That may sound shallow, but the experience of “playing” Dear Esther feels profoundly deep and satisfying, assuming you can shed your old notions of what a game must be. The only carrot on a stick drawing you further in is a blinking red light in the distance and an innate sense of curiosity. Is it really a game at all? This title strips away all familiar conventions of “gameplay” and focuses entirely on atmosphere and presentation. This is a game that takes place as much in your imagination as it does onscreen.īut here we return to the question above. To say any more would be a disservice to your own sense of discovery, as piecing the various plot threads together (inasmuch as they ever can be pieced together) is a large part of the experience. The narrator is, presumably, reading from letters written to the titular Esther, and the topics sway from memories of a car crash to the journal of one of the island’s previous explorers to the nature of the mysterious culture that originally inhabited the area. You have no choice but to explore the island, and as you do so, snippets of narration play out in a semi-random manner, giving a vague and haunting context for your presence there. There are no inventory items, no NPCs, and no puzzles. The player controls an unnamed, unseen protagonist who lands on an unnamed island. It is, at heart, an exploration of the possibilities of nonlinear storytelling in games. Most notably, the graphics have been completely reworked with stunning results.ĭear Esther is the brainchild of University of Portsmouth researcher Dan Pinchbeck. The core game is exactly the same, but now features the polish that comes with a larger team and budget.
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Originally released in 2008 as a free mod for Half-Life 2, Dear Esther became a cult hit and secured both the funding and talent necessary for an enhanced commercial re-release. Strange because it is a bizarre work of surrealism, brave because it tries things few other games have ever dared, and beautiful because it succeeds, at least at what it attempts to do.
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