Product Code Database
Dear Esther is a 2012 adventure game developed and published by The Chinese Room. First released in 2008 as a free modification for the Source game engine, the game was entirely redeveloped for a commercial release in 2012. The commercial version was released for Microsoft Windows in February 2012 and MacOS in May 2012; ports for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were released by Curve Digital in September 2016.
Dear Esther is a narrative-focused game with almost no interactions between the player and the world, a design which was controversial on release but later proved influential. The player's only objective in the game is to explore an unnamed island in the Hebrides, Scotland, listening to a troubled man read a series of letters to his deceased wife. Details of her mysterious death are revealed as the player moves throughout the island.
Dear Esther received positive reviews from critics, and is credited with popularising the walking simulator genre in the 2010s. The Chinese Room released a spiritual successor to Dear Esther, titled Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, in 2015.
Independent games artist Robert Briscoe began work on completely redeveloping Dear Esther in 2009, with the full support of Pinchbeck. Briscoe and The Chinese Room worked in parallel on the game's remaster, with much of the level design completed solely by Briscoe based on concept art done by Ben Andrews. In redesigning the island's landscape, Briscoe aimed to eliminate the confusion caused by the original game's layout, and to fill out the environment with "richer, visually interesting" features to improve on the barren landscape of the original mod. In March 2011, while the game was still in development, The Chinese Room lost the financial backing of the University it had relied on. The studio had needed the University to pay for the Source Engine license needed for a commercial release of the game, but the University's legal department was dissatisfied with the license agreement and refused to sign it. The Chinese Room turned to the Indie Fund for finances, who were hesitant at first, but after playing a demo, agreed to fund the project. The Fund's Ron Carmel stated "As soon as people started playing it, the tone of the conversation just completely shifted, and people were very much in favor of supporting this project". Within six hours of the remastered release on Steam, over 16,000 units had been sold, allowing the developers to pay back the full Indie Fund investment.
The voice of Dear Esthers narrator was performed by Nigel Carrington, whose script was extended for the remake. The game's music was composed by Pinchbeck's wife, Jessica Curry, a freelance music composer and co-director of The Chinese Room. In the remake's development, Curry overhauled and re-orchestrated the score to be fuller and longer, featuring more instruments and reaching nearly double the length of the original soundtrack. The music of the original game was released for free in July 2008, shortly after the mod itself was released, and the remastered soundtrack was released on 14 February 2012.
Ports for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were released by Curve Digital's Secret Mode, a publishing label of Sumo Digital, in September 2016. In February 2017, an updated version based on the Unity engine, Dear Esther: Landmark Edition was released as a free update by Secret Mode. An iOS version was released in October 2019.
Reviewing the game for Honest Gamers in 2009, Lewis Denby praised the game's original tone, saying that the game "taps into an emotion that few games dare to approach: happiness" and stated that Curry's soundtrack created "an impressively ethereal atmosphere". Despite commendations for its premise and story, the original mod release received complaints of poor level design and numerous or bugs in moving about the terrain.
The limited interactivity between the player and the narrative in Dear Esther also divided reviewers. Destructoid Pinsof stated that "the ironic thing is that the most pedestrian of stories can be convincing when coupled with intelligently applied interaction—something Dear Esther stubbornly stands against." PC Gamer did not find the basic gameplay to be a problem, stating that "the lack of puzzles is necessary: it's crucial to the experience that you're allowed to keep moving at your own pace. … Without puzzles, the visuals and narrative are allowed to take precedence."
The level of detail in Dear Esthers environment was given broad praise by critics. Reviewing for bit-tech, Joe Martin called the game "a graphical masterpiece", commenting that "what gives Dear Esthers visuals such a poignant edge is how masterfully it extends the sense of loneliness and isolation that's conveyed in the script". Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Tom Hoggins noted the effect of the game's more minor details, stating that "the broad strokes of Dear Esther's visuals are majestic, but the finer details on the landscape are the most revealing."
At the 2012 Independent Games Festival, Dear Esther received the prize for "Excellence in Visual Arts". In its 2012 Awards, Develop awarded Dear Esther the prize for "Best use of narrative". At the TIGA Games Industry Awards 2012, the game won the "Originality Award" along with the prizes for "Best Action/Adventure game", "Best Visual Design", "Best Audio Design" and "Best Debut Game". The game was nominated for five awards in the 9th British Academy Video Games Awards.
As of September 2013, the game had sold over 850,000 copies.
External links
Categories: Dear-esther Official Website, 2012 Video Games, Adventure Games, Art Games, Fiction With Unreliable Narrators, Video Games About Ghosts, Indie Games, Indiecade Winners, Macos Games, Playstation 4 Games, Single-player Video Games, Source Games, Source Mods, Video Game Remakes, Video Games Developed In The United Kingdom, Games Financed By Indie Fund, Video Games Scored By Jessica Curry, Video Games Set In Scotland, Video Games Set On Islands, Windows Games, Xbox One Games, Walking Simulators, Independent Games Festival Winners, Curve Games Games, The Chinese Room Games, Ios Games
|
|
