Pangolin Game Review: Dear Esther

I meant to write this review earlier. Much earlier, in fact. But life happens, and I'm the laziest person on the internet. So here's my review, 1 and 1/2 months after my initial playthrough of Dear Esther.

Let's get one thing out of the way first: this game is art.

Not in the sense of "all games are art and this is no exception" but in the most literal of senses, the game itself is an artistic experience. "Playing the game" is a phrase that doesn't adequately describe the experience I had.

Click on all these screenshots to see them in their original size. The detail in this game is astonishing.



Lush vegetation sprawls across the landscape.



Although I did interact with the game, there was not a health bar, ammo counter, magic gauge, enemy, NPC, or HUD to be found at all. There were no online leaderboards, no time trials, and no high scores. In fact, there was nothing resembling the traditional definition of a game in Dear Esther. It isn't played so much as it is experienced. It may very well be the best indie game so far this year.

I must elaborate on this point of experience because you may be wondering, if there isn't anything to shoot, any people to talk to, any levels to gain, or any missions to complete, then why buy the game at all? Well, hypothetically inquisitive madam or sir, I'm glad you asked! The game is an experience of beauty and introspection.

Exploration is the key to unlocking the game's mysteries.

The experience tells a story. In this story, you are a body-less narrator who must traverse an island, winding your way through hills, shorelines, caves, and mountains toward a mysterious aerial beacon in the distance. Along the way, your character's voice provides narration. But unlike many games where the narration has to do with events or characters in the game, this narration deals with the protagonist's own life experiences, and the lives people never seen or heard in the game.

"Well," you may be saying at this point, "if I wanted a story I'd just read a book or watch a movie." But then you'd be missing out on the best part of the game: the absolutely insane attention to realism. All the game's environments are painstakingly detailed. I can say painstakingly because it must have been an absolute bastard and a half to cram as many environmental details into such a relatively small game space.

The most beautiful indie game I've yet played.

Everything sounds like it should. There are no out-of-place sound effects in the entire game. Poignant piano music flows over your narrative as you pass from one place to the next. The story is excellently written, with prose that flows together like the environment you walk through in the game. The protagonist is an Englishman, middle aged, who speaks in the tone of a man somehow profoundly aware of things in spite of himself. As you find out more about the island, you find out more about your character.

His voice is your only company.

The visuals are nothing short of jaw-dropping. You could be forgiven for thinking you were playing the latest AAA game from a major publisher, even though the game only cost at most a few hundred thousand dollars to make. As you wind your way through cold, sandy beaches and up crumbling stone stairways, through weed- and flower-strewn fields, into dank caves dripping with water and studded with crystals and bio-luminescent fungi, and along candle-lit paths under a semi-clouded starry sky, you will feel as though every single bit of the game could exist in real life, in some far-flung part of the North Sea or the archipelago islands of Cape Horn.

No buttons to push. No switches to find. Nothing to kill. Only the story remains.

The final effect of this radical attention to detail is somehow ethereal and concrete. I felt as though the location could be visited if I just took the time to find it. Yet the narrative and, for a game, unsettling lack of interaction combined to produce a dream-like quality to things. It is beautiful and unreal, yet as accessible and tangible as the keyboard I'm typing on now.

The best way I can describe it is if the folks at Cyan (makers of the Myst games) decided to make an indie game. You feel very alone, yet through the protagonist's descriptions, very aware of other people unseen in the game. This solitude is even stronger than that in the Myst games, which was passive and had other characters doing the speaking and writing while you said nothing. The solitude in Dear Esther is active, and self-realized.

Dear Esther is currently on Steam for $9.99. It is a bargain, in my opinion, because I would have paid double that for the new game experience I received in return. It runs on Valve's Source engine, so pretty much any machine will handle it well, and for an indie game it is possibly the most impressive I've ever seen. Once you finish this review, go fire up Steam and buy this game. Shut your door, turn down your lights, and turn up your speakers. You'll get sucked into an ephemeral landscape and into an equally ephemeral story.

And you'll love every minute.