When the player unlocks the basement of the house, they finds the belongings of late uncle Oscar Masan. Who was the uncle that he inherited his house from and what was their family like? Early on the player finds out that Terrence suffered from a writing block and gave up his career as a writer.The most haunting aspect of the game, then, is the revelation of what actually happened to Terrence during his childhood. What if I said that there was a horror story in the game, though? One that relates to the father, Terrence. The awkwardness of snooping around and invading the privacy of everyone in your home. The constraints and silence of experiencing a queer lived experience second-hand. The purposeful tension and the unease that the house embodies, including the references to haunted mansion tropes. I often reflect on the difficult feelings that the game raises: GH uses horror tropes to create unease.īecause Gone Home relies so much on observation and exploration, it can’t be seen separate from the affect it generates with its players. In contrast, Kennedy (2020) writes that GH queers the domestic through making it unfamiliar-this ties in with the idea of the archaeological uncanny (Moshenska 2006)-quotidian objects made strange by decay. #GONE HOME ENDINGS ARCHIVE#On Twitter, archeogamer Florence Smith Nicholls describes Gone Home as a queer archive by drawing from the work of Kennedy (2020) and Melissa Kagen’s work on archival adventuring. Walking through the abandoned house is like walking through a museum – the whole game is structured like an archive. Each family member has a past that can be explored indirectly, through objects and memorabilia. She describes her relationship with Lonnie, and her struggle to come to terms with her queer identity: ‘It feels like every minute that I don’t spend with Lonnie, I spend worrying about them finding out about us.’ Gone Home, however, also has other plot lines. The narration is primarily by your sister, whose letters you can find, and are read to you. I don’t want mom and dad anyone to know.’Īs you explore the house, you find objects that are linked to the past of your family. This is already clear from the first letter that you find from your sister: ‘Please don’t go digging around trying to find out where I am. Kaitlin, however, finds the house abandoned. Her parents have moved to a mansion that they inherited from the father’s uncle, Oscar Masan. It is a starry night in 1995 as she returns home. You play as Kaitlin Greenbriar, a girl who has just returned home after a backpacking through Europe for a year. How does this walking sim mediate home, relationships, privacy and family? How does it narrate the queer experience? No game embodies these themes as intimately as Gone Home by The Fullbright Company, an indie classic that feels as relevant today as when it was first released by in 2013. Virtual tourism has never seemed more meaningful.īut as I spend so many hours during Covid in my house, I also feel drawn to the concept of home, privacy, and identity. I spend my lockdown in the realistic New York simulation that is Spiderman, as well as different towns build by my friends in Animal Crossing. Beyond typical walking sims, gamers can turn to the Old West in Red Dead Redemption 2 or the vast landscapes in Breath of Wild. Whether we move through the indoor spaces of Gone Home or The Stanley Parable, or lush environments like Journey, games dazzle. It allows us to experience new environments in a challenging time. Walking and exploring these rich virtual worlds is particularly important during this lockdown, as Kagen also described in The Guardian. Other hits in these months are the Final Fantasy VII remake and Animal Crossing, which has been described by many critics as the ultimate game during the pandemic. Confined to our homes, games are more meaningful than ever, and certain games, like Ring Fit Adventure, sold out in no time. During this Covid-19 crisis, videogame sales have skyrocketed.
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