Ether One

I enjoyed this game a lot. It is a walking simulator filled with puzzles that reward players who want to immerse themselves in the world and learn about the story of the areas they are exploring. It feels a bit like drinking a cup of tea with the characters. The game presents the player with story-rich locations and landscapes that need to be explored in order to progress (the art style is nice, too!) While it is possible to complete the game just by collecting the basic objectives that are scattered throughout the areas, this makes the game feel a lot like a walking simulator and it actively goes against the spirit of the game, since the ending you get for beating the game this way is extremely unsatisfying. Instead, the game encourages the player to immerse in its world and solve its more difficult puzzles, reading notes which present the stories of the people that lived in the areas you explore, and paying attention to other various environmental clues. This way, the apparently difficult puzzles unfold nicely, almost like in a detective game - which I believe this game is, in a way, also proved by the fact that the studio made a detective game after this one. The story is quite simple, but also emotional and captivating, if you want to empathize with the virtual characters that you read and hear about. All this isn't to say the game is without flaws. Some of the puzzles are obtuse and I thought they were badly designed even after reading a guide about them, since I could not figure them out by myself. The best puzzles have their solution in the environment and notes and manage to add depth to the story - for example, one of my favorite puzzles is in the second area of the game and it regards Graham Bell, who allegedly lived in the town where the game takes place; the puzzle is located in Bell's workshop, but in order to solve it the player needs to find the house where Bell lived, investigate the place and read various notes around the area to discover the relationships the engineer had with other people, which complements the story nicely. Some of the worse puzzles just require the player to run around and remember numbers that appear in certain places and place them on a grid - these add nothing to the story and is why I say they were badly designed. These more or less require a guide. The graphics are simple but effective, and I enjoyed both the original (made in Unread Engine 3) and the Redux version (made in Unreal Engine 4). Overall, I enjoyed the game a lot and would recommend it to people looking for an emotional and immersive adventure that rewards taking your time and paying attention to the environments.