GOTY | Honorable Mention — Gone Home

Some­times it’s hard to find time to play and fin­ish a game. This year, one game came to a close to me just a few short days ago, well after I had locked in my top ten of the year. Had I played it much ear­li­er, it would like­ly have end­ed up fair­ly high on my list of best games of the year. Gone Home defies the rules of tra­di­tion­al games by mak­ing the entire premise of the title being dis­cov­er­ing the sto­ry of what’s hap­pened in the house by sim­ply explor­ing it.

Tak­ing this premise, which can be found as a sec­ondary char­ac­ter­is­tic of many oth­er games, and mak­ing it the pri­ma­ry rea­son for play­ing was a bold move that worked out real­ly well. Through find­ing out the sto­ry of every char­ac­ter in the house you grow to care for every­one in it, despite nev­er actu­al­ly com­ing face to face with any of them. I hope more games take their cues from this indie title that proved that sto­ry can in fact be every­thing in a game. I just want­ed to give this game hon­or­able men­tion, because it very much deserved to be in my top 10 of the year, but I didn’t quite fin­ish it in time.