I pretty much only bought this game because I saw screenshots of it on a forum and was totally entranced. Later, I regretted this a bit when its Polish developers came out as being pro-GamerGate. This is a bit weird since it actually most resembles games like Gone Home and Dear Esther which gators love to deride as being not real games. But they don’t seem to have similar problems with The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Note that I played the original version and not the Redux version because I didn’t realize that it was available as a separate download for free.

Here you play a private investigator of some sort who specializes in the paranormal. You travel to the town of Red Creek Valley after receiving fan-mail from 12-year-old Ethan Carter. But it’s clear that you have arrived too late and that tragedy has already befallen the town. The only thing left to work is to search for clues about exactly what happened here and perhaps provide some sort of closure to the victims. This task is made easier by your character’s psychometric powers of gaining information about people by touching the objects they have held.

In practice, this game plays out like a walking simulator with a handful of puzzles thrown in. The good news is that thanks of its fantastic visuals, great sound design and realistic environments, this is probably as close as you can get to a simulated hiking experience on a computer. The vegetation is lush, the landscape is amazing and the rays of the sun feel like they could reach you out of your monitor. Combined with the spooky atmosphere and the hints of the supernatural, the effect is similar to the televisions series Twin Peaks.

Still, however pretty the game it is, there’s only so much atmosphere you can soak in before things get stale if there isn’t anything to interact with. Early on, I tried to exhaustively explore every nook and cranny that I could find. It turned out that barring a single achievement that you can get, this isn’t very rewarding. There are a number of puzzles in this game but by and large the objects required are all in the same general area so you don’t really have to wander far to get them. With the exception of the one involving portals in a house, most of the puzzles really aren’t difficult at all. The hardest part is simply realizing that you are indeed in the middle of a puzzle.

Some reviewers have praised the story. Personally I liked the tone of the writing but not the actual content. I recognized what the writers were going on with each of Ethan Carter’s stories representing a different horror trope, so I wasn’t really surprised at the ending. I was disappointed mostly in how few characters the town had and how few snippets of lore there is. I really wished the game rewarded exploration more by having more interactable bits that tell the story of the town itself.

Obviously this is a rather short game. My own playtime is 5 hours and that was only because I kept going everywhere in the hopes of discovering more secrets. Still, it’s obvious that a ridiculous amount of work went into creating the town so if like gorgeous graphics, this game may be worth it for that alone.