"the only thing that’s haunted in this game are the characters"

April 28, 2015 12:13 PM

The best video game of the past summer is Gone Home. The best story of the past summer is Gone Home. Consider it the newest addition to the canon of narratives that achieve Munro’s vision—even if it came in a shape no one was expecting.

Why Alice Munro Should Play "Gone Home": The Video Game as Story and Experience -- by Carmen Maria Machado. Bonus: "strange and seductive stories" -- Sofia Samatar on Carmen Maria Machado's own fiction
posted by MartinWisse (23 comments total)

One of the people who created Gone Home is MeFi's own zusty.
posted by brundlefly at 12:28 PM on April 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Oh. And the game is great.
posted by brundlefly at 12:28 PM on April 28, 2015

I remember an interview with Alice Munro where she said she usually starts reading a novel in the middle, and when she gets to the end she continues "back" to page 1. Or that she often hops and skips and jumps around a novel.
posted by Nevin at 12:33 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I liked this game a lot, I hope we see a lot more like it. And it's awesome that we have a sideways connection to it by way of a fellow MeFite, I did not know that. It's easy to see that you and your team put a lot of love and craft into this game, zusty, thank you.

I also like the linked article a lot, but if you haven't yet played Gone Home and you think you might, note that some would consider the article a bit spoilery. It probably won't ruin your experience, but it might diminish the delight of exploring and discovering the nuances of the story on your own, which is a larger-than-average piece of the Gone Home experience.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:41 PM on April 28, 2015

Gone Home made me supremely motion sick. Like 90% of video games created in the last 10 years. I'll stick to print (and isometric perspective games)
posted by DigDoug at 12:51 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:56 PM on April 28, 2015

I'm a huge wimp because I got too scared playing it, which is really stupid considering everything I know about it from friends, but there you go. I keep meaning to go back, but I remember being really freaked out when I launched it last. It's really stuck with me though, so there's that. It really, really pulled me in.
posted by tittergrrl at 1:11 PM on April 28, 2015

Gone Home isn't a supernatural horror game, despite the player being alone in a somewhat-spooky house late at night. But you can always order the Gone Home Official Soundtrack if you really wanted a GH:OST.

(For months, people following the game's development joked about whether it was actually a horror game in surprise or contained a secret ghost. It got out of control, with some gaming website previews mistakenly referring to Gone Home as a horror game, and the creators having to warn people not to expect that kind of game. So I enjoyed watching the game's composer Chris Remo realize on Twitter the obvious abbreviation for the game's soundtrack.)
posted by straight at 1:40 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fullbright is making Tacoma right now and I'm excited about that.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:35 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

One of the neat narrative tricks that Gone Home uses is to lure players in with the idea that it might maybe have a ghost story in it and use that to get them over the "art game" hump. It' s a nice spoonful of sugar as well as being thematically resonant
posted by GilloD at 2:48 PM on April 28, 2015

I must admit I didn't quite understand why Alice Munro is in the title, or is mentioned fleetingly in the the essay/review. Her stories are not driven by plot or narrative, or by "atmosphere" so much as by sketching an interior life. Can anyone explain the connection?
posted by Nevin at 2:49 PM on April 28, 2015

Spoilers:

While Gone Home is not a horror game, the moment before the reveal at the end was genuinely terrifying to me. Maybe I read some of the hints and clues wrong, but I was really afraid that I was going about to find the body of my little sister in her secret hideout in the attic.

Also, piecing together the clues about the father's childhood trauma, and how it has overshadowed so much of his life, is a certain kind of horror as well. Just not uncanny or supernatural horror.
posted by rustcrumb at 3:15 PM on April 28, 2015 [8 favorites]

I was wondering that too. The Alice Munro connection seems to be entirely in the last paragraph where Munro compares a novel to a house:

A story is not like a road to follow… it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows.

A novel as a house, and a game that consists entirely of exploring a house, therefore a game as a novel.
posted by bleep at 3:15 PM on April 28, 2015

A little while after playing Gone Home I had a dream that I was in the GH house, turned a corner and found (presumably) Caitlin's father with a gas can about to set the place on fire.

So, that's how it actually ends if you were wondering.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:35 PM on April 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

SPOILER ALERT:
I think it ends with the narrator taking a trip back to the Ottawa Valley expecting to find her childhood tormenters but she discovers none of them remain, nothing is really the same and nothing has the same hold over her she remembered.
posted by Nevin at 3:40 PM on April 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

GilloD: "One of the neat narrative tricks that Gone Home uses is to lure players in with the idea that it might maybe have a ghost story in it and use that to get them over the "art game" hump."

If I walk down this hallway tonight
It's too quiet, so I pad through the dark
And call you on the phone, push your old numbers
And let your house ring till I wake you ghost

Let him walk down your hallway
It's not this quiet, slide down your receiver
Sprint across the wire
Follow my number, slide into my hand

It's the blaze across my nightgown
It's the phone's ring

I think last night you were driving circles around me
I think last night you were driving circles around me
posted by boo_radley at 4:04 PM on April 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

I also had the 'motion sickness' experience when playing. I also -- and YMMV on this, of course -- didn't find it a particularly enjoyable or moving experience. I think it's a cool idea and there are some intriguing game mechanics, but the amount of praise it's received baffles me. The story reminded me of various YA novels, both in content and writing style.
posted by littlegreen at 4:20 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think it ends with the narrator taking a trip back to the Ottawa Valley

This could work because the mother is Canadian, which the commentary admits is because one of the dev team, who is Canadian, made a piece of in-game art with an extra 'u', and instead of going back to change it, they made the mother Canadian.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:22 PM on April 28, 2015

rustcrumb

SPOILERS

I don't think you interpreted anything wrong. I think that the truly horrific park of the game was realizing there was no monster, but that there still might be something terrible in the attic.

END SPOILERS
posted by Midnight Rambler at 5:01 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I loved Gone Home - zusty, many thanks to you and your team. I would love to play more storytelling games. Dear Esther was good too.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 5:12 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I adored Gone Home and will gladly throw money at that team again.
posted by dejah420 at 5:29 PM on April 28, 2015

I remember an interview with Alice Munro where she said she usually starts reading a novel in the middle, and when she gets to the end she continues "back" to page 1.

That’s how I read Finnegans Wake.


j/k, never could get through that book
posted by El Mariachi at 4:46 AM on April 29, 2015

Gosh, you are all sweeties! Thanks for being so kind!

I admit I am sort of horrified at the idea of Alice Munro playing our game, though, because oh my god can we not write as well as she can. I would feel like a little kid with a macaroni collage.
posted by zusty at 9:32 AM on April 29, 2015 [5 favorites]