at the point about half of you have stopped reading. Can't say I blame you. I was expecting a horror adventure myself, and felt a bit disappointed.
That's not to say that Gone Home isn't interesting - it is. The graphics aren't amazing, but they're decent enough. And you do actually feel for the characters in the game, not that you actually encounter them personally. Instead, you get to read letters and notes left by the family which explain what happened. It's also set firmly in the early nineties which lends the game an interesting feel.
But the game does also suffer from a weird sense of forced linearity. Despite the game taking place in what would normally be a fairly open location, about half the house is unaccessable until you find the appropriate items. I can understand this since it forces the story to unfold in a linear way, but it's still a bit odd.
In fact, I'd be hard pressed to call Gone Home a game as such. Instead, it's a brave experiment in storytelling, And if it was a fiver or so I'd recommend it just because it does something new. Unfortunately, it actually costs £15 which is a heck of a lot for something that you won't play twice, because there's no potential for change the second time through.
Granted, if it ends up dropping to five quid in a Steam sale, by all means pick it up, but even for a niche product, there just isn't enough entertainment value or story value here to justify the price.
Score: 6 out of 10.
Pros:
The story's fairly interesting.
The voice actings pretty good.
Cons:
The graphics are nothing to write home about.
It's not particularly atmospheric.
Once you've played it through once there's no reason to play it again.
It's overpriced.
The answer to all those questions is a resounding 'no'. Because, despite sounding like a survival horror or Amnesia style spook-em-up game, Gone Home is nothing of the sort. Instead, it's a game about families and the issues that can divide a family. And at the point about half of you have stopped reading. Can't say I blame you. I was expecting a horror adventure myself, and felt a bit disappointed.
That's not to say that Gone Home isn't interesting - it is. The graphics aren't amazing, but they're decent enough. And you do actually feel for the characters in the game, not that you actually encounter them personally. Instead, you get to read letters and notes left by the family which explain what happened. It's also set firmly in the early nineties which lends the game an interesting feel.
But the game does also suffer from a weird sense of forced linearity. Despite the game taking place in what would normally be a fairly open location, about half the house is unaccessable until you find the appropriate items. I can understand this since it forces the story to unfold in a linear way, but it's still a bit odd.
In fact, I'd be hard pressed to call Gone Home a game as such. Instead, it's a brave experiment in storytelling, And if it was a fiver or so I'd recommend it just because it does something new. Unfortunately, it actually costs £15 which is a heck of a lot for something that you won't play twice, because there's no potential for change the second time through.
Granted, if it ends up dropping to five quid in a Steam sale, by all means pick it up, but even for a niche product, there just isn't enough entertainment value or story value here to justify the price.
Score: 6 out of 10.
Pros:
The story's fairly interesting.
The voice actings pretty good.
Cons:
The graphics are nothing to write home about.
It's not particularly atmospheric.
Once you've played it through once there's no reason to play it again.
It's overpriced.
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Gone Home is a game with a fairly intriguing if faintly familiar premise. You play a girl who's come home from college to find her house is empty, despite having warned her parents of her impending arrival. There's no-one home to greet her - what on earth's going on? Is she really home? Did some nightmarish force take her parents away? Was she dead the whole time and didn't know it?
The answer to all those questions is a resounding 'no'. Because, despite sounding like a survival horror or Amnesia style spook-em-up game, Gone Home is nothing of the sort. Instead, it's a game about families and the issues that can divide a family. And at the point about half of you have stopped reading. Can't say I blame you. I was expecting a horror adventure myself, and felt a bit disappointed.
That's not to say that Gone Home isn't interesting - it is. The graphics aren't amazing, but they're decent enough. And you do actually feel for the characters in the game, not that you actually encounter them personally. Instead, you get to read letters and notes left by the family which explain what happened. It's also set firmly in the early nineties which lends the game an interesting feel.
But the game does also suffer from a weird sense of forced linearity. Despite the game taking place in what would normally be a fairly open location, about half the house is unaccessable until you find the appropriate items. I can understand this since it forces the story to unfold in a linear way, but it's still a bit odd.
In fact, I'd be hard pressed to call Gone Home a game as such. Instead, it's a brave experiment in storytelling, And if it was a fiver or so I'd recommend it just because it does something new. Unfortunately, it actually costs £15 which is a heck of a lot for something that you won't play twice, because there's no potential for change the second time through.
Granted, if it ends up dropping to five quid in a Steam sale, by all means pick it up, but even for a niche product, there just isn't enough entertainment value or story value here to justify the price.
Score: 6 out of 10.
Pros:
The story's fairly interesting.
The voice actings pretty good.
Cons:
The graphics are nothing to write home about.
It's not particularly atmospheric.
Once you've played it through once there's no reason to play it again.
It's overpriced.
The answer to all those questions is a resounding 'no'. Because, despite sounding like a survival horror or Amnesia style spook-em-up game, Gone Home is nothing of the sort. Instead, it's a game about families and the issues that can divide a family. And at the point about half of you have stopped reading. Can't say I blame you. I was expecting a horror adventure myself, and felt a bit disappointed.
That's not to say that Gone Home isn't interesting - it is. The graphics aren't amazing, but they're decent enough. And you do actually feel for the characters in the game, not that you actually encounter them personally. Instead, you get to read letters and notes left by the family which explain what happened. It's also set firmly in the early nineties which lends the game an interesting feel.
But the game does also suffer from a weird sense of forced linearity. Despite the game taking place in what would normally be a fairly open location, about half the house is unaccessable until you find the appropriate items. I can understand this since it forces the story to unfold in a linear way, but it's still a bit odd.
In fact, I'd be hard pressed to call Gone Home a game as such. Instead, it's a brave experiment in storytelling, And if it was a fiver or so I'd recommend it just because it does something new. Unfortunately, it actually costs £15 which is a heck of a lot for something that you won't play twice, because there's no potential for change the second time through.
Granted, if it ends up dropping to five quid in a Steam sale, by all means pick it up, but even for a niche product, there just isn't enough entertainment value or story value here to justify the price.
Score: 6 out of 10.
Pros:
The story's fairly interesting.
The voice actings pretty good.
Cons:
The graphics are nothing to write home about.
It's not particularly atmospheric.
Once you've played it through once there's no reason to play it again.
It's overpriced.