"You are on a macadam jetty — ostensibly shipwrecked — looking out over a briny shoreline that snakes its way out into the distance before disappearing behind a limestone cliff face. Even further stands a radio tower on which a pair of nictitant red lights burn through the seaside fog in equal parts beacon and warning. You turn to your right and are confronted by the crepuscular candy cane husk of a long-forgotten lighthouse, by all accounts abandoned and forgotten. The seaside wind chills you to your waterlogged bones, and to escape the howling wind, you retreat into the abandoned lighthouse.That is, you thought it was abandoned. But out of the corner of your eye, you swear you saw a figure of a woman. Was it real? Your mind is awash with fright, yet you are also tired. So tired. What is and isn’t real is certainly up for debate, and so, reassuring yourself in your sleepy stupor, you clutch your arms around yourself, steel your resolve, and press onward, alone."
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.
