Gone Home

Hang on ... you're telling me someone's already released
a nostalgia-based adventure game
— and it's getting 5-star reviews?!!

Today I stumbled upon a Digital Spy article about porting a game to the Oculus Rift 3D system and my jaw dropped wider-and-wider as I read.

Back in August, indie developer The Fullbright Company released an adventure game entitled "Gone Home" for Windows, Mac & Linux.  It sold 50,000 copies in the first month.

Not just any old VHS tapes.  No, these are X-Files episodes, slapping us bang into the 90s.

Set in 1995, you play as a young woman who returns home after a year abroad; the house is empty and you must roam, exploring objects & notes to find clues about what's happened and where your family has gone.  Reviews suggest it is an immersive, emotionally-satisfying experience.

Obviously, any period setting will need an authentic look-and-feel.  However, by setting it within recent memory, the detail must be dead-on to ensure that there are no anachronisms or anomalies.  I still remember reading an interview with the makers of movie The Krays explaining how important it had been to ensure an accurate 1960s period setting because so many of the people watching the film would remember that time so vividly.

There's something more going on here, though.  This doesn't just look like the 1990s.  The choice of items (e.g. brick-sized cordless phone, SNES cartridges, cassette tapes, bedroom posters, etc.) pulls the nostalgia chain so hard, it's difficult to see how it could be anything other than deliberate and calculated.

Founded by former BioShock developer Steve Gaynor, the company consists of 4 team-members, but with bits of input from friends at companies like Double Fine.  These developers are clearly of an age where the '90s were their formative years.

"We started from, 'we want to make a game that's about exploring a place and finding bits and pieces of the story scattered everywhere.' If it was more recent than the 90s, so much of that stuff would be in devices. An email message, a text box," he says. "It was a very practical decision of, 'we'll choose this era because that means people would be actually writing notes and leaving them for each other.' That physicality is important to the game."

It came from the team's own memories -- what could they recall about their living rooms in 1995? Recorded VHS tapes off TV with written labels, two recordings on one tape to save memories, for example. Such details give the game its very lifelike and plausible texture. Gaynor also read blog posts about experiences of people growing up in that time, and was influenced by the memories of others.

-- "The story behind Gone Home", Gamasutra (24 Oct 2013)

The music is sourced from genuine 1990s riot grrrl punk/grunge bands; indeed, the game was demo-ed with audiences at related music festivals (targeted fanbase promotion in action).

In the company's blog, there's even is a section about the use of flowery motifs to enhance the Victorian credentials of the house.  And another about the development of generic game titles & logos for the SNES cartridges.

There's a mine of stuff to research, and I haven't even watched the "Making Of" videos & articles yet!  This will make a very interesting case study.

Applied nostalgia adding value to a video game design?  Fullbright have done it.  And it works.