Check it out! GONE HOME ON STEAM!

Oh man, that countdown! At this moment, it is approximately 25 hours until Gone Home unlocks on Steam! Give the page a look for minimum system system requirements, screenshots, our trailer… and of course feel free to add Gone Home to your wishlist if you like!

Something you may notice down in the bottom right there:

Yes, Gone Home will feature Steam Trading Cards!

We were worried about these at first– would they pop up while you’re playing and interrupt the game? We’re not doing Achievements to avoid just that issue. Would they cause spoilers, or otherwise make the game itself worse? In researching the system, we found that Steam Trading Cards do no cause any popups if you’re playing the game– you just have a notification waiting for you when you exit telling you that you have new inventory items available. And the content of the images and text on the cards is totally under the developer’s control, so they won’t give away anything we want to keep secret.

So what did we make for this goofy system? Cards, Badges, Emoticons, and Profile Backgrounds. Kate, our 3D artist and also a talented graphic artist, put together a bunch of gorgeous images for the set. I’ll share a sampling here!

First are the Steam Game Cards, which we’ve chosen as unique objects from inside the game. In this case, a Frankly Awesome Binder. The super cool Puffin illustration on the binder is by our super cool friend Aleks Sennwald:

These can be “crafted” (?) into Badges, which we’re basing on the music of Heavens to Betsy, Bratmobile, and The Youngins that we licensed for the game:

There are also Emoticons that you can use in Steam chat. Check out :ufo:

I want to believe.

And finally, profile backgrounds based on the game. Here’s Mixin’ It Up, with tape graphics by Emily Carroll, remixed by Kate:

So yeah! Check out Gone Home on Steam, and keep an eye on that countdown clock… we know we will be!

Look for one or two more posts here before that countdown ends!