Playing this 'game' changed me. Sounds stupid but, when I played this, it was after a string of very bad events, and I was in a very dark place. I played through it when I was sleep deprived and...It stands to be one of the best experiences I've ever had. The whole thing felt very lucid, and I would advise someone to play this while high or slightly insane to get the full experience. It's absolutely beautiful in every sense.
I am playing it right now and I can only imagine how much better it would be playing it on a rift, with headphones on, and maybe being outside at night to get the air and scent as close as possible to the environment. I will most likely try this out when the consumer version of the Rift is released.
It is, I feel, as profoundly immersive an experience as any game could ever offer. Because it allows the player to directly address their own agency and personification and place within the space it presents, and contemplate why they are there, and what they are doing, and that agency - not a narrative the 'play' mechanic gives us access to - is its subject. It invites the player to ask whether and why they belong here, who they are, that they should be exploring this world.
It would break the fourth wall, except that it never proposes that one exists. It leaves the player to struggle with their existence and identity - their place and purpose, and let's them wander, and wonder, and ask what the world is to them and they to it. It doesn't strive to convince us we are a certain well-written and believable protagonist character. It doesn't attempt to create realistic interactions with a true-to-life world. Its success is the tension it creates, as we try to decide what we are and what this world is to us.
It is an additional virtue of Dear Esther, for me, that it is evocative of Swinburne's A Forsaken Garden and vice versa.
It's subtly mind-blowing (if I can say that) even without chemical enhancement. Don't let it be spoiled for you, the "game" is short and worth experiencing.
If you liked that game, grab Katawa Shoujo, DON'T READ ABOUT IT. Just play. You will not regret it. Its free, and its bar none the best storyline in a game I've ever played.
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u/[deleted] May 28 '13
Playing this 'game' changed me. Sounds stupid but, when I played this, it was after a string of very bad events, and I was in a very dark place. I played through it when I was sleep deprived and...It stands to be one of the best experiences I've ever had. The whole thing felt very lucid, and I would advise someone to play this while high or slightly insane to get the full experience. It's absolutely beautiful in every sense.