Dear Esther Message Board

- Expanded language support
- Fixed cubemap issues on NVidia cards which was causing cubemaps not to render on some models in the caves level
- Fixed some sound stuttering issues
- Misc. maintenance for upcoming Mac Release

Bundles, crowdsourcing – these are not the only ways to bring in suitable monies for an independently-developed videogame. Fascinatingly strange IGF Technical Excellence award-snatcher Antichamber – as experienced by one John Walker here - has been signed up as the seventh beneficiary of the Indie Fund. That’s the investment initiative arranged by the likes of 2D Boy, Jon Blow, Capy and thatgamecompany. It follows in the proud footsteps of Dear Esther, Qube, and Monaco, and is to receive the funding necessary to push it over the finish line for a PC and Mac release later in this year of our endless, ursine lord, 2012. If it works out as well as it did for Dear Esther, both developer Alexander Bruce and the Indie Fund team will be terribly happy.(more…)

-Added support for Serbian community translations

You don't kill, shoot or level up in Dear Esther. You don't even control your flashlight, it just clicks on automatically when you enter a dark space. Instead, Dear Esther is strictly about exploration, about piecing together a randomized story and trying to make sense of something that, by design, ...

#gdc This is from Dan Pinchbeck, writer of PC indie story/thing Dear Esther, while giving a presentation at GDC earlier today. More »

Updates to Dear Esther has been released. The update will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Fixed
- Updated default video settings to reduce likelihood of getting blank screen/incorrect resolution/refresh rate on start-up
- Updated UI to include support for more languages
- Updated UI to support Bulgarian Cyrillic
- Fixed graphics settings breaking visuals for some
- Fixed crash when switching between high>low shader detail settings in-game
- Fixed Controller Options Menu crash
- Fixed Mat_Wireframe Crash
- Fixed collision issue on goat shed next to bothy

Known Issues
- Some Non Xbox360 controllers have unusual configuration

As it was rumoured, so it shall be. Dear Esther’s lead writer, Dan Pinchbeck, has revealed to Joystiq that thechineseroom are working on A Machine For Pigs, set in Amnesia’s world, although it won’t be a direct sequel to the dimly lit descent. It will, however, star a wealthy industrialist called Daniel Plainview Oswald Mandus, who returns from an ill-fated trip to Mexico in 1899 and finds that his body is plagued with fever and his mind is plagued with nightmares that revolve around an ominous machine. Possibly for pigs. Probably not some sort of mechanical pig disco and daycare centre.

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Breaking news, if you were reading the internet a couple of days ago. Following a brief ARG, a tiny, hopeful squeak of detail has emerged for the next game from Amnesia devs Frictional. Frankly anything is more useful than ‘it might be set in China, possibly‘, but in this case we have a couple of pieces of creepy, bloody concept art and a possible title.

That title? ‘A Machine For Pigs.’ Which sounds ever so slightly like a change of direction for George R.R. Martin’s reader-mocking novels, but also appears to refer directly to the abbatoir-esque scenes in the concept art. But is that the real name, or just a codename? I’ve done some research into animal-slaughtering equipment and come up with some EXCITING ALTERNATIVES.(more…)

#dearesther This February is proving to be a fascinating month for non-traditional development and funding paths in game design. While Double Fine's Kickstarter proposal has been in the news, indie title Dear Esther has been making small waves of its own. More »

Dear Esther, the minimalist first-person explorer, made its costs back in the first five and a half hours on sale. A quite remarkable achievement for an indie game, and a rather impressive vindication of The Indie Fund, the gathering of successful indies who are funding new projects. It has sold 16,000 copies in its first 24 hours, and made back all $55k they’d invested in the game before it was even six hours old. And by the rules of The Indie Fund, that means the developers thechineseroom are now making profit. You can read all about how it went down here. Alec adored Dear Esther, as he writes about here. I didn’t think it was nearly so good, as I explain here.

John’s already presented his verdict on thechineseroom’s first-person ghost-esque story Dear Esther, but I’ve a thing or two I’d like to say about it myself. And not just because I like to oppress John at any opportunity I get. It’s because Dear Esther really did work its dark, metaphysical magic upon me.

This write-up will contain spoilers unbound; do not read on if you haven’t played (and intend to play) Dear Esther.(more…)

Dear Esther is now available on Steam!

Dear Esther immerses you in a stunningly realised world, a remote and desolate island somewhere in the outer Hebrides. As you step forwards, a voice begins to read fragments of a letter: "Dear Esther..." - and so begins a journey through one of the most original first-person games of recent years.

Since it was originally released as a free Source engine mod back in 2008, there's been a lot of conversation about whether Dear Esther really counts as a game. I find this an immensely boring question; we should be more interested in what it has to offer than how to define it. With no goals, guns, ...

I come to Dear Esther completely blind. For some reason I’ve chosen to read nothing about it at any point, perhaps instinctively opting to preserve myself against knowing everything about at least one game before I get to play it. I’ve heard the overwhelmingly positive, and grumbles of hype and overrated content, and I have an idea that it’s a game about exploring over anything else. But that’s all I know. So from this position, having never played the 2008 mod, here’s Wot I Think.

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#review Dear Esther is a terrible video game. More »

Hauntingly beautiful, exploration-based first-person ghost story Dear Esther (a lavish remake of the mod of the same name) is up for the Excellence In Visual Art, Excellence In Audio, Nuovo Award and Seamus McNally Grand Prize at this year’s Independent Games Festival. As part of our series chatting to the creators of (almost) all the PC and Mac-based finalists, today we talk to Robert Briscoe, lead artist on Dear Esther, about Stalker, Mirror’s Edge, making in-game exploration satisfying, why indie development should be taught in universities and his answer to the most important question of all.(more…)

Dear Esther touched many people when it originally released as a Source mod in 2008. Now you can enjoy it again in a completely remade form this February on Steam...