Edge writes: "Dr Dan Pinchbeck of the University of Portsmouth's Advanced Games Research Group had a rather ambitious goal when he made Dear Esther. He wanted to tell a powerful story in a game-like environment, but without using gameplay to tell it. But while fully expecting to explore difficult issues that commercial developers wouldn't touch, he was astonished at how popular the project, a mod for Half-Life 2, became, topping 40,000 downloads and winning the 2009 IndieCade Independent Game award for best world and story. Proof that his experiment worked is that after releasing his second project, Korsakovia, many fans requested a version of it with less game in it – and his recent decision to create his first commercial game."
The Chinese Room's Dear Esther goes free on Steam to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this foundational title.
Eh.
I mean free is free, but I found this to be a boring slog.
Not to mention this remasters actually made the game look worse in multiple areas.
I did quite like their A Machine for Pigs and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture though.
On Valentine's Day a decade ago, Dear Esther went from a Source Engine mod to a full-fledged indie game, catalyzing the "walking sim" genre. How does it measure up today?
"The China-based indie games publisher Secret Mode and Brighton-based (the UK) indie games developer The Chinese Room, are today very pleased to announce that they will celebrate the tenth anniversary of "Dear Esther" by making the genre-defining 2012 narrative exploration game free to download from February 14th to February 15th via Steam." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
