Knights of the Cardboard Castle

This is another one of those non-game games that have gained attention recently. Unlike, say The Stanley Parable which tries to play around with videogaming tropes, or The Path, which offers a metaphor-filled, dream-like experience, Gone Home is straight-up storytelling. It’s a very short game, probably two hours or less and there’s not much point in replaying it since it’s very linear. Spoilers will also ruin it, so I’ll only post some very brief impressions.

• Overall I enjoyed it and found it very much worth the time. The game does succeed at evoking the right emotions. Reaching the end and working out what happened felt way more satisfying than such a simple story had any right to be.
• At the same time, I feel that this worked only because the game toyed with my expectations and mislead me. The visuals and atmosphere suggested one kind of story. Its denouement turned out quite differently. In a way this is quite clever. Us videogamers are always primed to assume the worst. But this sure won’t work on me a second time.
• Boy, the house sure felt big. The proportions felt off to me. Maybe houses and rooms in the United States really are this big.
• The visuals are okay but not great. A higher degree of visual fidelity would I think have helped this game a lot, reinforcing the impression that this is a real house, as opposed to a videogame level you need to navigate.

As I said, I enjoyed this one but I feel like its a one-time thing. I would like to see more games that are just trying to tell stories, but next time perhaps fill these empty spaces with people you can interact with please?