Dear Esther

My apologies for not posting this yesterday as promised.  I started writing late last night and felt my focus lacked a bit of that special stuff.  This post deserved to have me without a fuzzy head, so I postponed it.

What it is:

Dear Esther is a game about exploration.  You start on an island with no context as to who or where you are.  Almost immediately, the player is shown a blinking red light.  This light belongs to a radio tower, far into the distance and high up in the hills.  The goal is obvious but mysterious: get to the radio tower.  The player can walk and look around, nothing more.

What I like:

At specific points along the path to the radio tower, segments of narration get triggered.  This narration along with objects and symbols found in the environment (none of which can be interacted with) hint at a much larger story.  During my time with the game and for a handful of hours afterwards, I wracked my brain trying to make sense of the narrator's words.  After those hours passed, still uncertain, I came to the conclusion that what the game said is not important because Dear Esther's goal is not to tell a compelling story.

The goal of Dear Esther is to elicit a powerful and lasting emotional response from the player.  Absolutely every aspect of the game exists to serve this goal.  For me, these emotions were loneliness, sadness, and wonder.  These emotions found me almost immediately and stayed with me throughout my 90 minute journey.  The beautiful landscape, the dreamy music, the confusing symbols, the even more confusing narration.  Everything I encountered made be feel more lonely, more sad, and a greater sense of wonder.

I respect Dear Esther for having such strong focus.  Again, every aspect of the game lives to elicit a powerful emotional response from the player.

What I dislike:

At the end of the game, standing at the base of the radio tower, the game takes control away from the player.  At this point, there's no place left for the player to go but up.  Why take that away from him/her?

I don't feel like anything was gained by playing the game for me in its final seconds.  I'm confident however, had control not been taken from me, every emotion I felt at the game's conclusion would've been strengthened.  That's reason enough to let me be the one who climbs the tower.

Cheers,

Danny

Why Study Games?

Periodically, starting tomorrow, I'm going to dedicate posts to specific games.  These posts will be my attempt to analyze games critically.  If I think a game's neat, what about it makes it neat?  If I find a game frustrating, what would I change to alleviate that frustration?  I won't be reviewing games.  I don't want to talk about graphics or the length of the game or anything else that might appear on the back of a game box.  These posts will intentionally not be exhaustive.  I want to focus on the single best and worst elements of the games as I see them.  My hope is that some of the observations I make during these critiques will resurface and positively influence my own games during their development.

Why this is beneficial:

One piece of advice Ian Schreiber (of Game Design Concepts and Challenges for Game Designers) gives for generating new game ideas is play more games.

Play lots of games! But… play as a designer and not just a player. Don’t just play for enjoyment. Instead, play critically. Ask yourself what choices were made by the designer of the game, and why you think those choices were made, and whether or not they work.

In his article Formal Abstract Design Tools, Doug Church argues that having a consistent design vocabulary, or way of discussing games, is paramount for game design to truly evolve and progress.

So we need a design vocabulary, a set of tools underlying game design practice. There is no correct or official method to identify them. One easy way to start looking is to take a good game and describe concretely some of the things that work well. Then, from concrete examples of real game elements, we can attempt to abstract and formalize a few key aspects and maybe find ourselves a few tools.

The first game I want to poke, prod, open up, and take a look inside is Dear Esther.  Come back tomorrow to find out what secrets she shared.

Cheers,

Danny