Gone Home is one of a new breed of games that doesn’t let the pressure to have ‘game-like’ elements in order to be an interactive experience. Like Dear Esther, Gone Home doesn’t involve much in the way of gameplay, exactly (although more than the aforementioned Dear Esther).

Gone home subverted my expectations, and kept me interested as I went along. It has some nice little bits of humour mixed into some serious and powerful subject matter. It manages to keep a strong tone the whole way through. It’s not too long - I clocked in at around 100 minutes for my first playthrough. There isn’t likely to be much replay value, although I’ll probably do a runthrough in the commentary mode, and maybe in the future I’ll run through it again, like re-reading a good book.

I’d highly recommend it if you don’t mind a slower pace and lack of gameplay. If you liked Dear Esther, definitely give it a go. If you found Dear Esther too slow or the plot not gripping enough, I think Gone Home does better on both those fronts, and is more likely to be enjoyable to more people.