This article was taken from the January 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Game developers Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonja worked on
Minerva's Den, a game set in the fantastic, retro-futuristic undersea city of Rapture, home of the BioShock franchise. Now, at their indie startup The Fullbright Company, they are building a game set in a yet more inexplicable environment: the 90s.
"We wanted to pick a time without mobile phones or home internet, so all the clues could be artefacts -- receipts and notes people left for each other," explains Gaynor, 30. "But we didn't want to go so far back that we lost the personal connection."
In Gone Home, the player investigates a suburban home in Oregon (where The Fullbright Company is based), piecing together what happened to its missing inhabitants. Zimonja, 35, found design inspiration in the American consumer's Bible: "We got a Sears catalogue from 1992 on eBay, full of ghastly furniture. We scanned things from that and then Kate Craig, our environment artist, turned them into 3D models." Gaynor adds: "The core lies in a place that feels familiar and believable. It's all about being immersed in the atmosphere."
Gone Home will be released in 2013 for PC, Mac and Linux.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
