Last year's low-budget masterpiece is a showcase of narrative elements that prove games can do some things far better than any other medium. The game puts you in control of one Kaitlin Greenbriar, a gap year student who returns to her inherited family mansion in a torrential rainstorm only to find a note from her sister pinned to the front door and the rest of the house completely empty (or is it?). Taking the idea of first-person exploration as a game mechanic and stripping down the experience to just walking around the house with nay a weapon in sight, it's down to you to explore every single piece of evidence left behind by each family member and intricately piece together the events that transpired before your arrival. Even regardless of it's willingness to force you into a headspace of curiosity and nail-biting tension (the thunder-cracks that permeate the night will get you more than once), it's truly a masterpiece of game design in the way you unwittingly end up exploring the house in the exact way the creators designed, their puppet-strings remaining invisible all the while pulling you in certain directions. As with all great stories, come the final reveal you'll either be thoroughly satisfied or begging for more (potentially both), and the more you think about how the material is handled plus the way you've approached everything, Gone Home quickly becomes one for gaming's history books.
