The player takes the role of Katie in the first-person view, who can move around the house and view and interact with objects. There are no defined goals in the game; however, the game encourages and rewards the player when they explore new areas of the house and search for new messages. Much of the interactivity rests upon looking at objects and notes within the house. In order to progress in the game, the player must find certain objects that unlock access to other parts of the house.
Plot
On 7 June 1995, 21-year-old Katie Greenbriar returns home from overseas to her family's new home in fictional Boon County, Oregon. Her family consists of her father, Terry, a failed writer who makes a living reviewing home electronics; her mother, Janice, a wildlife conservationist who recently got promoted to director; and her 17-year-old sister Samantha (voiced by Sarah Grayson). Upon arriving, she finds the house deserted, much of their possessions still in moving boxes, and a note on the door from Sam imploring Katie not to investigate what happened.
Searching the house, Katie begins to piece together what happened during her absence. After moving in, Samantha found it difficult to adjust to her new high school, but eventually made friends with another girl, Yolanda "Lonnie" DeSoto, a JROTC cadet. The two bonded over Street Fighter, punk rock, grunge and the burgeoning riot grrrl movement, and after sneaking off to a concert, the two became romantically involved. After various incidents at school, Sam's parents found out about her relationship, forbade Sam to close her bedroom door while Lonnie was over, and went into denial that their daughter is a lesbian. As Lonnie was set to eventually ship out to begin her service, Sam was left distraught.
Two days after her farewell show, which coincides with the day of Katie's homecoming, and the week of Sam's parents going on a vacation (which is revealed to actually be a counseling trip instead of a camping trip, like they told others), Lonnie departed to her station, but eventually called Sam from a payphone to tell her that she got off the bus in Salem and she wanted them to be together. Sam's final journal entry to Katie explains that she packed up her things and took her car to find Lonnie, hoping to start a new life with her outside of Oregon.
Optionally, Katie can find various other clues that provide information on additional events that happened during the time: it is implied that Janice was beginning to have romantic feelings towards a subordinate, and that Terry was berated by his father via letter about his failed writing work, as well as Sam and Lonnie's suspicion that the house was haunted by the deceased Oscar Masan, Terry's uncle and former owner of the house.
Development
Fullbright was founded by Steve Gaynor, Karla Zimonja, and Johnnemann Nordhagen as "The Fullbright Company". The three had previously worked together at 2K Games on BioShock 2: Minerva's Den. All three were drawn by the prospect of developing an exploration game influenced by Minerva's Den through a small independent team rather than a large company, and subsequently left 2K Games to form Fullbright. To reduce costs, the team moved into a house together in Portland, Oregon, and set up the office in the basement, with Gone Home being their first game. Gaynor considered their previous work on the BioShock games as effectively the pre-production stage for Gone Home, allowing them to complete it within seventeen months. The rapid development was aided by first prototyping the game in Amnesia: The Dark Descent's HPL Engine 2 (which Gaynor had prior experience with), before completing the game in the Unity 4 game engine.
The initial concept for Gone Home was for the player to explore a smart house that including a central artificial intelligence running everything with robots running around to complete tasks. The player would have been able to change the state of the house through their actions; Gaynor compared this idea to a non-combative System Shock game. As they explored this idea, and recognizing the small size of their team, they considered what would change if they made the house more like a regular household without any other characters visibly present, which significantly simplified the development into something more manageable for the team. This created the focus of the game as being "no other people, no other characters, just you in a single environment". The reduced scope allows them to complete the game with the three of them for programming, narrative, and 2D art assets, along with remote work from Kate Craig for the game's 3D modeling. Particularly, the smaller scope eliminated the need for any type of character modeler or animator. Craig's wife Emily Carroll, a comic artist whom Gaynor was a fan of, also assisted by designing some of the game's art asset and logos.
Narratively, Gone Home was designed around family; Gaynor had stated that for all the science fiction trappings of Minerva's Den, its core narrative was about a man, his wife, and how the man's past was affecting that relationship, and used the same approach for Gone Home. They placed the player as one of the members of the family to remove any type of morality of exploring a house that did not belong to them. Additionally, they established that the family had only recently moved into the home; Gaynor had worried that the player would have difficulty identifying key elements that would be present among all the other objects within a well lived-in home, while within a recent move, only objects of immediate importance would have been unpacked, making it easy for the player to focus on these. Fullbright set the game in 1995 because they considered it the most recent year in which technology had not made the majority of communication digital in nature, so that they did not have to account for how digital communication would affect their storytelling, while still keeping elements of the game familiar to players. Another source of inspiration was urban exploration, particularly Japanese haikyo, homes long abandoned due to industrialization. Gaynor said there were mysteries about its residents that people could put together from examining the state of the abandoned home.
