Gone Home - Switch

ESRB Rating: M (Mature)
Release Date: 9-6-2018
Critic Score (1-100): 75
Genre(s): Adventure, 1st-person, Puzzle elements, Detective / mystery, Direct control, Contemporary
Media Type(s): Physical

Reviews

“Gone Home is the greatest video game love story ever told.”

The New York Times

“I never expected to see myself — or such a strong reflection of myself and my own life — in a video game.”

10/10 & Polygon

“Epic, personal and revelatory.”

5/5 & Giant Bomb

Commentary Mode now available!

Your copy of Gone Home now includes Developer Commentary Mode! More than an hour and a half of audio commentary from the developers of the game. Find it in the Modifiers menu when starting a new game! Enjoy!!

About This Game

June 7th, 1995. 1:15 AM

You arrive home after a year abroad. You expect your family to greet you, but the house is empty. Something's not right. Where is everyone? And what's happened here? Unravel the mystery for yourself in Gone Home, a story exploration game from The Fullbright Company.

Gone Home is an interactive exploration simulator. Interrogate every detail of a seemingly normal house to discover the story of the people who live there. Open any drawer and door. Pick up objects and examine them to discover clues. Uncover the events of one family's lives by investigating what they've left behind.

Go Home Again.

Key Features

• A Personal Story: created by veterans of the BioShock series and the writer behind Minerva's Den, Gone Home offers the rich, nuanced details of one family's struggles to deal with uncertainty, heartache, and change.
• An Immersive Place: return to the 1990s by visiting a home where every detail has been carefully recreated, and the sounds of a rainstorm outside wrap you in the experience.
• No Combat, No Puzzles: Gone Home is a nonviolent and puzzle-free experience, inviting you to play at your own pace without getting attacked, stuck, or frustrated. This house wants you to explore it.
• Fully Interactive Investigation: discover what's happened to the Greenbriars by examining a house full of the family's personal possessions, and the notes and letters they've left behind. Use your powers of observation to piece together a story that unfolds as you explore.

Gone Home is a story-driven adventure game played from a first-person perspective. It focuses on exploration and is set entirely in a single house. The protagonist is Kaitlin Greenbriar, a 20-year-old woman who returns to her parents home in the USA on 7th June 1995 after a long trip in Europe. When she arrives the house is entirely deserted with no trace of her father, mother or sister Samantha. Sam however has left a note on the door that she is gone and urging her sister not to come look for her.

The game then offers the player the ability to freely explore the rooms of the house in any order or direction. Clues are pieced together by examining items in the environment: notes, letters, bills, photographs etc. These are however not presented as puzzles, but are scattered among typical items found in a house. The core gameplay revolves around browsing through items of which most serve no direct purpose. Drawers can be opened, lights can be turned on, you can look inside a dishwasher, browse books in a library, read flyers ... Most items are typical for specific rooms, such as different types of foods in a refrigerator, but also a lot of random items such as buttons, markers, pieces of papers and more, as they are expected to be found in a typical family home. Almost every item in the environment can be examined even if there is no direct purpose. Items can be picked up and rotated freely in any direction to get a better look. Every item can be dragged around and tossed at a different location, or sometimes used in the environment such as putting a tape in a recorder to listen to music. This does not serve as a mechanism to solve puzzles however, you are rather encouraged to find as many clues as possible and then piece together the story and the events by yourself. The amount of information discovered only depends on the player's investigation and is not enforced by the game. Exploration is non-linear, but there are a few triggers through keys to locked sections to slightly guide the player.

Movement is done through separate keys with the mouse to look around. Items that can be interacted with are highlighted. The second mouse button is used to zoom in. There is a basic inventory system for the few sections where Kaitlin keeps an item with her, but not as a puzzle mechanism. Certain key items trigger an audio diary of Kaitlin's sister Sam. These are afterwards stored in a separate menu for further review. There is also a map for the different rooms and floors in the house, and it is expanded when new locations are discovered. The house is largely dark and deserted, so often light sources need to be turned on to get a better look.

*** Data by MobyGames.com ***

× Some Disclaimers

  × Video games are pre-owned unless otherwise specified

  × Disc-based video games come with their case and cover art unless otherwise specified

         × PS1 Games May Not Have Their Front Cover Art/Instruction Manual

  × Cartridge-based video games come with just the cartridge unless otherwise specified

  × CD & DVD based discs are resurfaced before we put them out for sale

  × Pre-Owned games may have stickers or marks on them or their cases, either price tags from us or other stickers/markings from other stores or owners.