Gone Home review: living room

Gameplay is first-person exploration — Katie wanders through the various rooms, inspecting objects and letters, collecting useful bits of information. There's no combat to distract you, and only a couple of simple puzzles to suss out. But that doesn't mean you can go on autopilot and let Gone Home happen to you. Solving the mysteries of the Greenbriar family requires careful observation and at least a rudimentary sense of how to put the pieces together. It doesn't hurt to be the kind of person who obsessively opened drawers in, say, a BioShock game.

That there is no combat — or other mechanics aside from exploration and environmental manipulation — proves that you don't need to kill hordes of people to keep things interesting. Quite the opposite, in this case.

Gone Home depends on well-drawn characters and the urgency lent by an intriguing mystery, which motivate the player to keep going. But Gone Home made me want to both savor every moment and sprint forth to the next clue. Every piece of information imparted new details and invited me further into the Greenbriars' world, from the books lying about that show off Dad's past career as a pulp novelist, to hints in Samantha's schoolwork of her wicked sense of humor.

Gone Home is emotionally honest and beautifully, subtly written. The core storyline feels real, like the product of an intense, lived experience, and represents the first time I've personally related to video game characters.