We begin with a game that might not be from my favorite genre, but it’s the first time that I was invested enough to see it through to the end.
#10 — Gone Home:
Gone Home belongs to the genre of narrative focused titles like Dear Esther and arguably Analogue: a Hate Story where the core experience is learning the story of what’s going on.
Gone Home got a number of things right with the big one being the environment itself. A fully interact-able house that gives the player free reign to explore its nooks and crannies. Not since Shenmue that modeled its house similarly was I interested in exploring the surroundings. The mood and tension of exploring the house was on par with most horror games.
The story of Gone Home is an interesting use of passive storytelling: Where the entire experience is about piecing together the story yourself. The main story that Gone Home told was something that we normally don’t see in the Game Industry and earned a fair number of fans on that alone.
Speaking of the story, I think this is what helped Gone Home to keep me invested in the game as opposed to something like Dear Esther. The house itself was a defined space and it was easy to know my position in the world, unlike Dear Esther which just plopping you down into the world and said “go explore.”
While Gone Home lacks the replayability and content of the Stanley Parable, I think it managed to do more with less. With just enough length to give you the full picture of the story without dragging on too long.
Gone Home is the perfect example of a game tailored made for the Indie Market: Short, original and not easily designed around creating a franchise out of it. And as I said at the start, not a game from my favorite genre, but if Gone Home kept me interested in it, then this is a must play for fans of interesting stories.
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