Why Do Homes Feel Alive? | Unpacking and Procedural Narrative

Why do homes feel alive?

In class, we discussed the impact we leave on our homes – the energy inherent within memory and time spent in a space. Homes are weathered by our presence, and the tiny scratches, scuffs and stains we leave behind tell a story of their history and transform them from a sterile box into a living part of our lives. We see this in Gone Home, as the house is made alive by the things left behind by Katie’s family – it creates narrative out of the lived-in-ness of its setting. You’ve returned to a home in the middle of its life cycle, and its life is a product of the time spent by people in that space.

Unpacking takes place in a totally different place in the life cycle of homes. Rather than leaving the player to explore the depth of a lived in space, it presents the player with a set of spaces in the very first moments of their being the protagonist’s home. Rather than producing narrative and gameplay through the exploration of a lived in space, Unpacking has you perform that living in, making your first impression on the spaces that will become your home and shaping the way that you will exist in them as they eventually become your home (as is seen in Stage 7 – 2015, when the protagonist’s new partner moves into their existing home).

I find Unpacking to be an incredibly narratively compelling game. I always appreciate when games ‘show, not tell’ me their story, focusing more on environmental or action based storytelling rather than long scenes of dialogue or journal entries upon journal entries (not to say I don’t like word-based narratives, I just sometimes like the variety). Unpacking is, perhaps unsurprisingly, masterful at this kind of environmental storytelling. It wordlessly communicates so much about the protagonist’s life through the various objects you carry with you through the various houses. It first communicates the protagonist’s breakup to the player by putting a pin through the protagonist’s ex’s face in a photo. In the final chapter, we discover the fruit of the protagonist’s artistic commitment (after all, we had to unpack and organize so many boxes of markers and art supplies throughout the years) in the copies of the children’s book that they wrote about the stuffed animal pig they brought with them since childhood. We get glimpses into the protagonist’s journey with TTRPGs, as they buy and later paint a mini of their bard character, buy an extra large d20, and even paint a portrait of their party, as we see in 2013. Even objects as small as the purple toothbrush mug or the mousepad carry a story of their use, getting chipped or faded over time, implying to the player how well they were loved by the protagonist.

But beyond these environmental elements, Unpacking manages to tell stories at an even more impactful level, at least for me. Moving beyond just environmental narrative, Unpacking employs procedural narrative  – story moments directly resulting from the rulesets and mechanics of the game – to directly engage the player with creating the story of the game. The main puzzle of Unpacking is, of course, unpacking all of your things and tetris-ing them together in the somewhat limited space you have. The game makes a narrative out of this gameplay loop by limiting your space in different ways throughout the game. In 2007, you move into an already lived-in space, and, perhaps in an effort to not intrude too much, you are unable to move your roommates things, having to slot your own items around their existing organization (or lack thereof), offering a sense of the protagonist just trying to fit in and people-please their new housemates. In 2010, you can move your new boyfriends things around, but there is only so much space in the apartment, so you have to rearrange and consolidate their things to be able to have any presence at all within the cramped space, perhaps an early indicator of a tension of space between the two characters that might lead to their breakup. In 2015, for the first time, you unpack someone else’s things, melding them in with your protagonist’s (aka the player’s) existing organization, combining and compromising along the way, maybe indicating the early strength and mutuality of the protagonist’s new relationship. The game creates these complex emotional stories by establishing procedural systems and situations where the player will necessarily run into these narrative tensions. It seamlessly links its core gameplay look and challenge element with a narrative undertone, creating a very cohesive and lively story of the protagonist’s journey through homes.

So what makes the homes in Unpacking so alive? It is certainly partially due to the pre-existing lived-in-ness of many of the homes it portrays. But the life of these homes is carried, in this game, not just in the spaces, but in the protagonist’s items themselves (in some ways, these constants – the toothbrush mug, the chicken figurines, the stuffed animal pig – are the protagonist’s home, or perhaps these objects’ presence in a house makes it a home). Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, the life is carried by these moments of transition and change, and the ways in which the existing homes of the game must interact with the home the protagonist packs in their boxes. The items and spaces of this game are lived-in, spent time with and alive, not just on their own, but especially together.