Thank god the screen didn’t just cut to black. ![]() When the shadow transformed into that of a gull and I unexpectedly soared over the sea, I was hit with a wave of bittersweet relief. I hated seeing my shadow appear on the ground as I rushed downward. I had long realized that would likely be the endgame, but I wanted to complete it (or not) on my own terms. When I reached the end of my first playthrough, and the game took control for my avatar’s climb and subsequent leap from the top of the radio tower, I was terrified. The more recent friend passed away right before I played Dear Esther for the first time. I’ve been touched by suicide twice in my life, both victims succumbing to a fall. Game or none, Dear Esther was a beautiful and poignant experience the first time I played it. This has led many critics to question whether or not it can even be considered a “game.” Again, I’ll bow out of that particular discussion. Unlike Gone Home, there are no puzzles to solve, and one is unable to interact with anything in the environment. Like Gone Home, Dear Esther eschews typical gameplay mechanics and instead relies on the player to explore the environment at their own pace. Playing through Gone Home got me thinking about a game I first played last fall, The Chinese Room’s Dear Esther. But I’m not here to add yet another piece to the ever-growing list of fantastic criticism on that game. I could stumble blind across these rocks, the edges of these precipices, without fear of missing my step and plummeting down to sea.īesides, I have always considered that if one is to fall, it is critical to keep one’s eyes firmly open.Īlways a day late and a dollar short, I finally played through The Fullbright Company’s Gone Home this weekend. Certainly, the landmarks are now so familiar to me that I have to remind myself to actually see the forms and shapes in front of me. I think some understanding of what this might mean is important, not least as Homesick has been compared to Dear Esther (with one site waggishly deeming it “Fear Esther”).I have lost track of how long I have been here, and how many visits I have made overall. ![]() Where some games experiment with procedural generation of the environment, Dear Esther was an almost completely linear path around an island – what was random was the order in which you would hear the narrator’s fragmented memories, leaving the player (or “experiencer”) to draw their own conclusions about what happened.ĭear Esther was an academic’s exploration of what constitutes a game. I may be jumping to conclusions, but I think something has gone badly wrong….Ĭue some debate, so in that sense, it was a success. But even its own creator has pursued interesting narrative in a more conventional interactive way for more commercial follow-ups like Everybodys Gone to the Rapture. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter also had strong narrative with an unusual conclusion, but with puzzles to solve and areas to unlock along the way. Partially visible clues allow you to deduce further actions, which in turn allows further progress. This is important because comparing Homesick to Dear Esther is unfair. In many ways, it is more successful at what Dear Esther was created to achieve, because it has a strong but mostly inferred narrative, and while it is more conventionally a puzzle game, it manages to portray those puzzles and their solutions in a manner very integrated into the game world. In other words, unlike Dear Esther, it’s actually a game, but manages to be a game without the clunky intervention of on-screen prompts or deus ex machina NPCs with convenient explanations and items. Homesick’s intention to not get in your way is apparent on the title screen. There is a single screen, with the controls keys (normal WASD) on the left load, new game and exit in the middle, with the helpful instruction you can save by sleeping and video options on the right. It’s very accessible.Ī refreshingly no-nonsense title screen makes things easy. This is a good thing, as some of the puzzles aren’t. Starting a new game, then, you awake in a devastated room. As an indie effort it is reasonably short, comprising five game areas, but considering the overall setting is just an apartment building, and a destroyed one at that, each area has a distinct look and is gorgeous despite the desolation.įor all the desolation, it’s a simply beautiful game to look at. The word ‘haunting’ is over-used, but any score was deserving of the adjective, it would be this one. I just realised my captions are more subdued than normal. But just look at that piano – how jovial do you feel right now? Yeah, exactly. ![]() The visuals and audio are not just there to give power to the world which forms the stage on which the story is set, however. ![]() They’re also integral to solving the games’ puzzles.
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