Dear Esther…

I find myself standing on an island, staring out at the ocean as my eye traces the shoreline into the mist…

(Presse)

(…) To my right is an old, abandoned lighthouse. I wander over and search inside, but all I find are are old paint pots and a book of Hebridean history. I am a visitor on this island, my only guide the disembodied voice, rambling a confused, disjointed monologue into my ears. Is the voice me? Is it a thought or a memory? “Dear Esther…” The voice begins, as I walk outside and continue my journey to uncover the secrets hidden in the heart of the island. So begins my time with one of the most thoughtful and original games ever to grace my hard drive.

An experiment…

For the uninitiated, creator Dan Pinchbeck began working on Dear Esther in 2008 as a project at Portsmouth University to explore experimental game play and storytelling. The free mod became a cult hit among gamers, largely for one simple reason: it lacked any of the qualities that we traditionally associate with computer games. In Dear Esther, there are no monsters to kill or puzzles to solve. There are no challenges or impediments to the player’s progress. Instead, the player is merely free to wander across a desolate Hebridean island, exploring and observing the environment as they go. Certain locations trigger short audio monologues, adding some context to the player’s journey. The story, such as it is, is delivered entirely through the environment and the audio monologues.

A feast for senses…

The commercial release of Dear Esther is a tweaked, tuned and polished version of the original mod, courtesy of ex-DICE employee, Robert Briscoe. The results are truly stunning. Rarely have I visited such a hauntingly beautiful place in a computer game. The sense of desperate isolation felt when exploring this place is almost palpable. The fantastic score and jaw-dropping visual design both help, but where Dear Esther really excels is in its extraordinary attention to detail. The beaches and caves bristle with details that draw the player’s attention. Some subtle, some striking, each detail is a clue, a piece of an indecipherable code. The plot of Dear Esther is deliberately obtuse, leaving the player to fill in the gaps and impose their own interpretation and meaning onto the game. The end result is something that feels strange and confusing but undeniably unique and powerful.

High-brow aspirations…

There’s no avoiding the fact that Dear Esther wears its high-brow aspirations on its sleeves. Despite being entirely grounded in modern computer game design, in many ways the experience is more akin to an art installation than a typical Call of Duty-alike. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether this a good thing or a bad thing. Some people feel the price is a little steep, €7.99 for a game that lasts under 2 hours, but I disagree. If you’re remotely interested in the medium of computer games and the kinds of possibilities it offers, you owe it to yourself to try Dear Esther.