I'm pretty okay with this. It may not be my game of the year (I'm not certain what is), but Gone Home absolutely deserves it.
In terms of game mechanics, Gone Home does something that I haven't seen since Riven... it gives you an open environment, litters the world with contextual clues, and lets you pick up on a variety of interesting subplots just from putting all of those pieces together.
Sure, there's the "main" storyline provided through the audio logs, but that's just a small part of the story of what went on in that house while you were gone. When people tell me that the game has no puzzles or gameplay and that it's the best "walking around" simulator they've ever played, it usually seems like they just managed to completely overlook the gameplay: Exploring your new home, finding the obvious clues (scraps of paper) and the subtle ones (everyone very clearly spending their time in different parts of the house) and putting them all together to tell a short series of separate but interweaving stories.
It's cool that the story of the game tackles issues that don't normally fall into video game territory, but the thing that really impressed me was that they did something different and unique with the gameplay, and I've love to see more games like it. Adventure games that have a higher focus on exploration and understanding than on finding the right key for whatever arcane puzzle is blocking your path.