Dear Esther - new 2deep4u 'interactive experience' coming out soon

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Wouldn't hold your breath on that when people paid $10 for a digital painting.

I was pretty drunk when I wrote that so I didn't mention everything I wanted.

Yeah, the walking was a real killer, I almost quit a few times when I realized I was just led around a huge circle. The inability to run reeks of pretentiousness. "Oh, we've created this beautiful world, it would be a sin to allow the player to run through it!"

I really liked the voice actor. Very good stuff and indeed the ambient sounds are great. Really, I wish more games would stick to ambiance instead of constant music. As for the story, I just wasn't paying attention to it. Some of the lines were nice, but all in all I was just moving forward to see what else there would be.

Yes, shamefully I wouldn't spend money either. I think it really shows how nice the Source Engine really is. Just about all the games that use it manage to look and feel great. TBH, I can't even figure why that is, just that everything looks natural.

This is one of those games where you can't help but wish they had done this or done that. It's like all these cool things are right at the tip of your fingers, but you can't quite have it. I kept thinking how cool it'd be if this was a simple adventure game, scrounging in the abandoned huts and finding items to use later on. A few puzzles. Hell, be like Amnesia except stunning landscapes instead of fear are the motivations to continue on. What a shame, really.

You sound upset. Hurt, even.

Yeah, that is surprising. A lot of artfags out there I guess. Well, good for the creators. Of course this only means that they'll keep making games like this. Maybe someone will get the novel idea to add enemies to a really well built environment.

I smell the next grand evolution of role playing games.

Or they can just release an auto-walk button DLC.

Previously when watching movies you were a mere bystander, but now you have to hold PLAY button to let the rich and engaging story advance in this majestic new RPG.

The way the flashlight switches on and off for you was kind of insulting to me.

Yeah, that was stupid as fuck. It ducks for you too.

My make-your-own-adventure thread would be more interesting to hear than the shit they feed you in Dear Eshderp.

...

"The languishing hole which wounded the very mother of earth before me laid still and languishingly cold and frozen beyond which languished my heart's true desire: to languish no more upon this tunnel, this languished hole of ever darkness which lays in languish from hence I have thus spoken in past tense due to just speaking of it."

goddamnit

Derp Esturd

Derp Assturd

Dear Skyway

Here you go. I just spared you 10$/the time it would've taken to torrent & "play" this.
You're welcome.

This is why we can't have nice things. I'm totally open minded about diversity and experimentation but fuck, if you're not going to make use of the most basic, ground level fundamentals of this medium, then don't pick it up for your work. How simple is that?

We don't have indie filmmakers creating a powerpoint-esque set of photos and calling it a film, we don't have authors singing some musics and selling the CD as a book, why is game development so filled with people doing exactly this kind of gigantic mistake?

We need another crash. ASAP.

guys, the comments section in this video is in need of codexers

FFS, it's not a game and wasn't supposed to be.

The original description was:

The author and original creator, Dan Pinchbeck used to say up and down that it wasn't a game, it was a mod he created partly as a proof of concept for some of his ideas about the potential for narrative in the medium. It ignores standard rules of the medium because it's explicitly trying to be new and experimental. It's only recently that it gets called a game, mostly since thechineseroom decided it was a development studio.

Oh, and that name?

Is it a game? No.

Is $10 less than the price of a movie ticket these days? Yes. It's not like they're marketing this and charging for it as if it's a triple-A, GOTY material while it contains no gameplay. Bio's got that angle covered. The only real danger is that people are going to think that this passes for a game and imitate it entirely, rather than taking the technical craftsmanship and the narrative mechanics and applying them to an actual adventure game.

Why do we have people fucking with the medium? Because it's a new medium and 98% of it is still terrible, boring schlock. It's like people don't know what to do with it--most big studios think the answer to advancing the medium is "better graphics." I think people are confused because it still has boundaries to be explored. Most of those expeditions turn up a vast expanse of emptiness but complaining about people experimenting in a medium just for the sake of experimentation is counterproductive. Complain about the people who take it too seriously, but what's the harm in people trying just to try?

So, in other words: 2deep4u? But seriously, I think stuff like this is just as big an affront to the gaming industry as Call of Duty/Modern Warfare clones. It's the reason why people hail Bastion as Game of the Year despite having mediocre hack and slash game play -- art house aesthetics. And, just like I fear with Call of Derpies, if something like this gets successful we're going to see more and more indie developers put out digital movies/experiences rather than focus on developing creative game play. And that's bad news considering a disproportionate amount of indie developers are already married to the puzzle platformer (sub) genre.

I guess the intent is that you get to choose when scenes are cut and the camera moves on. If you want, you can stare at a scene as long as you'd like. Well, you can't do that in a movie beyond pausing it.

I've made fun of the game or whatever you want to call it, but I do appreciate the idea behind it. I hope we don't get flooded with this sort of stuff, but I do hope someone takes it and uses what's good from it and moves the idea forward.

I don't agree. I think if you look at indies, you see a constant stream of diversity regardless of what is or isn't successful. We still get Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, Amnesia, an assortment of hack n slash, Spiderweb games, shit that tries something new like Frozen Synapse, stupid games, fun games, awful games, pretentious games. I don't think Dear Esther is the death blow to indie games. I don't think such a blow is possible at this point.

I didn't say it was a deathblow, either, I said it potentially starts us down the track of where the indie landscape is glutted by similar games (that lack game play) just as it is already fairly glutted with puzzler platformers. Obviously there is still variety in indie games but it's becoming increasingly stifled as developers look to replicate what is successful. Even that point aside, I will always be critical of a game that has no game play be it an indie production made by two people or a AAA monstrosity vomited out by Activision or EA.

We'll likely have to disagree on each others speculations. I just don't think that because of Dear Esther some would be indie RPG (for example) isn't being made because the developers decided to copy DE. If you're in the business of capitalizing on others success then you likely weren't interested in making something fun and original to begin with. Yes, there might be more DE style games, which I don't particularly like, but I don't think it will negatively effect indie games as a whole. It likely means there will be a fresh supply of shit to avoid, as we always have had to do.

I'm getting sick to the stomach from this game. Literally I get motion sickness from it. I guess I have a natural resistance against such titles...

We already have a fair number of indies without gameplay--Passage comes to mind, as does that one with the Bluebeard retelling. There's the Little Red Riding Hood game and the one where you sit in the cemetery, by the same studio, I think. Indies without gameplay have been in the market for a while, and some have done rather well.

Bastion was Bastion. It wasn't Best Game Ever material, but it gave you diverse, fun guns, didn't pad itself with filler, and had some hard, arcade-y challenge modes and levels. It's a fun old formula that we don't get to see very often these days--I do want more games to pay attention to that formula and imitate it. People who say it's fun because of its art direction are deluding themselves about the strong points of the game.

The point I was trying to make is that Dear Esther isn't a game. It was an experiment, a 'hey, I wonder if....' I'm not making claims about its depth. I'm saying what is and isn't. It matters to me because calling it a game feels like the path to spawning indies that imitate its non-existent gameplay rather than its well executed narrative, environment, and even audio. But to throw it away would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.