Might have to check it out just for the beautiful environments.

Completed it last night, just as beautiful as I was expecting.

I remember reading about this mod a while back - thought it sounded interesting. Was meaning to download it for ages, I might give this release a go.

EDIT: DLing now.

I know the guy who did the voice acting, he said they did quite a bit for such a small team.

Never heard of it til now, the cave video was enough to sell me. It looks gorgeous.

So, is there no risk of being killed by anything? You don't have to fight anything? I'm assuming it's linear as well. Looks kind of creepy from the trailer.

I'm in the same boat as you with no money but I have the added luxury of not having internet either. Been doing 99% of my surfing from my POS Android smart phone.

Tis a good looking game. Only played it for about five minutes - looking forward to devoting a night to it sometime soon.

The walking speed reminds me somewhat of Morrowind though...

Yes there's no danger, but no real horror either.

(I haven't played the game yet, but I've followed its development and played the original mod years ago. )

It is basically an interactive story as people said before, and stretches the definition of a video game. Basically all you do is exploring the island while voice overs play that tell a story. IIRC there are actually 3 different stories that get mixed, and the dialogue triggers are randomized.

So it's just walking. No combat or creepy monsters, no puzzles, no other people, just exploring a fairly linear world. But a beautiful one, with an intriguing story and a nice soundtrack.

It's pretty short, so it's better to see it as an interactive movie than a videogame. It's weird isn't it? People will easily accept paying 10 dollars for a movie, but if a 10$ game is of the same length many consider it too expensive.
In the original mod you could constantly 'bunny hop' to increase your speed a bit, which completely ruined the atmosphere and caused voice overs to overlap because you went too fast. Is that still possible?


I bought it already but I'm delaying my playthrough until I get the nice 1080p 23 inch monitor that I've been meaning to get.

Nope. I pressed every key to see if there was anything you could do apart from walk.

Pressing the LMB zooms in, but that's it.

EDIT: I should add - despite how amazing the game looks, it should run fine on most computers. It's not graphically intensive at all. I have a mid-high end laptop and with V-Synch turned off, I'm getting 150+ FPS with everything maxed out, AA X8, AF X16, etc. It helps that the environments, glorious though they are, are completely static.

Yeah I was really impressed with the system requirements. Hurray for the Source engine.


Also for the Euro people, Dear Esther is 8 euros. Always nice when a Steam game in euros has the proper price, instead of using the same number as the dollar price.

It's very obvious that the game is using the Source engine (the water clipping through everything that's at the same level as it is the worst offender), but it still looks incredible. One problem I've always had about Source is that, as I previously mentioned, the environments are always incredibly static looking. Still, it's a minor niggle - the game is gorgeous.

How creepy is it on a scale from *me* to EvilFish1's eyebrows?

I'd say one eyebrow.

IMO the waving grass sprites and stuff make it look a lot less static than any other Source games. I also haven't noticed a problem with water, although from my time doing development in Source I know it [censored] bricks over water.
I didn't find it especially creepy, although once I thought I saw a monster in a canyon thing and nearly fell of my chair in fear. It was a suitcase.

Can you interact with anything in the world?

Sorry for all the questions but I never did play the original mod. I'm more than likely gonna buy it when I get $10 and internet.

Well at first I thought it was Myst with good graphics, but if what you say is true and it contains no puzzles or game content of any kind, I'll probably end up not purchasing this.

Not really, you pretty much just walk through, take in the scenery and listen to the story.
You're looking at this the wrong way. It's not really a game, it's a story presented in game form. Making you have to do stupid platforming or puzzle solving would detract from the story.

If you're not sure game you can play the original http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther for free (if you have a Source engine game like Half Life 2), which plays exactly the same as the remake. The remake better graphics, a larger environment, a redone soundtrack, some extra voice acting and a whole lot more polish to everything but the base 'gameplay' is the same.


Also Dear-Esther.com exceeded its bandwidth.

The success of this game makes me happy.

To all Steam/online distribution nay-sayers - shove your precious physical discs up your arses. Online distribution makes games like this possible.

People on here are calling it a game, and it's being marketed as a game. Sorry for making that mistake.

Yeah, that marketing's really pushing the game aspect, isn't it

They say vague [censored] like that about every game ever made.

...and it's sold on Steam.

There's a bit where you have to jump between some moving platforms while collecting minature Gordon Freeman action figures. During this, Bowser throws clones of Princes Peach at you while GLaDOS taunts you incessantly.

Just a little related news:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/23/thechineseroom-working-on-amnesia-a-machine-for-pigs/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348402-any-amnesia-fans-around-here/page__st__30 for those who want to discuss it.