If you lived here, you'd be home by now.

I'd read once - somewhere, on the interweb - Gone Home being called an "Oscar bait" video game -- and while it did win no shortage of awards last year, I don't think that evaluation of it is completely fair. While it's true that it tackles a story one could accuse of award-baiting, and its "gameplay" resembles that of an annoying post-modern walking simulator, this isn't just pretentious arthouse fluff; there is some real narrative substance to it.

Gone Home is a first-person, exploration-based, pure-story game. There's no action, and there are no visible characters; the story is told forensically, by examining notes and other objects found throughout the game's titular home. While there is an amount of reading to do, Gone Home also uses a bit of narrative liberty to provide voice-overs relevant to its main plot thread. This particular liberty is the only aspect of Gone Home I would really call unrealistic, but it's done so well that I didn't even think about it until after finishing the game.

It's important to note that the story Gone Home tells is a good one. It's well-written, it's believable and human, and its pacing is remarkably good at producing tension and anxiety (despite its retrospective context). By the end, I really felt close to the characters at the center of its story.

But here's where the other shoe drops: it is short. Steam tells me I finished my playthrough in 1.2 hours -- that's including a little bit of idle exploration and dicking around. I bet you could speed-run this thing in like 10, 15 minutes, without missing any significant content.

Gone Home could use more story. And what's interesting is that it seems like it might have had some, earlier in development. There are other characters - tertiary to the main plot - that seem to have tales of their own to tell, as shown in some other notes and items around the house. The house overall is super-well-detailed, and there is plenty of space (and narrative excuse) for it to accommodate even more storytelling. In short, all the materials to support additional story threads are here.

Instead, it seems like The Fullbright Company made a deliberate decision to focus specifically on one thread. And to their credit, it's really well done. But the game ends up feeling very small as a result. And the math is hard to deny: with a full price of $20, and a running time of under two hours, Gone Home has one of the worst dollars-per-hour ratios in the history of video games.

Buy this on a Steam super-sale for a few bucks, and enjoy it before bed, or while waiting for another game to download. Gone Home's story is a worthy addition to any mental library; it just isn't worth that much money. (I'm rating this "Good" on the assumption that no one would ever pay full price for it.)

Better than: Dear Esther
Not as good as: Analogue: A Hate Story
Seriously guys: Just, I dunno, do some DLC that narrates and completes the other characters' stories. (Free DLC. Come on.)