Kaitlin and Sam ’ s mother receives letters from her friends and concert tickets from a work colleague that imply that she is considering an affair . Explorations of the basement reveal that their father was the victim of sexual assault as a child , and it is even implied that this is why their family have such a negative reaction to Sam ’ s homosexuality . All of these revelations , however , earn no musical underscoring or voice acted dialogue . In a subversion of the mainstream approach to queer video gaming , the ‘ queer route ’ ismandatory , and the ‘ heterosexual route ’ is completely optional , not even deemed important enough to have a musical score .
The music itself mimics and supports the ways in which the game tricks the player into a false sense of insecurity . All the musical excerpts in the game ’ s first half are in C major , as Sam retells the story of meeting Lonnie . It is even the key of the game ’ s menu music , so in a literal and metaphorical sense , C major represents “ home ”. The more of the house that the player explores , however , the more the music modulates into A minor . This mimics the way that Sam ’ s storytelling transforms into something much darker , as she recounts her parents ’ negative reaction to her same-sex relationship , or Lonnie ’ s decision to join the army . All of the musical cues and sound design leading up to this point is preparing the player for a tragedy . But it isn ’ t until the final ‘ journal entry ’, discovered in the attic , entitled “ I Said Yes ” that the music triumphantly resolves back into C major , as Lonnie deserts the army to pick Sam up and run away together . Here , the ‘ home ’ of C major is recontextualised to not refer to the house , the game ’ s setting , but to refer to Lonnie instead . Sam has ‘ Gone Home ’ in the sense that she has found a home , her safe space , her ‘ C major ’, in Lonnie . Just as the ominous red liquid in the bathtub is revealed to be hair dye , the game and its ’ music allow us a happy , resolved ending .
The music is specifically designed to be cute and lighthearted , to be a safe-haven away from the game ’ s expected design , in much the same way that Lonnie is the safe- haven in Sam ’ s story , pulling both Sam and the player out of the horrors of the ‘ house ’ and into the warmth of Lonnie ’ s ‘ home ’. It doesn ’ t allow the lesbian couple to befetishised or made into a tragedy , and simply celebrates the young love of two women . Any gamer who goes into the game will not expect “ anything other than blood ”; but suddenly , the game puts them into the unfamiliar territory of the game ’ s joys . The only reason the game is scary is because the normative experience of gameplay tells us that this game is going to be terrifying . Our own normative experience of game design sets us up for fear . Bagnall writes on Gone Home that “ play , like queerness , encourages complexity and unpredictability to exist and blossom in cultural systems , be those digital games or the gender binary ,” ( 2017 , p . 139 ) and this unpredictability begins andisexplored primarily in Remo ’ s score , as it presents queerness as a liberation from the fear that the game industry otherwise tells us to feel . This is what sets queer games apart from “ Queergaming ”, the player is not just shown a lesbian couple and told how hard they have it , the player experiences the fear with them . The player is inadvertently queered through the game ’ s sound design , finding the house terrifying without any explicit terror , and finding solace in the lighthearted music that accompanies Sam ’ s dialogue , being put at ease only by Lonnie .
The ways in which games explore and subvert normativity is crucial to understanding gamemaking ’ s queer potential , and this is at its ’ most explicit in Anna Anne Anthropy ’ s ‘ dys4ia ’. Marked as a hallmark of the Queer Games Avant-Garde movement ( Ruberg , 2020 ) it is a free-to-play flash game that explores Anthropy ’ s own relationship with hormone therapy .
JACK DRUMMOND-JOY
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