The Space and Narrative in Fullbright's Gone Home

An essay written in 2019 about Fullbright's video game, Gone Home.

The title screen of Fullbright's Gone Home, released in 2013

Depending on a player's experience with the space, the setting of a home might evoke feelings of familiarity and comfort, or even anxiety and fear, especially in the context of a horror movie. Gone Home pulls upon both of these extremes: it presents itself as a place that was once comforting and lively but is now abandoned and scary. It stirs paranoia in the player, not only through the setting itself, but through the many elements that accompany the space; the sounds, the lightning, along with the physical objects in the game all add up to create a specific mood that the designers want to achieve.

Gone Home follows 21-year-old Katie Greenbriar who has just come home from a semester abroad, finding the family house to be completely empty. The player begins in a type of veranda in front of the main doors, which are locked. A note from Katie’s 17-year-old-sister Samantha is stuck on the door, discouraging Katie from investigating what has happened. The note, along with the fact that the player has nowhere else to go, encourages the investigating of the objects in the veranda where the player eventually finds the key to the doors. Once inside, the player must explore the rooms and objects of the house to uncover what happened.

Players are encouraged to investigate every object and room in the house in any order they want. Although there is an embedded story that the player must uncover, they are given the freedom to begin in which ever room they wish. However, the character’s movement through the space retards or accelerates the trajectory of the plot (Jenkins 129) as some of the rooms are not exploreable until the player hears a specific journal entry, showing evidence that there is still a direction that the designers are pushing the player towards despite the freedom.

While exploring the space of the game, the player interacts not only with the objects and the narrative in the game, but also with other elements of the setting: namely the sound of the rain and the thunder, the flashes of lightening, the flickering of the house lights, the sinister shadows in the corners, the TV having been left on, and so on. Some of the rooms are a mess of papers and objects scattered everywhere, with the drawers completely pulled out with clothes cascading onto the floor, giving the sense that the house was left in a hurry, or even that it was ransacked. All of these elements come together to create a specific mood—curiosity, discomfort, paranoia—a task that the narrative of the game cannot accomplish alone. Although the story about Samantha that the player uncovers as they move around the house as Katie is intriguing, the all the different elements of the setting allows the story to be told in a way that is more impactful that hearing the story by itself.

While playing Gone Home, I admit that I was incredibly paranoid. Every time I clicked on the light, a part of me constantly feared of seeing someone standing in the previously-dark room. I would spin the camera around every now and then to make sure nothing was going to jumpscare me from behind, even if I knew that this game included no other people except for Katie. The ambiance of the eerie, empty, poorly-lit mansion with a storm raging outside was enough to make me feel like I was playing a horror game. Every light I switched on stayed on—I couldn’t bear to see any dark hallways or rooms. I laughed out loud when I saw a note pinned on the wall next to Sam’s room that read “Stop leaving every damn light in the house on!” This note alone proved that the designers had anticipated that some players would been affected by the space they created for the game and would keep all the lights on in order to comfort themselves. This instance, along with countless others, forced me to realize all the thought that goes into game designing, and how the designers use the expectations of their audience to their advantage.

The physical environment and narrative of a game are equally significant as they each serve their own purpose and affect the player in different ways. Both aspects of the game work together in order to enrich the experience of the gameplay, and the space of a game largely contributes to mood setting and help the narrative be that much more captivating and compelling.

Works Cited

Gone Home, The Fullbright Company, 2013.