Wait… What?
As Wikipedia states, a horror movie is a type of film that seeks to elicit a physiological reaction to the viewer. Whether that’s done by camera tricks or by gradually building up the intensity is really up to the director, but what about video games. What is a horror game? Well the title suggests that it must fit the same description as a horror movie. So, a horror game should be a video game that tries to make the player have a physiological reaction to the on-screen events. Probably the most important and most noticeable trait that these games have is that they should make you feel fear and make you sweat, your heart beat faster and etc. But does Gone Home make you feel fear?
The game itself
There is a very large difference between fear and scare. A scary film or a scary event is a one-time thing, those might be remembered, but might just as easily fade away, but fear is built up and it haunts you for a long time. It makes you more (or less, depends on the person) aware and with Gone Home it’s really hard to tell. We’re looking for the least subjective aspects of this debate and we can’t explain is Gone Home a horror game without diving into feelings or emotions, so we’re going to have to do some subjective analysis.
The game has no enemies to face, no weapons, no serious jumpscares, yet it’s always hard to open a new door or simply to turn around. Yet Gone Home, in some ways still manages to build up intensity without having significant amounts of jumpscares, pulling cheap tricks out of its bag or launching enemies that you can’t kill.
Strangest thing about it
Is that you seem to forget that nothing in this game can hurt you. You feel like there’s something breathing down your neck and yet you can’t really put those thoughts of “there’s no one behind me” on the surface. But whether the game does this deliberately (it most likely does) can be debated.
The way it Gone Home builds atmosphere and the way story progresses gives us an answer, gamespedition would like to categorize Gone Home as an unintentionally scary and intense adventure game. The scary parts don’t haunt you, like Amnesia or Slender, Kholat, games of that sort. Gone Home’s atmosphere creates a vacuum that you transport yourself into once you pop in the game, but after you’re done playing, the vacuum vanishes, taking the atmosphere it possessed along with it. So it’s intense and encourages you to react, but is not a horror game.
Agree or disagree? Give us your thoughts and don’t forget to check out more we have on Gone Home.
Cheers!
