Building comparison
head to head
Gone HomevsHeavy Rain
Heavy Rain asks more than Gone Home, and the gap is execution.
Gone Home
Optimization · Light / Casual
A first-person exploration about returning to an empty family home.
Heavy Rain
Execution · Light / Casual
Branching interactive thriller where QTE choices decide who survives the Origami Killer case.
Gone Home leans Optimization (Light / Casual); Heavy Rain leans Execution (Light / Casual).
Gone HomeHeavy Rain
Axis by axis
Execution0 vs 3
Heavy Rain leans clearly harder on execution.
Gone Home
Pure walking and inspection.
Heavy Rain
QTE prompts under tension
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Gone Home
No opponents.
Heavy Rain
No adaptive opposition
Variance1 vs 2
Heavy Rain leans a little harder on variance, though the gap is small.
Gone Home
Notes and items are fixed.
Heavy Rain
First-run uncertainty about consequences
Optimization2 vs 3
Heavy Rain leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Gone Home
Order of discovery hardly matters.
Heavy Rain
Branch knowledge fully solves outcomes
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.