Dear Esther was spawned as a Half-Life 2 mod that was nothing short of a critical hit in the modding community, then a year after it’s 2008 release, it was picked up by an artist who wanted to bring more vibrancy to the world. A year after that, it was being completely redone, from the ground up by a small team, seven people in fact. Then, again, a year after that we have it’s release, today. Honestly, this day is kind of a perfect choice for the commercial release of this bit of software, Valentines Day. Perfect, that is, to tell you a good story of love and loss, and a beautiful story at that.
The Chinese Room's Dear Esther goes free on Steam to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this foundational title.
Eh.
I mean free is free, but I found this to be a boring slog.
Not to mention this remasters actually made the game look worse in multiple areas.
I did quite like their A Machine for Pigs and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture though.
On Valentine's Day a decade ago, Dear Esther went from a Source Engine mod to a full-fledged indie game, catalyzing the "walking sim" genre. How does it measure up today?
"The China-based indie games publisher Secret Mode and Brighton-based (the UK) indie games developer The Chinese Room, are today very pleased to announce that they will celebrate the tenth anniversary of "Dear Esther" by making the genre-defining 2012 narrative exploration game free to download from February 14th to February 15th via Steam." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
