When I want that sweet Myst flavor without all of the incomprehensible puzzles, I play Gone Home.
Gone Home is the perfect test case for Steam Friends and Family Sharing, which is how I was able to play this entire game without spending a dime. While I have some very positive things to say about the overall experience, I can't recommend that anybody spend $20 on this game.
I don't want you to mistake that statement for thinking that this is a bad game. In fact, I'm not even sure it is a game. You can't fail. It's not really a challenge. But I enjoyed the 2 hours or so I spent absorbing whatever it is that Gone Home is supposed to be.
When you boot it up and start a new game, you hear a short answering machine recording (not voicemail, this takes place in the mid 90s) telling you family that you are coming home from your long trip overseas. Upon arriving, a note is on the door telling you that nobody is home and not to look into it any further. So you read the letter, think about what is says...and then you spend the rest of the time doing the exact opposite because otherwise it wouldn't be fun.
Once you figure out how to get in the house, you start to learn about your parents and sister, and the game slowly drops you clues to understand who these people are, what they have been up to, their personal struggles, and you eventually get an idea of the truth.
I'm not going to get into the story much further than that because it could easily spoil the experience. But to solve the mystery you will have to look around for notes, recordings, keys to locked rooms, etc. It's not hard to figure out if you just pay attention. Even if you are diligent, chances are you will miss a few things, and that's OK. While my experience playing the game left a little ambiguity at the end, I still understood what was going on when I was finished. This is definitely not something you will want to go back to again and again. It's a one time experience. There aren't really any alternate ways to play it or different gameplay modes. That's not a knock on the game. It's just a very simple experience.
But if you are interested at all in stories about very personal things like love, frustration, longing, ambitions, and disappointments, Gone Home will be a good use of a couple hours, certainly as much as a quality movie or book.
What makes this effective as a story telling vehicle is the writing. This story is entirely from your perspective and as I said, nobody is home. So you never meet the other characters. And yet the lives that the game tells you about through the clues it leaves you in the house paint a very lucid picture of who these people are. I really find it incredible that a game can make me empathize with characters that I never met. To top it off, the environment is great. While the graphics are not high end by any means, the use of sound effects, music, and journal entries read aloud by your sister truly play with your emotions. I felt like I knew this family at the end of the game even though the only image in my head is based on a stupid family painting on the wall.
It should also be noted that as someone who grew up in the 1990s, it reminded me of what that time was like. It's almost like I forgot about cassettes, answering machines, and handwritten notes instead of email. There are even Super Nintendo cartridges, but I wouldn't forget about those because...well...you know. I suppose this era makes it easy to create the mystery and story. In 2013, they would be able to settle the story pretty quickly with a few text messages.
If the game was $5, I would recommend you go out and get it right away, and I think even non-gamers can appreciate it. It's not like it's difficult. Not really a game either...sort of an interactive story. It's an exaggeration at best to say that it's like Myst. Myst requires you to think and consider your actions. Gone Home doesn't do that, which is either a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. The big problem I have with it is that it's $20. For something that you can only do once, isn't a technical marvel, and doesn't even have variation with the story telling, that's just a bad deal. Since it is on Steam, you can expect that at some point it will be $5 or less. You can wait until then. Or you could share it from a friend with Steam if you are on the sharing beta.
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