Gone Home Was Once an Amnesia: The Dark Descent Mod

[Cognimancer]

Gone Home Was Once an Amnesia: The Dark Descent Mod

Gone Home was prototyped as a custom campaign for Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and now you can play that early build for yourself.

A lot goes into the process of making a game, but one of the earliest decisions is choosing what game engine to use. When Fullbright started working on its indie hit Gone Home, they thought it would work well with the same engine that powered Frictional Games' Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Trouble was, Frictional created that engine itself, and did so without planning on releasing it to other developers. The Amnesia team rejected Fullbright's request to utilize their proprietary engine, but that didn't stop Fullbright from creating a proof-of-concept Amnesia mod anyway - a mod that's now free to the public.

"From time to time we get requests from people who want to license our HPL2 engine in order to make a commercial game," says Frictional's Thomas Grip. "Our reply is to simply state that there is no documentation, we do not have time for support and they are better off using Unity or UDK anyway."

It seems that Fullbright listened, since the commercial version of Gone Home is powered by Unity. After the game became a success, Fullbright sent Grip a copy of the old prototype Amnesia mod that inspired the full version of Gone Home. That mod is available to everyone on the internet, by the way, so if you liked Gone Home you can see what it was like in the early days. Check out the mod (installable as a Custom Story) right here [http://unbirthgame.com/GoneHome.rar].

Source: Frictional Games [http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/10/gone-home-amnesia-edition.html]

Permalink

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

 

[AntiChrist]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

Yeah, because to be a bad developer, you need to make a bad game first. So I guess only Chinese Room is a bad developer, since Amnesia A Machine for Pigs could be classified as a game.

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

 

[Mike Richards]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

Yeah, because to be a bad developer, you need to make a bad game first. So I guess only Chinese Room is a bad developer, since Amnesia A Machine for Pigs could be classified as a game.

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

An excuse for butthurt people to perpetuate a pointless debate that does nothing but fail at pathetically attempting to delegitimize titles they don't like?

I don't like strategy games, but I'm not going to say Company of Heroes is a piece of shit just because it doesn't let me shoot people myself. That's just the kind of game it is. Gone Home, Dear Esther, Stanley Parable, whatever else you want to throw on that list, are just examples of a new genre.

If you want to debate how well they work as titles within that genre by all means, go right ahead. But wasting time arguing about what is an isn't a game doesn't actually get us anything. It doesn't make the games better, it doesn't make the industry better, it doesn't make the medium better. All it does is start fights. The definitions are all arbitrary, and any real attempt to lay them down in stone is just gonna end up looking foolish. In fact it already has.

Some people like things other people don't. Everyone needs to just get over it.

 

[Mothhive]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

Yeah, because to be a bad developer, you need to make a bad game first. So I guess only Chinese Room is a bad developer, since Amnesia A Machine for Pigs could be classified as a game.

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

A gameplay must have something to overcome and some kind of failure state, even if its super minor. If its not that, its basically a 3D museum.

Most Point and Click Adventure Games don't have failure states, are you saying they aren't games?

Also, Gone Home does have things to overcome. Locked doors being one of them, the keys to which you aren't able to find without following clues, clues which you find by interacting with the environment.

 

[Cedric Plante]

Most Point and Click Adventure Games don't have failure states, are you saying they aren't games?

Also, Gone Home does have things to overcome. Locked doors being one of them, the keys to which you aren't able to find without following clues, clues which you find by interacting with the environment.

Exactly. Gone Home is very close to a point and click game.
Also Gone Home is well designed and engaging.

 

[Eternal_Lament]

I can't tell if Gone Home done in Amnesia would produce something marginally worse or better than what Gone Home really was. All I could think is that it would seem really out of place having

Spoiler

a trite story about discovering oneself being a lesbian

in a 18th century castle environment. At the very least, all the 90's set pieces would seem out of place as fuck. Actually, upon thinking it over some more, while it would still probably be shit, this version of Gone Home would probably be creepy as opposed to the original that simply tries to be unnerving.

NOTE: I know you can create different environment's with the engine, I just can't get the idea of an 18th century Gone Home out of my head

 

[Hazy]

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

It's not that Gone Home isn't a game - it's just that it isn't a very good one.

I'm sure people find the story compelling and everything, and that's cool but

Spoiler

if I wanted to rummage through someone's stuff to learn about a gay kid, I'd go to my friend Anthony's place

 

[Cecilo]

I quite enjoyed Gone Home, going into it expecting it to be a horror story, got a story about your family breaking apart with a creepy atmosphere. While it might not be called a game in the traditional sense, it did a wonderful job of displaying how you do atmosphere correctly, lighting, the constant rain and lightning, it played on what you'd usually expect in a horror story, someone messing with supernatural stuff, an old relative died in the house, a hidden Ouija board, an alter hidden in the wall.

It did what it did fantastically, but yea, I probably wouldn't call it a game, more like an interactive visual novel. Or a Video Book. I dunno.

 

[Mahorfeus]

I had no idea what kind of game Gone Home would be when I started playing it. In fact, I genuinely thought that it was taking a turn for the horror genre as I was playing. It seems really stupid in retrospect, but wandering around in the dark, looking for secrets, I actually felt afraid. Especially towards the end, things seemed to just get plain creepy. Was that paranoia? Maybe; like I said, I had no idea what the hell I was getting myself into when I started to play. Of course, the story is actually about

Spoiler

lesbians.

It was certainly an interesting experience, and I can't hesitate to call it a "game."

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

Yeah, because to be a bad developer, you need to make a bad game first. So I guess only Chinese Room is a bad developer, since Amnesia A Machine for Pigs could be classified as a game.

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

A gameplay must have something to overcome and some kind of failure state, even if its super minor. If its not that, its basically a 3D museum.

There is a failure state - failing to find out what happened to your family. That's not even a minor failure state, and it's what makes the game so intriguing. At least more intriguing than it would be if the failure state was being eaten by a monster roaming around the house. But screw realism and real-life situations, right?

 

[Finomans]

I don't get all the negativity against Gone Home, especially considering none of you actually use valid reasons for why it's a "bad" game or "not-a-game". It is a game because you have to figure out what happened, it might not have been a really complicated mystery, but there's always space for improvement. What it does do well is display a sad emotional story (for me anyway) that starts of with a creepy and eerie atmosphere. It an entry into a new genre of games, if you don't like it just ignore it like I do with the battlefields and the cods and the fifas, just don't go saying something isn't a game because you don't like it.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

Yeah, because to be a bad developer, you need to make a bad game first. So I guess only Chinese Room is a bad developer, since Amnesia A Machine for Pigs could be classified as a game.

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

A gameplay must have something to overcome and some kind of failure state, even if its super minor. If its not that, its basically a 3D museum.

There is a failure state - failing to find out what happened to your family. That's not even a minor failure state, and it's what makes the game so intriguing. At least more intriguing than it would be if the failure state was being eaten by a monster roaming around the house. But screw realism and real-life situations, right?

You cant 'fail' finding out what happened to your family unless you get sick of playing the game.

And what's wrong with that? Put yourself in the protagonist's position. She wants to know what happened to her family. She can either do so, exploring the house and finding all the clues, or give up. True, finding the clues isn't very hard but you still have to put in the effort to do it. You're suggesting we fill the house with traps and monsters to make it artificially harder.

The power here is in the story and what's left unsaid, and I rarely say that about any game as I prefer maintaining momentum through challenge not story.

 

[Amphoteric]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

Yeah, because to be a bad developer, you need to make a bad game first. So I guess only Chinese Room is a bad developer, since Amnesia A Machine for Pigs could be classified as a game.

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

A gameplay must have something to overcome and some kind of failure state, even if its super minor. If its not that, its basically a 3D museum.

There is a failure state - failing to find out what happened to your family. That's not even a minor failure state, and it's what makes the game so intriguing. At least more intriguing than it would be if the failure state was being eaten by a monster roaming around the house. But screw realism and real-life situations, right?

You cant 'fail' finding out what happened to your family unless you get sick of playing the game.

And what's wrong with that? Put yourself in the protagonist's position. She wants to know what happened to her family. She can either do so, exploring the house and finding all the clues, or give up. True, finding the clues isn't very hard but you still have to put in the effort to do it. You're suggesting we fill the house with traps and monsters to make it artificially harder.

The power here is in the story and what's left unsaid, and I rarely say that about any game as I prefer maintaining momentum through challenge not story.

If the only failure state is trigger by me stopping the game that does not make it a game else every movie or show ever made is technically a game.

"video game"

A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. -Wikipedia

any of various games played using a microcomputer with a keyboard and often joysticks to manipulate changes or respond to the action or questions on the screen. -dictionary.reference.com

a game played by electronically manipulating images displayed on a screen. -oxford dictionary

an electronic game in which players control images on a television or computer screen -merriam-webster

 

[wulf3n]

Oh the irony. Amnesia dev tells later creator of Gone Home they cant make a game on their engine, then gets ChineseRoom to make a game for them on their engine. Two absolutely awful developers wanted what Frictional had, and both continued being awful afterwards.

Just because you didn't like the creations of The Chinese Room and Fullbright doesn't mean they're bad developers. Besides, I don't think either of them wanted "what Frictional had", if you're referring to Frictional's success. They just wanted to use the engine.

Yeah, because to be a bad developer, you need to make a bad game first. So I guess only Chinese Room is a bad developer, since Amnesia A Machine for Pigs could be classified as a game.

If Gone Home isn't a game, then what is it?

A gameplay must have something to overcome and some kind of failure state, even if its super minor. If its not that, its basically a 3D museum.

There is a failure state - failing to find out what happened to your family. That's not even a minor failure state, and it's what makes the game so intriguing. At least more intriguing than it would be if the failure state was being eaten by a monster roaming around the house. But screw realism and real-life situations, right?

You cant 'fail' finding out what happened to your family unless you get sick of playing the game.

And what's wrong with that? Put yourself in the protagonist's position. She wants to know what happened to her family. She can either do so, exploring the house and finding all the clues, or give up. True, finding the clues isn't very hard but you still have to put in the effort to do it. You're suggesting we fill the house with traps and monsters to make it artificially harder.

The power here is in the story and what's left unsaid, and I rarely say that about any game as I prefer maintaining momentum through challenge not story.

If the only failure state is trigger by me stopping the game that does not make it a game else every movie or show ever made is technically a game.

"video game"

A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. -Wikipedia

any of various games played using a microcomputer with a keyboard and often joysticks to manipulate changes or respond to the action or questions on the screen. -dictionary.reference.com

a game played by electronically manipulating images displayed on a screen. -oxford dictionary

an electronic game in which players control images on a television or computer screen -merriam-webster

We can go a bit further.

Game:

1) a form of competitive activity or sport played according to rules.

2) an activity that one engages in for amusement.