![]() ![]() 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. 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. Adventure gamers are no strangers to the endless debates over genre definitions, but it’s rare that we ask the even more fundamental question, “What is a game?” Dear Esther, from developer thechineseroom and level designer Robert Briscoe, is an extraordinarily strange, brave, and above all beautiful experience. ![]()
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