Critical Play: Mysteries

For this critical play, I decided to play Gone Home, created by the Fulbright Company. Gone Home is an interactive walking simulator that has the player focused on the details of an empty house to piece together the story of the people who used to live there. The player must interrogate every detail of a seemingly normal house to solve the mystery.

As someone who is afraid of horror games, I was happy to realize that Gone Home is not a horror mystery game in a traditional sense. There are very few jump scares and every interaction you have with objects in the house is fairly simple. You can control the unfolding of the story. The game is not meant to be thrilling but rather makes you think deeply.

Gone Home in itself is not incredibly interesting. It is very subtle and there are more games with better visuals and more interesting plots. But I really enjoy how the user has agency over the unfolding of the narrative. I can imagine how two players would have a very different set of experiences with their own play. I also enjoyed how the game did not pressure the player to complete it by a certain time, instead it allowed me to leisurely explore the house.