Not being able to shoot things really annoys some people. There are few better demonstrations of this enduring truth than Fullbright s first-person exploration game Gone Home. Not only has it spawned an hilarious parody featuring lots of things being killed, but now you too will be able to kill things in the titular home, thanks to this Counter-Strike: GO map.
"Your family is mysteriously missing again," so says the Steam Workshop description. "But you can figure that out later. Right now you have more pressing issues to attend to, like the fact that your house is full of terrorists and some dude has been taken hostage. Rescue him by taking him to the garage where you can make a swift getaway on that old bike thats been sitting there for twenty years."
The hostage map is recommended for less than 32 players, and can be downloaded here. Of course, you could go ahead and play Gone Home again, which comes highly recommended.
Thanks Joystiq.

Gone Home studio Fullbright Company has changed its name. The small Portland-based studio will now go by the name Fullbright. Snappy, isn't it? The folk at Fullbright describe it as more "streamlined", which makes sense as now instead of five syllables there are a mere two. They also have a new logo, which you can look at above.

More exciting is that Fullbright is working on its follow up to Gone Home, and they're currently recruiting. The studio is seeking a programmer and a "world-class character animator", with the latter perhaps suggesting there will be characters in this mysterious new game. You heard it here first. According to the announcement the studio will "be continuing our focus on creating immersive, unforgettable story exploration video games".

Gone Home nabbed the PC Gamer 'narrative of the year' award for 2013, with Chris Thursten describing it as "a drama that celebrates the things your brain is doing when you re switched on and engaged with the world". If you found the game a bit too cerebral for your tastes, then you may enjoy this video which reimagines it as a brutal FPS with "high octane introspection".

Ether One has been teasing us for quite some time, but next week the Oculus Rift capable exploration game is finally free to mess with our minds. To celebrate, we ve got a spanking-new release trailer to check out the weird world of the memory repair technician, also known as a Restorer.



As Tom discovered in his preview last summer, being a Restorer seems to be a pretty ordinary job. You strap into a virtual reality machine made quite meta by the inclusion of Oculus Rift support and head into some poor person s mind to heal their traumas and neuroses.

There are a lot of influences going on here, including Myst, Dear Esther, and Gone Home. The idea of walking free-form through a Spotless Mind style scenario is fascinating, and the deeper mysteries hinted at during the trailer have me wanting to dive right in.



Ether One will be available on Tuesday, March 25, on Steam and GOG.

Steve Gaynor, Sean Vanaman, and Tim Rogers playing Towerfall before podcasting.



In this week's special GDC 2014 episode, we recorded from Tyler's kitchen in downtown San Francisco with two groups of game developer guests who hiked over from GDC. First up, hear from Xaviant design director Tim Lindsey, whose resume also includes CCP, Bethesda, and Hi-Rez; Twinbeard Studios founder and Frog Fractions creator Jim Crawford; and Mode 7 Games' Ian Hardingham, who designed and programmed Frozen Synapse and is now working on Frozen Endzone.

The second group features Steve Gaynor, co-founder of The Fullbright Company and writer/designer of Gone Home; Sean Vanaman, former lead writer and project lead on The Walking Dead at Telltale Games, Idle Thumbs podcast co-host, and founder of Campo Santo; and Tim Rogers, creator of "abstract minimalist electronic sport" Videoball.

Download: PC Gamer Podcast #376 GDC 2014 Special

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com or call us toll-free at 877-404-1337 x724.

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Unity 5, the latest version of the popular game development engine, was unveiled at the Game Development Conference in San Francisco today. The new update will include big updates to Unity s audio and lighting tools and 64-bit engine support, according to Unity Technologies. Unity 5 will be available for pre-order starting today, and is accompanied by a trailer featuring lots of flashy light rendering and a wub-wub distortion soundtrack.



Every time we ship a new version of Unity, we re looking to empower developers with technology that's more powerful and easier to apply than ever before, David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies, wrote in a press release. With the huge additions of physically-based shading, lighting workflows, a new platform, and a new built-in method for user acquisition, we re improving Unity dramatically from both a creative and business perspective.

Unity has also partnered with Mozilla to bring the game engine to WebGL, meaning that Unity games could run inside Firefox without any additional plug-ins. Mozilla has written up a full post about the collaboration here, and the Unity booth will be showing off this ability with in-browser builds of Dead Trigger 2.

Users who pre-order will also get access to the current build of Unity 4 and all planned updates. Unity 4 launched two years ago, and has provided the base for games like Rust, Kerbal Space Program, Gone Home, and Surgeon Simulator.

Thanks to Aaron San Filippo, developer of Unity game Race the Sun, for the tip.

I'm not going to sugar-coat this for you: last night's BAFTA Game Awards didn't end with the PC hunched under an unbearable weight of face gold. The platform struggled against heavy hitting console match-three games, like The Last of Us, and Grand Theft Auto 5. Even so, there were awards for indie gems Papers, Please and Gone Home, and multi-platform titles like Bioshock Infinite. In addition, the reclusive Rockstar heads showed up in person to accept their BAFTA fellowship. You can find that video, and a full list of winners, below.

Also, before the big list, be sure to check out the BAFTA Steam sale that's running until later today. There are some particularly great deals in there, like the excellent XCOM: Enemy Within for a ridiculously low 5/$7.50.

BAFTA FELLOWSHIP
- Winner: Rockstar Games



BEST GAME
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Papers, Please
- Super Mario 3D World
- Tearaway

ACTION AND ADVENTURE
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- BADLAND
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
- Tomb Raider

STRATEGY AND SIMULATION
- Winner: Papers, Please
- Civilization 5: Brave New World
- Democracy 3
- Forza Motorsport 5
- Surgeon Simulator 2013
- XCOM: Enemy Within

MULTIPLAYER
- Winner: Grand Theft Auto 5
- Battlefield 4
- Dota 2
- Super Mario 3D World
- The Last of Us
- World of Tanks

SPORTS
- Winner: Fifa 14
- F1 2013
- Football Manager 2014
- Forza Motorsport 5
- Grid 2
- NBA 2K14

FAMILY
- Winner: Tearaway
- Animal Crossing: New Leaf
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Rayman Legends
- Skylanders SWAP Force
- Super Mario 3D World

STORY
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Gone Home
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
- The Stanley Parable

GAME DESIGN
- Winner: Grand Theft Auto 5
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Papers, Please
- Tearaway
- The Last of Us
- Tomb Raider

DEBUT GAME
- Gone Home
- BADLAND
- Castles in the Sky
- Gunpoint
- Remember Me
- The Stanley Parable

ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT
- Winner: Tearaway
- Beyond: Two Souls
- BioShock Infinite
- DEVICE 6
- Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
- The Last of Us

GAME INNOVATION
- Winner: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Papers, Please
- Tearaway
- The Stanley Parable
- Year Walk

AUDIO ACHIEVEMENT
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Battlefield 4
- BioShock Infinite
- DEVICE 6
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Tomb Raider

ORIGINAL MUSIC
- Winner: Bioshock Infinite
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Beyond: Two Souls
- Super Mario 3D World
- Tearaway
- The Last of Us

MOBILE AND HANDHELD
- Winner: Tearaway
- BADLAND
- DEVICE 6
- Plants vs. Zombies 2
- Ridiculous Fishing
- The Room Two

BRITISH GAME
- Winner: Grand Theft Auto 5
- Tearaway
- The Room Two
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
- Gunpoint
- DmC Devil May Cry

PERFORMER
- Winner: Ashley Johnson (Ellie - The Last of Us)
- Courtnee Draper (Elizabeth - BioShock Infinite)
- Ellen Page (Jodie - Beyond: Two Souls)
- Kevan Brighting (The Narrator - The Stanley Parable)
- Steven Ogg (Trevor Phillips - Grand Theft Auto 5)
- Troy Baker (Joel - The Last of Us)

BAFTA ONES TO WATCH AWARD
- Winner: Size Does Matter
- Project Heera: Diamond Heist
- The Unknown

Welcome to the PC Gamer Game of the Year Awards 2013. For an explanation of how the awards were decided, a round-up of all the awards and the list of judges, check here.

Traditional storytelling techniques suffer in the transition to interactive entertainment. While many games choose to compartmentalise their storytelling and interactive sections, others experiment with new methods. In Gone Home, exploration becomes a form of authorship. The entwined stories of each family member unravel at your command as you flick through the detritus of their lives. The resulting tale was the most affecting of the year.

A warning for those who haven't played it yet, the discussion below does contain a few spoilers.

TYLER Gone Home s interlocking tales of love, rejection and regret are exposed almost wholly by the artefacts left by your family members as you explore their new house. The story is moving (although the sentimentality sometimes borders on schmaltzy), but what makes Gone Home extra special is how it s told. More than interacting with spaces and things, I m interacting with motivations and fears, solving a maze with empathy rather than spatial reasoning. In a medium rife with expository cutscenes and deus ex machina, Gone Home brings vital innovation to the art of the interactive narrative. Also, I teared up a little at the end, if you must know.

ANDY I was expecting the worst. I went into this game not knowing a single thing about it, and in every dark room, and around every dark corner, I was expecting something horrible. So it was a relief, and a pleasant surprise, to discover that it just wanted to tell me a story about people. This was far more interesting than serial killers or ghosts or whatever I was bracing myself to encounter in those gloomy, eerily quiet corridors. Even as I climbed to the attic I was preparing to stumble across something grim, but instead I found a beautiful, touching end to a wonderfully understated human story. Years of playing videogames have trained my brain to always expect conflict or danger, and it was nice to have those expectations subverted. I too have a low tolerance for schmaltz, but Gone Home was on just the right side of sentimental for me.

TONY It s all in the dad s room. It s set up so that the first thing you come across is his desk, where you discover what seem to be the scribblings of a would-be science fiction writer. This is a dad with dreams. Then, as you work your way around his den you find the boxes of books with his name on and realise he made it: he s a published author. That s great! Good for you, unfulfilled American 90s dad! Only... why are there so many boxes of his book? Then you read the publisher s letter, rejecting his latest manuscript because his books have all bombed. Lastly, you read the snarky editor s memo from the consumer electronics magazine the dad works at now, writing puff pieces about hi-fis, and realise that this is a dad who went for his dream and failed. A whole life in boxes, in a single room.

CHRIS It s been said that Gone Home subverts our expectations of what a game experience should be in order to tell a different kind of story but what I like most about it is that it s not about throwing away what games are good at. Games are a form of communication that demands mutual participation. Good games expect your critical engagement, and treat you like someone capable of interpreting situations and environments intelligently without the need for hand-holding. There s something positive and hopeful about entertainment that wants you to be active, not passive.

Gone Home is, as much as any other game on this list, a game about making choices. Not which soldier to turn into a robot, but where to go, what to look for, what to choose to attribute meaning to. It s about following lines of potential through to the point where you discover what is, a drama that celebrates the things your brain is doing when you re switched on and engaged with the world.

PC Gamer editors are prohibited from celebrating Christmas. For the team, the end of the year is marked by an event known as GOTY Sleepover, a time where we somewhat-voluntarily sequester ourselves away from our families and loved ones in the interest of a greater good: selecting the best PC games of the year. We gather in a room with a very heavy door and very little ventilation and stay there until we ve reached a unanimous decision on every award category. It s a lot like the Papal conclave, but with more Cheetos.

So far, this is what we ve got. These are games nominated for awards in general, not just our single Game of the Year. Consider this a short-list of the games our team loved in 2013, one we ll whittle down into proper, named awards in the coming days.


Dota 2
Arma 3
Spelunky
Battlefield 4
Gone Home
Tomb Raider
Rising Storm
Saints Row IV
Papers, Please
BioShock Infinite
Total War: Rome II
The Stanley Parable
XCOM: Enemy Within

Check in each day over the holiday break to see who's victorious. In the meantime, here's our 2012 winners and some lively year-end video conversations about our best PC gaming experiences in 2013.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games recently revealed that The Fullbright Company’s indie title, Gone Home, first saw life through the Amnesia engine. And if you're interested in the prototype, you can try it right now.

Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip notes in a company blog post that he denies all requests to use the HPL2 engine in a commercial game, as there’s no documentation for the engine and Frictional Games simply doesn’t have the time to support the engine. Instead, Grip would suggest using Unity or UDK (Unreal Development Kit). Steve Gaynor, who helped craft the haunting tale that is Gone Home, asked Grip whether his team could use the engine for what would become Gone Home, but received the same answer.

Fullbright ended up following Grip’s advice and used Unity to shape Gone Home—but not before building the first prototype with the HPL2 engine anyway. After all, Grip only denied requests to license the engine for commercial products.

Grip and Gaynor reconnected after Gone Home’s launch, with Grip asking if Gaynor still had the “Amnesia version” of Gone Home tucked away in his computer. Gaynor just so happened to have a copy, and now that copy is available to you.

Grip said Gaynor requested the HPL2 license way back in January of last year, and speculates that the Fullbright Company must have been utilizing the HPL2 engine before asking Grip if the final version of Gone Home could use that license. Basically, this means the Amnesia prototype is a very early version of what Gone Home would eventually become.

To navigate Gone Home’s earliest, creakiest walls, just download the prototype and extract the file into Amnesia: The Dark Descent’s “custom_stories” directory. If you see something called “Test Game” after selecting “Custom Stories” on Amnesia’s main menu, you’re good to go. At least the Gone Home prototype doesn’t have invincible flesh monsters roaming the halls…right?

This week's podcast is all about Steam's three, big announcements. What do SteamOS, Steam Machines, and the Steam Controller mean to PC gaming? How does it all work? How much does it cost? Does Valve want to replace your main rig? Your living room entertainment center? All of the above? How would Nicholas Cage fare in the political landscape of the 15th Century?

Cory, Evan, and T.J. answer all of these questions to the best of their ability in PC Gamer Podcast 363 - Gabecube!

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com or call us toll-free at 877-404-1337 x724.

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