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Gone Home, Europa Universalis 4, more discounted in Humble Store Winter Sale
The Humble Store has kicked off its Winter Sale with a number of big discounts, most notably indie hit Gone Home, which will be reduced to a mere $5. Other notable sales include Europa Universalis 4 for $20, Shadow Warrior for $10 and Legend of Grimrock for $3.75. A full list of the current deals can be found on the Winter Sale website. So what's the catch? These deals are only available for a limited time. These discounts in particular are only valid for the next eight hours, after which time they'll be replaced by new, different discounts. There's no telling what might pop up next - an earlier version of the sale only reduced Gone Home's price to $10, instead of its current $5. As with all Humble Store sales, 10 percent of all proceeds go toward charity. It's up to you which charity you'd like your money to benefit, though between the American Red Cross, Child's Play, the Electronic Freedom Frontier, the World Land Trust and Charity: Water, wherever your cash goes it will be put to good use helping the less fortunate.
Hit List Q&A: Gone Home's Steve Gaynor
In the "Hit List" from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the video game industry's top talents describe their current gaming addictions, their most anticipated releases and more. This week: Steve Gaynor, co-founder of 'Gone Home' developer The Fullbright Company. Steve Gaynor is co-founder of independent game studio The Fullbright Company. He was the writer and designer of the Company's critically lauded first game, Gone Home. Prior to this, he worked for a number of years as a designer on the BioShock franchise. At the 2014 DICE Summit, Steve will deliver a talk entitled Strangers in a Strange Time: "We live in a strange time. Is it a golden age, or a gold rush? The landscape is changing – because we're at the crest of the wave of first-generation indie success, and the indies that made those breakthrough games are now about to release their second titles. What does this mean for new indies now entering the field – and for the rest of the games industry?"
And the VGX 2013 winners are ...
The winners of the 2013 Spike VGX awards have been announced, and we've got them all compiled here for your viewing pleasure. Waiting to see who took home Best Studio, Best Character, Game of the Year and more? Well wait no more! Envelope, please. These are the winners that were announced during the VGX 2013 awards show: Best Action Adventure Game: Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag Best Sports Game: NBA 2K14 Best Indie Game: Gone Home Best Shooter: Bioshock Infinite Studio of the Year: Naughty Dog Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto 5 Of course, there are many, many more awards to be won, and many more monkeys to be handed out. If you want to see the full list of winners for every category, check out the official site of VGX 2013.
Gone Home plus four in-game albums bundled for $25
The Fullbright Company has released a new Record Collection bundle that includes a copy of the studio's interactive short story Gone Home and four full albums by artists featured throughout the game. For $25, buyers will receive downloadable tracks from Calculated by Heavens to Betsy, Pottymouth by Bratmobile, and The Youngins are Hardcore by The Youngins. The package also includes Gone Home's original score, composed by Chris Remo. Fans who already own a copy of Gone Home can purchase the albums separately for $15.
Gone Home began as an Amnesia mod, and you can play it
Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games revealed that The Fullbright Company's indie hit Gone Home began life as an Amnesia mod, but switched to the Unity engine after plans to license Frictional's HPL2 engine fell through. As a standard practice, Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip declines all HPL2 licensing requests, due to the engine's lack of documentation and support. After inquiring about licensing, Fullbright's Steve Gaynor received the same response from Grip, who advised the team to begin building Gone Home with Unity instead. After following up with Gaynor in the months after Gone Home's release, Grip received a copy of Gone Home's original prototype version, which is now available for download as a mod for Amnesia. While it's still in an early state, the prototype retains many of Gone Home's distinct themes and mechanics. "The prototype is quite short and very basic; it is really more of a proof of concept," Grip explains. "But it still gives a very good sense of the game, and having played the full version, I could recognize quite a bit. It does feel a bit awkward to play an early test like this though. Gone Home is a very personal game, and playing this prototype felt like a meta version of the game's voyeuristic thematics."
Gone Home adds Commentary Mode, now 50% off on Steam
The Fullbright Company's first-person interactive story Gone Home has updated with a new Commentary Mode, giving players an excuse to make a return trip through the Greenbriar family's labyrinthine dwelling. Gone Home's free Commentary Mode adds more than 90 minutes of audio content to the game, and features voiceovers from developers Steve Gaynor, Johnnemann Nordhagen, Karla Zimonja, and Kate Craig. Additional commentary is provided by Sarah Grayson (the voice of Sam), composer Chris Remo, and Sleater-Kinney singer Corin Tucker, whose former band Heavens to Betsy is featured throughout the story. The mode itself works similarly to Portal's commentary, and can be accessed via a series of clickable icons located throughout the Greenbriar's house. Explore thoroughly enough and you may shed some new light on the much-discussed Christmas Duck sidequest, among other juicy secrets. For the next 48 hours, Gone Home is available for 50 percent off of its regular price on Steam and via its website.
Gone Home developer preparing free commentary track
The Fullbright Company is working on a free in-game commentary track for its inaugural outing, Gone Home. "We're working on a commentary mode right now, and we're going to release that as free DLC," Fullbright's Steve Gaynor told RPS. "If you have it on Steam, you'll just get it. We don't have a date for it yet, but it'll be relatively soon. We're aiming for the short-term, and we've already recorded most of it." Commentary will involve "background stuff," some easter eggs and Corin Tucker, riot grrrl musician, speaking a bit about her involvement with the game. In our review of Gone Home, we lauded the game's restrained environmental storytelling and well-voiced letters. Gone Home launched in August and, over the course of its first month, has sold 50,000 copies. The game is currently available on Steam for $20, for the PC, Mac and Linux.
Gone Home sold to 50,000 occupants in a month
"Where is everyone?" house exploration mystery Gone Home, which is available through the game's site and Steam, has sold more than 50,000 copies since its launch on August 15. "We hope people will find it encouraging to know that," said Steve Gaynor, one of the founders of Fullbright Company. "Along with the positive critical response we are continually grateful for and humbled by, we are also doing alright as far as sales numbers go!" To talk about Gone Home is to take away from the experience of it. However, our review said: "Gone Home offers its revelations in quietness and purity, and that's why you'll leave it with a spring in your step."
The artists behind the SNES cart art in Gone Home
In your search for clues in Gone Home's big ol' house, you may have spotted a few forgotten games in the cupboard. The fictional SNES games of yesteryear were each concocted by established video game artists. Adventurous The Cat Returns, created by Double Fine artist Lee Perry, is the easiest cartridge to find, developer The Fullbright Company notes in a blog post. Perry's directive was to create "an overly 'cool' Bubsy-esque character" and we'd say he nailed it. Journey of Crystal, seen above, was clearly created by Supergiant Games art director Jenn Lee. This hypothetical JRPG sequel to Secret of Time Crystal is chock full of the fantastical, with a towering castle beckoning off in the distance. Check out the Fullbright post for the rest. Gone Home, currently available for PC, Mac and Linux on Steam, has you returning home after a year abroad, only to find no one there to greet you and a cryptic note on the door. You explore and examine the house interior to piece together the story of the people who live there.
Gone Home review: First-Person Snooper
You have returned and found your house bereft of its family, but littered with material proof of their lives. If you've ever been left alone to ponder mom and dad's unexpected absence (always leave a note!), you'll know the mystery can swing between the wild and the mundane: Burglars. A late-night ice cream run. An ambulance. Ghosts. Kidnapping. The Rapture. Wait, isn't that just kidnapping the nice people? Gone Home is a game about what happened while you were gone. Your co-identity in exploration is Kaitlin Greenbriar, the older sister who drops her bags on a Portland porch after a year-long trip to Europe. What you imagine her finding in drawers, on bookshelves and in crumpled notes – the physical counterparts of everything she's missed – is going to be grander and far colder than what develops here so elegantly: a warm, uplifting relationship that outgrows the very place built to enshrine it. Effective world-building, it turns out, can start with a single house and a tender voice inside it.
Gone Home finds out who's there on August 15
Gone Home, the first game from three ex-BioShock developers at The Fullbright Company, launches on Steam and the game's site on August 15 for PC, Mac and Linux, priced at $20. Gone Home is an exploration game set in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s, starring a teenage girl returning home from a year abroad to find her house empty. Players dig through every drawer and crevice in the house to figure out who her family is and what happened to them. In the name of authenticity, Gone Home features music from the 90s Riot Grrrl movement, including the bands Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy. Music is a huge influence on the life of any teenager, and Fullbright uses it to tell a real, emotional story, studio co-founder Steve Gaynor says. "It's really goddamn amazing to have the opportunity for this music to be in Gone Home," he says. "Authenticity is our No. 1 priority, and the inclusion of tracks by Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile really drives home the era and the place and the feelings surrounding the story of Gone Home. We're psyched."%Gallery-195217%
Gone Home sets the stage with two original Riot Grrrl bands
Gone Home uses an atmospheric, introspective exploration game to tackle one of the most mysterious, emotional and twisted phenomena of human existence – being a teenage girl in the 90s. Trust us, it's terrible.Regardless of gender or decade, one thing that alleviates the confusion of adolescence for millions of teenagers worldwide is music. For Gone Home's narrative, a teenage girl discovering herself in the 90s Pacific Northwest, this means Riot Grrrl. Riot Grrrl is a feminist punk movement that hit Washington and Oregon beginning in 1991, which spawned an influx of new bands and written publications focused on female empowerment.Developer The Fullbright Company – formed by three ex-BioShock developers – snagged two original Riot Grrrl bands, Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy, for Gone Home. It's an important get for Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor."It's really goddamn amazing to have the opportunity for this music to be in Gone Home," he says. "Authenticity is our No. 1 priority, and the inclusion of tracks by Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile really drives home the era and the place and the feelings surrounding the story of Gone Home. We're psyched."%Gallery-183348%
The Fullbright Company's first game explores the drawers of a strange home
We were excited about The Fullbright Company because it was founded by three ex-BioShock developers, but now we have another, more tangible reason to eagerly anticipate such a glorious union: the games. The Fullbright Company has announced its first project, Gone Home, a mysterious exploration game set in a "modern, residential locale" and shown as a pre-alpha build in the above video.Fullbright hopes to make Gone Home a rich simulation title with an emphasis on interaction, where players are able to open every drawer and examine the smallest details of their environment to unravel what happened there. The video teases these elements, as well as an audio diary system that plays at its end.Gone Home is native to PC but will support gamepad, and Fullbright will not have a Kickstarter for this title. In related news, "Are you planning to do a Kickstarter?" is now a question that developers consider a standard FAQ.
