Gone Home Nintendo Switch Review

Gone Home 
Developer: The Fullbright Company
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch
Available On: Windows, Mac, Linux, Steam, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Not many games have evoked the same level of emotion, enjoyment, and intrigue that Gone Home has for me. While being one of the many installations in the walking simulator genre, Gone Home is an undeniably unique and important title in this category. In the nearly three hours I spent walking through the inexplicably abandoned household, I experienced a deep range of emotions from curiosity, to fear, to anticipation — ultimately resulting in a lingering rumination on the game’s meaningful themes.

First published for PC in 2013, Gone Home has been ported to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and now the Nintendo Switch. In the newest release of the title, publisher Fullbright has allowed an entirely new audience of gamers to play this moving title.

As the title screen fades, you appear on the doorstep of your childhood home after an extended European voyage. The date is June 7, 1995, and you play as Kaitlin Greenbriar, a 22-year-old recent college graduate. Upon your arrival, you find that your once familiar home is empty; your only guiding clue as to what happened is a vague note from your sister Sam stating, “I’m sorry I can’t see you…We’ll see each other again someday.” In an attempt to understand this cryptic message, and ultimately the disappearance of your family, you must search the house for clues.

From the minute I arrived on the home’s doorstep, I felt a great sense of unease. Hurried and scribbled notes, booming thunder, and infrequent creeks that could be mistaken as unwanted footsteps created a dull anxiety I felt through the entire game. Alongside the artifacts left in the home, both essential and nonessential to the story, these atmospherics created an incredibly engrossing environment. Because of this, each opening of a door or turn of a key was filled with anticipation.

As a narrative-based game, Gone Home implements unique devices to tell its story. Abandoning the idea of creating a cohesive narrative, the story unfolds through the home’s scattered remnants. And I truly think the game is better for it, making the story incredibly engrossing. Instead of foisting a narrative on me, my exploration of house allowed me to piece together the game’s story through scraps of paper and photographs. In empowering me to unearth the game’s narrative, the story was incredibly intimate and personal.

In addition to creating an encapsulating narrative, Gone Home’s structure serves as one cohesive puzzle, wherein the artifacts of Katie’s home are the pieces. While it is entirely possible for a player to forego crucial story elements to hurry through the game, I don’t think they will have genuinely solved the game’s puzzle. I only felt that I truly beat the game when I discovered where Katie’s family went and what pushed them to leave.

In my journey to uncover the events behind the family’s disappeared, I ended up discovering a much more interesting story. As I searched for clues, I was able to unearth the details of her family’s life. By the end of the story, I equally cared about the family’s daily struggles as much as I did their disappearance.

Gone Home’s fictional story is something that we can only ask for in the best games– to be taken away from our own world. However, despite serving as an escapist adventure, Gone Home is quite rooted in reality. As you venture further into the house, you uncover the detail of your sister’s relationship with her girlfriend, Lonnie. A relationship that was met with disregard from the adults in their life, whether it be Sam’s piously-disapproving parents or her condemnatory teachers.

The game provides a profound look into the lives of LGBTQIA individuals during the midst of a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell society, highlighting the period’s lingering consequences. While five years have passed since the game’s initial release, the story remains equally impactful in today’s cultural climate.

While the game’s structure and mechanics serve as the infrastructure to understanding its narrative, they weren’t perfect. While I hoped the release of Gone Home on Switch would bring new features that take advantage of the console’s handheld and touchscreen capabilities, the game mostly feels like a direct port. Touchscreen functionality was limited. Aside from allowing me to look around the room via a swipe of the screen, there were no other applications of this technology. Had I been able to zoom in and interact with items via the touchscreen, this incredibly personal journey would have been even more intimate.

Alongside the limited touchscreen capabilities, I experienced some screen freezing that either forced me to pause my journey or restart my Switch altogether. Though these hiccups did not greatly spoil my playthrough, it did take me out of this engrossing environment at times.

In the nearly three hours I spent in the game, I groomed through every corner of Katie’s home; however, I feel like there is still so much to learn. Elements of possession, insanity, and the occult that I witnessed throughout the household piqued my curiosity, enticing me to further explore after I completed the main story.

In spite of the elements of horror, suspense, and superstition that framed the narrative of Gone Home, it is an incredibly real game that beautifully articulates what it means to be human. Sam’s coming of age, their father’s longing for significance, and their mother’s desire to feel loved echo the journey we all experience as complex individuals in search of a place where we feel at peace.

In the end, this is what I took from Gone Home, and what I believe makes the title so special. The theme of going home not only refers to Katie’s return from her European voyage, but each characters’ quest to find a sense of belonging, appreciation, and love. A place they can call home.

Final Thoughts

Gone Home is an evocative and profound installation in the walking simulator genre. An exploration-based narrative style empowers the player to unearth the clues of a fascinating and impactful story. Despite a lack of touch screen integration and screen freezing, Gone Home provides an incredibly engrossing and suspenseful experience throughout that will be hard to rival for other titles within the game’s genre.