Dear Esther Message Board

Robert Briscoe, artist and environmental designer of The Chinese Room's first-person interactive story Dear Esther, has taken on a job at Valve Software, citing a need to break away from "the solitary life" of indie development.

"For the past five years, 90% of my days have been spent working alone in my rather pokey (although originally affordable) 1-bed apartment," Briscoe wrote in a recent blog post. "I think I need to be around people for a while; A lot of my energy and enthusiasm comes from being in the presence of people, sharing different ideas, methods and techniques, different views, outlooks and inspirations, and mostly by just being out of my comfort zone (which I have very much slipped into)."

Dear Esther was initially developed as a Source engine mod before launching as a standalone commercial release in 2012. Briscoe was recently approved for a U.S. work visa, and will move to Seattle on March 20 before taking on an unnamed position at Valve's headquarters.

Briscoe notes that his career shift will not impact development of the in-progress Unity version of Dear Esther. "The bulk of the port is done, with just some backend and scripting stuff remaining, so I should be easily able to finish things off in my spare time, plus I have the team of talented people at [The Chinese Room] to help me along the way if needed," he explains. "So things will very much carry on as normal with that."

[Image: The Chinese Room]

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 Robert Briscoe. Good for Valve, because Briscoe is astoundingly talented. But wait, wasn’t he in the process of moving Dear Esther’s painterly world into Unity’s less-costly frame? What’s going on there?

… [visit site to read more]

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 the game from Source to Unity is a fascinating peek behind the developmental curtain. Why, after using it for the first two editions of Dear Esther, would programmer Robert Biscoe now want to leave Valve’s engine behind? … [visit site to read more]

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) most of it’s in the below video b) I like going for a walk.

While Dear Esther, Proteus and Gone Home comparisons are likely unavoidable, Forgive Me is more precisely a semi-open world adventure game about suicide, mystery and a spooky, possibly mystical tower in some very pretty but bleak countryside that reminds me a little of Morrowind.(more…)

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 terms of levels: The Shard, Jacknife, Reflex, Velocity (from Mirrors Edge and its DLC); The Lighthouse, The Cave, The Beacon (from Dear Esther). All masterpieces up there with Rapture, City 17 and – quick, think of something slightly less distinguished to prove worldliness – that level in Robocod made out of Penguin bars. (more…)

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 future. Sony’s nabbed it for its burgeoning army of indie exclusives, so I guess that means it’s not allowed to love us anymore. I reached out to thechineseroom’s Dan Pinchbeck, and he confirmed the bad news.

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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 neat. And neater still? Probably the fact that they’re joined by Little Inferno, Awesomenauts, Capsized, Thomas Was Alone, and Dear Esther. Yeah, eight is pretty great. Or something.

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Spate looks positively bonkers. I mean that both in terms of the gloriously bizarre sensibilities that peer – with one lidless, unblinking eye – from the depths of its island’s mysterious nethers and the relative sanity of its grief-stricken main character. He’s a noir detective who’s dealing with the death of his daughter, so he’s taken up a powerful absinthe habit to numb the pain. Naturally, it manifests as a gameplay mechanic. “At the click of a button the character can take a swig of absinthe. This temporarily gives the player higher jumping and faster running abilities. But, it also makes him hallucinate, which changes the world both visually and physically. The mechanic is meant to mirror the emotional seesaw battle of drinking.” Heavy stuff. Perhaps too heavy? I suppose we’ll see. For now, though, peep a couple of incredibly impressive-looking trailers after the break.

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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the recently announced (and kind of creepy) new game from creative lead Adrian Chmielarz, formerly of People Can Fly, where he worked on violence-ridden games like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement. But while those games celebrated a proliferation of firearms, Chmielarz says his new title will be quite the opposite: There won't be any shooting at all.

There will be some death, however. "Take Dear Esther, add gameplay, murder and corpses," Chmielarz said to Eurogamer this week. "That's the closest to what The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is." Dear Esther was a first person exploration game more than anything, but Chmielarz added to expect slightly more interactivity in the new title. Players will play as a detective (presumably researching the titular mystery), and will find clues as the game goes on. Chmielarz said that "the focus is not on mind bending puzzles, but on unsettling discoveries."

He also said he was considering supporting the Oculus Rift, and other 3D displays and devices. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is set to launch on the PC later this year.

I preemptively think I’m gonna be sick. Don’t get me wrong: there are few things in this world I want more than Oculus Rift virtual reality for my mad dash through Mirror’s Edge‘s theme park of parkour, but now that it’s probably going to happen, I realize that I should probably bid farewell to any lunches I’ve had in the past couple months. And who will I have to thank for my sudden bouts of violent nausea? Interestingly, it won’t be EA. Instead, a third-party toolset called Vireio Perception is primed to add Rift support to Mirror’s Edge and other older titles.

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In this special Christmas edition of Out This Week, we reflect on some of this year's great games that you may have overlooked.

#gamemusicbundle It's almost Thanksgiving break, which means that a lot of you will be doing some traveling. And what better time to listen to delightful music than when on a plane or in the car? More »

This is the very first time that you have been here before. The whales are watching you. They know what you did. What did you do? Ask the whales but they won’t tell you because they are silent. Mysteriously silent. You probably killed someone and it might have been an accident but there’s almost definitely blood on your hands or lipstick on your collar, or a ghost in your shoe. The hills have the answers but they’re as quiet as the whales. Only the wind has a voice and it whispers so quietly that all you can make out is a name. Esteban. Download Dear Esteban to learn the truth about your past and that girl with the eighties hair. It’s free.

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Speaking to Joe Martin, the artist behind the fabulously-pretty island of Dear Esther, Robert Briscoe, has announced he’s embarking on a one-man project of formidable ambition. Here’s the quote: “I fancy doing something on my own, something entirely of my own creation. Dear Esther was a great project…[but] this time around? I’ve always had this idea in my head of this sort of open-world, STALKER-like game without weapons. With a horror aspect to it. I’ve never had the opportunity to it because the scope of it is so huge…I can’t even believe I’m contemplating doing it! It’s so unreal…but this is the whole thing with me: I want to see if it’s possible for just one person to make a game on a scale that’s probably never been done before…”

Frankly I want to see if that’s possible, too.

#dearesther Indie sensation Dear Esther won lots of praise for its distinctive feel and moody narrative when it came out earlier this year. Even though it's short, The Chinese Room's experimental title is the kind of experience you take your time with so that the mournful vibe and lushly drawn virtual world can seep into your pores. More »

“A People’s History” is a three part essay series by Robert Yang. He told us that he wanted to write an alternate view of the traditionally accepted history of the FPS genre as entirely dominated and driven by the mainstream, commercial industry, and to “argue for a long-standing but suppressed tradition of non-industry involvement in the first-person genre”. This is part one.

In 1994, the New York Times filed a review of a first-person game under its “Arts” section, proclaiming it to be “a game that weaves together image, sound and narrative into a new form of experience.” It sold millions of copies and inspired dozens of imitators. It seemed poised to define an era.

That game was Myst and it failed to define an era. Instead, a game called Doom came out three months after Myst — and then it shot Myst in the face.(more…)

When I beat the absolutely wonderful Thirty Flights Of Loving over the weekend, I had precisely one immediate reaction: “Wait, what just happened?” I cannot even begin to tell you how much that excites me. But then I decided to write an article about it, largely because one of my greatest passions in life is defying nonsencial figures of speech. At any rate, Thirty Flights Of Loving packs loads of information into not-even-30-minutes with hardly any dialog or exposition. But, in some ways, it’s even more of a supposed “un-game” than, say, Modern Warfare 3. I mean, all agency is illusory. Without spoiling anything (note: that’ll happen a little bit after the break), you’re along for the ride – and that’s it. In a couple bits, it doesn’t even matter where you walk. The game will just jump-cut you to your intended location.

So why is it one of my absolute favorite games – and yes, I one hundred percent believe it’s a game – of the year? Because it made me think about what happened. No, scratch that. It required me to think.

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Dear Esther‘s brilliantly amorphous plot made me feel like I’d hit my head and – for the same reason that television’s left me deathly afraid of light flicks on the forehead or especially hard rainfall – acquired horribly debilitating amnesia. That, however, is probably where the similarities between Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and Dear Esther end, so thechineseroom’s also giving its more experimental spirit room to breathe with Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. It is, of course, about the end of the world – as these things so often are. But this is far from typical videogame pre/post/postmodern apocalypse fare.

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#everybodysgonetotherapture Indie developer thechineseroom's experimental first-person adventure Dear Esther was a runaway success, despite the fact that wonderfully moody and atmospheric experience wasn't exactly what one might consider a game. Now that they've set the mood, it's time to add in a bit more game with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, the story of the end of the world and the inconveniences that might cause. More »

Change log:
-Fixed menu font issue on systems installed in an non-English language

- 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.