Walking Simulators. A colloquial gamer term for a game where you spend the grand majority of your time walking around and looking at stuff. The games that fall into this category are often not even thought of as “games”, or rather the traditional sense of what constitutes something being a game. I’ve written about this subject many moons ago on a website far far away, but I’ve been seeing a bit of a spike in the Walking Simulator market. Games such as Firewatch, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Abzu have rekindled my desire to discuss this strange genre of gaming in more detail.
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While i loved playing Firewatch and EGTTR, i would class them more as interactive story telling, as a avid book reader, the narrative in EGTTR was fantastic, coupled with the great voice acting and amazing sountrack it just bought it home for me. I actually played most of EGTTR on my Vita in bed, the same as if i were to read a book.
While "walking" simulators arent for everybody(you dont have to buy them) i am more than happy to spend a few hours playing these types of games.
I'm a great fan of this type of game, though I have to say I sometimes come across a completely other type of game with amazing location design, and I think: 'Wow I wish I could explore this a little more intimately ...'. I mean no offense to the awesome WS already out there, but they despite the fact that you're supposed to just walk and look, there's not very much that's particularly amazing to look at. Like imagine for instance walking around the world of Alice Madness Returns, or even Mirror's Edge. There are all sorts of games I'd just like to have a more intimate and detailed look at, simply for their brilliant design ...
Dayz is the king of walking simulators.
I played EGTTR and Ethan Carter and really enjoyed them. It's definitely a genre that I could play more of, provided they're well made and full of intrigue. Case in point, I played Gone Home and thought it was a pile of ****.
Are they really walking simulators though, if you interact with the world?