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10 months ago
Feature: Grim peaks.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Watching walking simulators evolve from the waffling emptiness of Dear Esther into remarkable narrative adventures like Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch has been one of my favourite spectator sports as a games journalist. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is one of the better stepping…
1 year ago
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture devs hang up their walking boots
The Chinese Room, the studio behind Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther as well as Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, have laid off their development team and are "going dark" for a bit while they figure out "what happens next". Financial and personal pressures were too much, see, so they're taking a break. When they come back, they say, it won't be to…
2 years ago
The 'Landmark Edition' of seminal walky story Dear Esther [official site] will launch tomorrow, developers The Chinese Room have announced. It's basically the same game, but remade in the Unity engine with a few tweaks and a director's commentary. It'll be free for everyone who already owns the original Dear Esther, and it sounds like it'll be separate rather than strictly an 'update', preserving that…
Feature: First-person saunter
Alice and Pip have been off wandering their way through digital worlds from Proteus to Sacramento and are now hobbling towards a shared definition of a walking simulator. Find out what conclusions they've reached and why their definition categorically does not include Dear Esther! Pip: Alice, when I asked you to recommend me your favourite walking simulators so I could go on some digital expeditions…
It's been a good four years since the remake of Dear Esther [official site] took us to a spooky-ooky Hebridean island but we're going a-wandering again soon. Remastered audio, an audio commentary from its makers, and more are coming our way thanks to a new version created for Dear Esther's console release as a 'Landmark Edition' - which will be a free update on PC.
3 years ago
Feature: Lights out
After The Rapture: The Chinese Room’s Next Game, Total Dark, Is An Isometric RPG
The next game from the creators of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and Dear Esther will be a systems-driven isometric adventure, inspired by tabletop RPGs and wargames. I spoke to The Chinese Room's studio director Dan Pinchbeck about the game, Total Dark, and he explained that he's wanted to make a game driven by RPG-style mechanics for a long time.…
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture [official site], the latest from Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs developers The Chinese Room, is finally heading to PC. I spoke to studio head Dan Pinchbeck earlier this week and he told me that the completed PC port has now been delivered to Sony, who will be acting as publishers. Sony's role means they'll be responsible for…
It always seemed likely that The Chinese Room's The-Archers-Do-The-Apocalypse follow up to Dear Esther would get a PC release eventually, both given that it was originally planned to before Sony waved a bunch of cash at them and because PC is surely its most natural home. However, the extent of Sony's involvement created a great deal of doubt about whether they'd possibly de-exclusify it. Earlier…
Feature: A 36 year old man writes
1) Passivity makes me fidgety. Even in a film, TV show, gig or novel I'm hugely enjoying, my mind will at some point drift to the clock, wondering how soon until it ends, how soon until I can stand up or talk or check something or eat something or go somewhere. Awful, I know. Games, broadly, need me to be doing something most of the…
Feature: On Everybody's Gone To The Rapture
Warning: in this piece I'm primarily talking about Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, which isn't out on PC as yet, though I'll willingly devour at least one item of clothing if it doesn't walk this way eventually. Anyway, I talk about STALKER and Dear Esther too, so everything's OK. Playing The Chinese Room's new game, Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, what strikes me almost immediately…
4 years ago
Feature:
Perhaps the prototypical walking simulator, Dear Esther is a source of some division among the RPS Hivemind - John's not at all taken with it - but I often catch my mind's eye returning to its maudlin Hebridean coast.
I've discovered a novel way to conduct interviews: tweet vaguely about something you're interested in, then wait for two game designers you like and respect to have a chat about it and send you the logs. I carefully laid my bait: "I use 'walking simulator' warmly and earnestly. I adore walking around looking at stuff and reflecting. Walking is great! Sim it to the max."…
As I watched early but surprisingly polished footage of The Old City, I was stricken by a few standout qualities: 1) it's a very handsomely atmospheric game, wreathed in glittering flecks of Dishonored and Half-Life, 2) there are dying whales and I feel very bad for them, and 3) the narrator delivers his lines with the stop-go car crash thunderstorm cadence of William Shatner. The narrator…
5 years ago
Feature: Creeping With The Fishes, Pt 1
SOMA didn't scare the scuba suit off me, but I did find a creeping sort of potential in its soaked-to-the-bone corridors. Amnesia: The Dark Descent 2 this ain't. Or at least, it's not aiming to be. Currently, it still feels a lot like a slower-paced, less-monster-packed Amnesia in a different (though still very traditionally survival-horror-y) setting, but Frictional creative director Thomas Grip has big plans.…
Valve might prefer to be extra super special secret quiet about it, but they do, in fact, still make games. And games, well, they tend to be more enjoyable when they're easy on the eyes. Now that I have cracked the eons-old mystery of Why Games Have Graphics, let's get down to business: Valve has scooped up Mirror's Edge and Dear Esther gorgeous vista warlock…
Bad news for anyone holding out for Dear Esther 2: The Legend of Jakobson's Gold - The Chinese Room's next step for their maudlin, poetic Taking A Walk game is to remake it. Again. In practical terms - i.e. how this will affect people who want to play the game - this is perhaps a bit of an unstory, but the shock choice to port…
I'm firing blind to some degree here, as 1) the trailer's in Italian 2) the website's poorly translated and 3) the demo they sent me a) isn't made public yet and b) doesn't include much more than going for a walk. However 1) That and the cheesy music reminds me of Inspector Montalbano 2) well, this one's no bastion of English grammar either 3) a)…
Feature: Reflecting On Things
This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills. Robert Briscoe is obviously not the only great environment artist in games, and it's a bit weird to say he has a singular portfolio after working on just two titles. What makes it a lot easier is if you think in…
Feature: Everybody's Gone To The PS4
Hello, everyone. I come bearing some extremely depressing news. The rapture's happening soon, but not to us. Hm, well jeez, when I phrase it that way, it doesn't sound terrible at all. What I mean to say is, Dear Esther developer thechineseroom's next non-Amnesia game, the super fascinating Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, is no longer coming to PC - at all, for the foreseeable…
You know, I never really thought about it before, but I think Proteus and Hotline Miami are videogame inverses. One's about languidly strolling around a neon-bubblegum dreamscape paradise while the other's about blink-and-you'll-be-on-the-receiving-end-of-it murder in an entirely different kind of neon-bubblegum dreamscape "paradise". They are one anther's bizarro twin, eternally opposed but forever intertwined. Also, they're in the latest Humble Indie Bundle together, which is…
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