Gone Home is one of those narrative-driven 'not-a-game' projects that always produces divisive opinions. I didn't know much about the game other than being aware of the high praise from critics with several publications awarding it a perfect score. I was sceptical, so played it with an expectation that it would be bland.
It is a hard software product to review without giving away spoilers, hence most player reviews critiquing the game with spoilers included. So I'm including some spoilers too.
You take the role of Kaitlin Greenbriar, who returns home from a year travelling around Europe. However, this is the first time Katie has seen the house, since her family has moved whilst she is away.
The door is locked and there is a note on the door from your 17-year old sister Sam. The note states she is gone and you shouldn't look for her. Once you enter the house, you search the rooms and rummage through the possessions. Sometimes this triggers diary entries from Sam, explaining how she is struggling to make friends at school, but eventually develops a relationship with a girl known as Lonnie. I was a bit confused how objects were triggering these diary excerpts, but the game ends once you find Sam's diary, so it's a retrospective take on the objects that Kaitlin discovers.
The story is set in Oregon in 1995, and the house is well detailed and true to the setting. Everything you find reinforces the idea that a normal family lives here. There are no puzzles, but you do need to find certain objects such as keys to progress through the house.
Gone Home is a bit misleading since the atmosphere seems to imply it is a horror game. The eerie start screen that greets you when you load the game, the fact that you are wandering a large house by yourself, the storm which rages outside, the diary entries which refer to suspicions that the house is haunted by your Great Uncle, and stumbling across some concealed parts of the house implies something more sinister will unfold.
However, all that is just a distraction to invoke a tense feeling and keep you on edge, but really it's just a story of a teenager struggling to fit in, some marital troubles between her parents, and then finding love. The voice acting is great, and this really drives the honesty and openness of Sam's diary entries, which are deeply moving.
As the game concludes, the twist is that you have just been mislead. The true story was just what your sister wrote on the door; she has left home. Maybe the fact that it pretended to have a great story made the game have a great story. Personally, I think it is an innovative way of telling the story, but it's not a particularly great one. If you ignore that aspect, all you have done is rummaged around someone's house for 80 mins and analysed all sorts of house-hold objects; pens, tissue boxes, cassette tapes etc. It's interesting place to explore, but there is a lot of build up just for nothing to happen.