Dear Esther

Dear Esther
Studio	The Chinese Room
Publisher	The Chinese Room , Curve Digital
Senior Developer	Robert Briscoe , Dan Pinchbeck
composer	Jessica Curry
Erstveröffent- lichung	PC: February 14, 2012 , PlayStation 4 and Xbox One : September 20, 2016
platform	PlayStation 4 , Xbox One , Microsoft Windows , Linux , Mac OS
Game engine	Source Engine Unity Engine (Landmark Edition)
genre	First person walking simulator, adventure
Game mode	Single player
control	Mouse , keyboard
medium	Download
language	English , German and a.
Age rating	PEGI

Dear Esther is a first-person adventure game developed by the British indie studio The Chinese Room . Due to the experimental gameplay, which has hardly any interaction options, the game is considered the founder of the games known as walking simulators .

Storyline and gameplay

The game begins on the coast of a lonely Hebridean island . The player as lost follows the path along the coast past a lighthouse , stacs , a stone circle , shipwrecks and dilapidated bothies , until he finally makes his way up through a mystical cave system with bioluminescent mushrooms to an antenna tower. While walking across the island, you read out fragments of letters addressed to an Esther. The pieces of information and the clues to be found everywhere along the way (dented car doors and axles , bloody surgical instruments and defibrillator ) suggest a car accident in which Esther died. The game ends with the jump of the one lost from the tower. Shortly before hitting the ground, the player transforms into a bird that hovers over the coast and the letters folded like paper boats floating in the water.

There are hardly any opportunities for interaction in the game itself. The player can only run, look around and zoom in on objects of interest to him. All other interaction options that are otherwise common in the first-person perspective (running, jumping, swimming, etc.) are not possible. However, it is possible to die by drowning or falling off the cliff. The letters are read out at certain points along the way, but can each have up to four different text variants. The selection is random, as is the placement of some objects along the way. As a result, the player has a different interpretation space for the background story for each game play (e.g. the player can find a sonography in an abandoned bothy that allows the interpretation that Esther was pregnant during the accident).

development

The development of Dear Esther began in 2008 as Half-Life 2 - Mod in the Source Engine . After the mod's great success, the new development began again in the Source Engine and the subsequent commercial release as an independent game. The narrator in the game is Nigel Carrington .

Due to licensing problems and technical difficulties with the Source Engine, it was replaced by the Unity Engine . This version was released under the title Dear Esther: Landmark Edition on February 14, 2017.

reception

Dear Esther has a metascore of 75. In the press, the innovative game mechanics and the soundtrack by Jessica Curry were particularly praised.

“A beautiful and thought-provoking piece of work. It is oil painting, poetry, eulogy and video game all at once. And it's never less than fascinating. ”

- Tom Hoggins : The Daily Telegraph

"The masterpiece" Dear Esther "is no longer a game, but rather a storytelling experiment - and a figurehead for a professionalized indie games scene."

- Dennis Kogel : The time

Just one week after the release, over 50,000 copies have already been sold on the online platform Steam .

Dear Esther was in 2013 in the categories Debut Game , British Game , Artistic Achievement , Perfomer and Audio Achievement for the BAFTA Video Games Awards nominations.

Web links

• Homepage of Dear Esther
• Dear Esther in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ jessicacurry.bandcamp.com
2. ↑ imdb.com
3. ↑ de.ign.com
4. ↑ 4players.de
5. ↑ moddb.com
6. ↑ nigelcarrington.com
7. ↑ Dave Tach: Why Dear Esther is being rebuilt in Unity. In: polygon . Vox Media , February 17, 2017, accessed March 22, 2017 . 
8. ↑ Alice O'Connor: Dear Esther's Landmark Edition wandering out Tuesday. In: Rock Paper Shotgun . Rock Paper Shotgun Ltd., February 13, 2017, accessed on March 22, 2017 . 
9. ↑ metacritic.com
10. ↑ gamestar.de
11. ↑ kotaku.com
12. ↑ rockpapershotgun.com
13. ^ ^{A b} Dennis Kogel: Indie Games: "Dear Esther" - an experiment from the shooter perspective. In: Zeit Online. February 14, 2012, accessed June 10, 2018 . 
14. ↑ dear-esther.com
15. ↑ telegraph.co.uk
16. ↑ Craig Chapple: Dear Esther surpasses 50,000 sales. In: MCV. Future Publishing Limited, February 27, 2012, accessed March 26, 2019 (UK English). 
17. ↑ awards.bafta.org
18. ↑ awards.bafta.org
19. ↑ awards.bafta.org
20. ↑ awards.bafta.org
21. ↑ awards.bafta.org