Let's take a walk

One of the games that Blake mentioned in his presentation on Friday was a little gem called Dear Esther: a delightful if not slightly unsettling story and environment that is simply triggered by the player taking different routes to the end point of the story, which is told to you (if memory serves me well) in the form of letters the main character writes to Esther that he narrates to you.

Dear Esther is one of many in a genre that is sometimes referred to as a walking simulator. These types of games are often exploratory in nature; you have to go looking for the story. Some don't even give you a story, you simply go through a changing environment and figure out what kind of story exists there or just bask in the beauty of it. Some of my favorites include Dear Esther, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable and (a more recent addition to the list), The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

I want to talk about the last item on the list for a bit. In The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (I'll shorten the title to The Vanishing for the rest of this little ramble) focuses around supernatural detective Paul Prospero coming to Red Creek Valley to solve a variety of murders and strange cases that surround one little boy: Ethan Carter.

Through out The Vanishing you're exploring the valley, and may I say it is one of the most gorgeous landscapes I have ever seen presented in a video game. Most of what you can see you can explore, and you are encouraged to explore as much as possible to find tid-bits of the story. The hyper realistic environment lends itself to another aspect of the game: it's an incredibly eerie game that tends to keep you on edge. (I really want to talk about hyper realism in horror and thriller games, but that's for tomorrow's blog.)

You don't meet many other characters and often when you do you're solving their murder. The wide open world with the limited interaction makes you feel so alone (another element that is common in walking simulators, but not always played to be as creepy.) The score is beautiful and well worth listening for. It pushes whatever feeling the environment and scene calls for; loneliness, a sense of foreboding, and even straight up fear.

I've gone on too long, but seriously get The Vanishing when cyber Monday or the big Christmas Steam sales roll around. If you want to get a look at how some of the mechanics of the game (which I don't have the time to go over) watch the demo on the Steam page, One of the developers goes through a bit of the intro to explain some of the more supernatural elements to the main character.