Gone Home from The Fullbright Company

[tegan]

Oh man, I just finished it (thank you toblix for gifting it to me!). I'm just gonna' say a couple of things:

 

Technical stuff:

I think some of the textures never loaded for me. Nothing important, but I kept finding solid black objects, black cardboard boxes, and what I think were probably post-it notes in the drawers that were black instead. The playing card packs were the same, but I could see them in the right light since they were embossed, so I have no idea if they were actually just black or what.

 

 

Bein' a butt:

sweetest throw:

 

 

 

Fun with homophones:

 

 

 

i found the knife but cant find any other weapons

wheres the game????

 

 

And a personal thing:

 

 

 

When I was little I got a stuffed brown brontosaurus for my birthday, which I creatively named Bronty and carried everywhere. Eventually I stuck him away in a closet, but I still checked on him once in a while to make sure he was still just the way I remember him. When I left home to escape my family and date who I wanted to date, I left Bronty behind. I still miss him sometimes. I hope things worked out better for Sam and Lonnie better than they have for me.

 

 

 

All in all, this game

puts the "hot gay" in "Steve 'Hot Scoops' Gaynor"

[Erkki]

Sweet dishwasher physics!

 

Loved the game. It feels like an important game. Not perfect, but really well crafted. One of the imperfections for me was just the abundance of notes and their convenient placement on the chronological path through the house. But also I don't see a way to do it better.

 

The music by Chris was really good, I didn't even notice it until a couple of hours in (I think I played about 4 hours). The attention to detail is great, although in some places I wished even more things were interactive.

 

Feels really authentic, and probably expands the nature of what games can be.

 

Also I had a slight flashback to a few years ago when I was working on a Deus Ex mod that was an adventure game taking place in a mansion. Now I wish I had finished that.

 

Ghost count: 2?

[beardofzaius]

This game. Hell. It makes me think of The Ballad of Halo Jones, and that is high praise for me, because I love those comics like nothing else.

[RubixsQube]

Really wonderful game. 

 

Not gonna lie, though, I was hoping that this was just like, a real deliberate and perfectly paced gamefaq for Street Fighter II.

[Patrick R]

All in all, this game

puts the "hot gay" in "Steve 'Hot Scoops' Gaynor"

 

[shammack]

My favorite little touch is

the portrait of the family with a plaque that tells you who everybody is and what their relationships are, which is helpful for the player but seems like a goofy thing for them to have in their own house, but then you go into Sam's room and find an amusing in-world explanation for the existence of that plaque.

[osmosisch]

My favorite little touch is

the portrait of the family with a plaque that tells you who everybody is and what their relationships are, which is helpful for the player but seems like a goofy thing for them to have in their own house, but then you go into Sam's room and find an amusing in-world explanation for the existence of that plaque.

Haha, yeah, including the parenthetical names. Awesome.

[brkl]

It's good to remember you don't actually find Sam's diary

until the very end

, you just hear bits of it before Katie reads it. So the entries don't just happen to be in chronological order.

[pabosher]

Edit edit edit

[brkl]

Sorry. I don't think that's truly a spoiler though. What would spoil the game is finding out how the different stories go before getting the chance to find out for yourself.

[pabosher]

Yeah, having beat the game I don't really mind (and tend to agree w you) but I figured I'd draw your attention to it seeing as it was clearly a mistake

[brkl]

Yup, cheers!

[elmuerte]

Revisited the house, and I clearly missed a few things, like the hair dye.

 

 

[MrHoatzin]

Citizen My So-Called Life of video games. An important game, goddamn.

Oh boy, I was so relieved not to find Sam in a circle of pills in the attic.

The parents' stern denial of what is going down is a little unresolved for me, maybe I missed some other hint as to their full perspective?

I really enjoyed the tension between the game tropes that made it in (filler books on shelves, reused furniture, more or less linear path through the bafflingly laid-out house, ghosts, etc.) and stuff that was removed. It is quite a daring salvo in the destruction of video games, that all this stuff we call a game turns out to be so much baggage. I'm looking forward to whatever Fullbright does next. Hopefully it will continue the precedent of removing game from games, only with more money shoveled into what remains.

 

The only con line item in my review is that I wish the typography was better, which, you know, prt ¬¬

 

Overall, reminds me of But I'm A Cheerleader, a really sweet movie that—looking at the Rottentomatometer just now—was rather violently reviewed for some reason...

[osmosisch]

The closest film to this game for me is

Fucking Åmål

. Spoiled because it gives some plot hints. Anyone who enjoyed this game should definitely watch that film.

[elmuerte]

Gaynor Peaches in Gone Home

[tegan]

Gaynor Peaches in Gone Home

 

Gone Home confirmed to take place in the same universe as Bioshock?

[Johnny Driggs]

Dammit I was looking all over for Gaynor Peaches.

[Lechimp]

Just another post saying how great Gone Home is. I hope it doesn't take years for Fullbright to develop another game.

 

Anyone know how well it's selling so far? It's not at the top of best selling list on Steam but I would imagine that it has a way lower budget that most of the stuff on there anyway and hopefully it's profitable for them.

[tberton]

Finished it today. Loved the game so much, although I think I played through the last third too quickly. I think I'm going to play it again in a couple days.

[agorman]

Wow I really liked this game a lot. I don't have much to add to this discussion, just expressing my adoration for a wonderfully made thing. Also Chris's soundtrack was just marvelous.

[juffowup]

Finished it and loved it...

 

I was really amazed at the way the tooltips represented Katie's thoughts.  Has this been done before?  It feels like such an elegant solution to the player/character divide.

 

A question---

Did I miss a hidden room between the TV room and the foyer?  There's some missing space there, and the blueprint in the basement makes it clear that that area was originally a larger room.

 

Also, was there ever an indication why they actually moved to this house?  If there was a note I missed it.

 

The Dad's room really resonated with me the most....

In the bar area elsewhere, there are liquor bottles everywhere and no regard.  But the bottle in Terry's office is special...this is his shame bottle, the one he drinks alone during the long hours he has the house to himself. He keeps this bottle high on a shelf (he's the tallest person in the house, and so the highest shelves are his personal areas).  Nearby is the 20 year old rejection letter that got unpacked when so many boxes weren't.  Also in his private space is the box of tissues next to the easy chair directly across from the hidden skin mag.  

 

If I have a story complaint, it's how many of the back-and-forth notes end with Sam talking rather than Lonnie... Shouldn't Lonnie's house have all the notes that end with Sam's writing?  Also, I didn't pick up on why the kitchen/dining wing is locked at the beginning of the game... all the other gating seems to have had a convincing attempt at in-game explanation.

The hidden panels are inaccessible until we know they're there... the filing cabinet, safe, locker and front door are all reasonable to lock; we can assume that Sam was keeping her darkroom locked because it was a private place.  Although, why would she have torn her combination and hidden it in two places?

 

I'm about to dive back into the game again for a fresh playthrough... I'm excited to see how much more can be extracted.

[osmosisch]

Why they moved:

Dad inherited the house from uncle Oscar. There's a will in the safe in his office.

.

[empika]

Why they moved:

Dad inherited the house from uncle Oscar. There's a will in the safe in his office.

.

Yup there is also...

an invoice from the movers in the entrance hall that dates their move to a month after Katie went travelling.

.

Great game, really well crafted and put together. I like how it started out super creepy after listening to that answer machine message, along with the storm and all the lights being off.

Glad I read through the last few pages on here because it answered a bunch of questions about things I missed or didn't piece together.

I think the only bad thing I'd say about it is having to find that one damn object in the whole house that would open up the attic, I obviously hadn't searched everything that systematically, so finding that thing took ages of me wandering about trying to find a tiny object amongst all the other stuff. I think there is a bunch of other stuff i missed too, so going to give it another playthrough during the week.

[juffowup]

Why they moved:

Dad inherited the house from uncle Oscar. There's a will in the safe in his office.

.

But they had inherited the house a few years earlier, so they were okay for a place to live.  The dad clearly isn't happy here, and the mom doesn't like the new longer commute, the sister didn't want to switch schools.  No one it seems really wanted to move... I would've liked a note from a realtor about failing to find a buyer for the new house, maybe you should consider selling your other house instead?

 

Edit:

Okay, going back and re-adding on the obit, I see they could've moved into the house immediately.  Still not clear why they would move at all though, when the new location was desirable for no one.  If they wanted more space, well a kid just moved out so you have that already?