Steve Gaynor on Gone Home

I remembered the false wall in the mom’s closet from a previous playthrough and tried to open it, and could’ve sworn I couldn’t trigger the hotspot.

SG: The level design trick going on there — I do increase the interaction distance, for the secret passage, after you read the note. It’s easier. We don’t want people to accidentally open it while looking for stuff, but we also want to let people wonder and actually open it from the beginning. Because… I think the core loop here is “explore to gain knowledge to explore to gain knowledge” and so on. Our game is not about hardcore challenge or puzzles, but I still think there’s an opportunity for mastery. By the end, you’ve gained all this knowledge about the house and how everything connects. It was important for me that you can just walk up to the [spoiler] and get the attic key and speed-run our game in 90 seconds.