Dear Esther Review

Dear Esther is, I think, the first game I ever played that could be considered a “walking simulator”. There’s no real puzzles, there’s no combat, there are no other characters… there’s just us – the player – alone on an island with nothing but memories to keep us company.

Dear Esther is something of a ghost story. As we traverse this desolate island we stumble upon various places that trigger memories. Not every location will trigger the same memory every time and they are generally pretty easy to find but there’s a couple that take some extra investigation on your part.

Because the game really is just all about plot, I’m not going to give it a summary here. I’ll just say that the story deals with a relationship between a small group of people who would spend time together on this island.

I mentioned the gameplay earlier. We literally just walk, jump, and climb. That’s it. There’s very little to interact with, nothing to run of hide from, no physics puzzles, no monsters, no other people. We explore. We find ourselves in abandoned shacks, we discover vast underground caves, and eventually we find the end of the story at the end of our adventure.

Graphically I think this game is gorgeous. I quite enjoy the drabness of the island. The grey and brown and just dullness of the whole thing is something I, personally, find to be very comforting. Which is odd for a ghost story, but I’m an odd guy. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is a feel good film for me, same with Waiting For Godot. But this game is not without color. There is a segment kind of mid game that is absolutely gorgeous. The colors are bright a vibrant and dynamic. Graphically, this game knocks it out of the part for sure.

I also really like the music. There isn’t a lot of it, there’s maybe a handful of tracks plus a little bit more and it’s kind of short mood music and stingers mostly, but I do think it’s good. I’ve got the soundtrack and sometimes I’ll just put it on when I want to sit and be introspective. The sound design is some of the best I’ve ever heard in a video game. It’s simple, but it does so much with so little. It’s a lot of wind and water but also ambience indoors and grass rustling and board creaking. It sets the atmosphere so very well.

I enjoy this game. Very very much. I love the look and the feel. The sights and sounds and most of all the story. If you want to take yourself out of the world for about an hour and experience something altogether different, give it a try. The game really does take about an hour to get though.