Two years in the making, the highly anticipated Indie remake of the cult mod Dear Esther arrives on PC. 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. Abandoning traditional gameplay for a pure story-driven experience, Dear Esther fuses its beautiful environments with a breathtaking soundtrack to tell a powerful story of love, loss, guilt and redemption.
“A deserted island…a lost man…memories of a fatal crash…a book written by a dying explorer.” Dear Esther is a ghost story, told using first-person gaming technologies. Rather than traditional game-play the focus here is on exploration, uncovering the mystery of the island, of who you are and why you are here. Fragments of story are randomly uncovered when exploring the various locations of the island, making every each journey a unique experience. Forget the normal rules of play; if nothing seems real here, it’s because it may just be all a delusion. What is the significance of the aerial -- What happened on the motorway -- is the island real or imagined -- who is Esther and why has she chosen to summon you here? The answers are out there, on the lost beach, the windswept cliffs and buried in the darkness of the tunnels beneath the island… Or then again, they may just not be, after all…
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Unified technical telemetry aggregated from Steam, Valve Steam Deck, ProtonDB, PCGamingWiki, and IGDB.
| Language | Interface | Full Audio | Subtitles |
|---|---|---|---|
| English |
Official minimum and recommended hardware configurations.
Top helpful player reviews pulled directly from the Steam open registry with verified playtime hours.
Well there's something you don't see everyday - Dr. Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters THE GOOD Dear Esther is not your ordinary game. In some respects, it is not a game at all. Focusing on environments and atmosphere rather than gameplay and action is a nice way to change the pace, but it will definitely put some people off. If you're a person who prefers Serious Sam and Doom over Amnesia and Proteus, I do not think this game is for you. The sound in the game is, well, not very exciting overall. The intro plops you into the island with explanation of why you are there, if you pay attention. The story is told by a nameless narrator, who talks about the island, his hobbies, and the mysterious Esther. Digging deeper into the story explains more about the characters and the settings, but only if you are willing to look. THE GREAT The game can be frightening and intense if you let it. Beautiful e
As an English major, maybe I am biased. Maybe also I am biased by the facts that my fiance died 12 months ago, that my mother died several months after that, and that my father soon died after her. It has been a rough year. Maybe that's why I love this game, and why I already own about ~3-4 copies of it so far, due to Humble Bundles and whatnot... But perhaps not. I loved Dear Esther long before any of that stared, after all. I certainly played it at least more than 21 times, trying to figure out where its lines were, though I could never exactly locate them on my maps. I would try to explain it to my fiance, to my dad, to my mom, back when they were still alive, why a 'video game' meant so much to me. How stupid was that? Trying to explain why a 'video game' actually meant something? Instanity, right? Like a barnacle, clinging stupidly to a rock, just trying to not slide into the ocea
This is a work of art. There is little story, and even less gameplay. You're mostly railroaded along a path, where you will hear and see things. The world is visually appealing, and the voice work is wonderful, but the overall mood may or may not appeal to you. Like any purely artistic work, it either speaks to you or it falls flat. Personally, it's not my cup of tea, but it might be yours.
As always, TL;DR at the bottom. This game deserves more though. In recent years it has become more common to hear gamers, and even some non-gamers giving credit to games as pieces of art. Truly all games are art in some form as they provide a visual and narrative experience no matter what type of game they are. Some games are simply greater classified as art than others, but even inside of that it seems something such as 'Dear Esther' should be given credit on the art scale much higher than any old "video games are art" scale. 'Dear Esther' is claimed by many as "not a game". This is a debate I am no longer interested in, as I simply don't take a hard stance on what a game is anymore now that I have played so many adventure games, and what are more aptly described as "walking simulators". If you want to call it art instead, which it is, I can accept that, but debating on what a game
It isn’t a game, it’s an experience. A lot of the criticism and confusion of Dear Esther is brought about because it is not exactly 'a game'. There are no enemies, no objectives, no inventory, nothing we've come to expect in video games. It is where art, storytelling and games intersect, to create a masterpiece. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=553155472 Dear Esther is visually astounding. Journey deep into the island's caves and you will be utterly in awe of the beauty therein. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=498467039 The music is beautifully haunting, always appropriate in intensity for the situation, and never overwhelming it. The narration contributes significantly to the player's emotional state while traversing the island. His rantings and musings, his rage and his despair, all help lend color to the landscape, and keep the player fi
Dear Esther is beautifully designed, hauntingly atmospheric and splendidly narrated. It also has a couple of very big problems... <Contains minor spoilers> The Old Argument ...but funnily enough, the question of whether or not Dear Esther is a game isn't one that bothers me. Gaming is still a relatively young medium, and writing off a game just because it doesn't meet the traditional definition can only stifle innovation and discourage others from experimenting. Ultimately, I'm more interested in the question: did Dear Esther succeed in what it set out to do? Well, allow me to elaborate on what I think. Hebrides Dear Esther is a so-called "walking simulator" (i.e. has very little gameplay besides walking and looking) set on a bleak Hebridian island. This island is perhaps the most compelling character in the entire story: it is nothing short of breathtaking. I regularly visit th
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