Unwelcome Home: Gone Home, Curtain, and the Removal of Safety

In the middle of my second year, my parents moved my family out to Boise, Idaho. After a series of complications and misjudged scheduling, I was finally able to visit during the winter break of my third year. At that point, my parents had fully moved into a house on the easternmost edge of the city, and had fully claimed the suburban unit as our family home. 

Of course, many college students encounter and grapple with the experience of coming home after college, and the realization that, like it or not, your family members have lives, and more importantly, lives that will continue in your absence. What struck me immediately about Gone Home, however, was its portrayal of the experience of arriving to a space that you are expected to call home and yet is wholly unfamiliar, much like my earlier mentioned experience. And while the rest of your family members have settled in, you are expected to catch up in order to carve out your own place in this newly restructured family life within the framework of a new space. 

Gone Home does not ease its player into this task. There is a noticeable physical absence of the protagonist's family, characters that may provide a sense of familiarity or guidance. Instead, the player is forced to sift through their family's belongings, stitching together bits and pieces for life updates and learning a little bit too much about the family in the process. Information is foisted upon the player, and like with dramatic real-life updates, the player forced to process these new revelations and their implications upon their family life, further frustrating the process of identifying the new family structure in order to determine the protagonist's place. 

The space of Gone Home further drives home the immense difficulty of the task of 'finding a place'. The game relies upon exploration of this wholly unfamiliar building and spaces the player and protagonist are expected to call 'home'. There are some familiar points found in previous possessions unpacked in the family move, but the game compels the player to discover the physical spaces in which the protagonist's family has situated itself. However, in the first room upon immediate entry, the player becomes dwarfed by the space, both by the immense width of the room and the broad staircase. It imparts a feeling of smallness, of helplessness, upon the player as they try to forge ahead in their quest for information, uncovering the structure of their family as they discover the house. This feeling of smallness and helplessness persists, particularly in the entry into the guest room, meant to be the protagonist's room as indicated by the protagonist's boxed possessions. The protagonist is literally assigned to a secondary room by their family, deemed a 'guest'. Their belongings are still in moving boxes, the room bare. No one in the family has had either the time or consideration to prepare the room for the protagonist, once again indicative of the protagonist's need to piece together their own life and establish themselves in this new space. The house is meant to be a refuge, a home to return to, yet the player is forced to grapple with unfamiliarity and discomfort. 

Curtain plays upon a similar notion of an unwelcome home - however, rather than focusing upon the discovery as its mechanism for establishing place, Curtain plays upon interaction to inform the player of their place. Yet each interaction is unwelcome, stifling, as the player and protagonist find themselves subject to belittling and frankly abusive comments from the other primary character (and somewhat love interest), Kaci. As the protagonist is unable to engage in conversation for the visible portions of the game, each attempt to familiarize oneself within the space of the apartment results in disparagement from Kaci, making Kaci the primary point of information and feedback. Even interaction with the one other living soul in the apartment (that is, the protagonist's cat Toast), results in discouragement, and attempts to interact with other characters outside of the apartment subjects protagonist and player to Kaci's wrath. These interactions, however, belittles both protagonist and player within the cramped, isolated confines of the apartment, forcing the player to question the protagonist's place within this story and relationship. 

Gone Home and Curtain engage in differing aesthetics and mechanics in order to achieve the same effect. Gone Home utilizes large, dwarfing spaces to impart smallness and unfamiliarity to the player. Curtain attaches aggression and discomfort to familiarity, imparting defensiveness and unease to the player. Gone Home relies upon discovery in the absence of dialogue to expose information. Curtain relies upon interaction and dialogue to clarify the protagonist's situation. Both games, however, successfully create a sense of immense discomfort and anxiety in spaces that we take to be safe, specifically the safe refuge of home. This removal of safety and familiarity forces players like us to inform ourselves of the spaces we inhabit, forcing us to grapple with where we stand in a place that is not our own.