
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a first-person story-driven mystery. Purchase this game to get both the original and the Unreal Engine 4 remaster called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux.
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Prices
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About
GOOD NEWS EVERYONE: By purchasing the game, you actually get two games now: 1) The original The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, 2) The Unreal Engine 4 remaster called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux. Please see The Astronauts website for details.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a first-person story-driven mystery game that focuses entirely on exploration and discovery. It contains no combat or explosions of any kind. If our game leaves any scars, we hope you won’t be able to see them.
You play the game as Paul Prospero, an occult-minded detective who receives a disturbing letter from Ethan Carter. Realizing the boy is in grave danger, Paul arrives at Ethan’s home of Red Creek Valley, where things turn out to be even worse than he imagined. Ethan has vanished in the wake of a brutal murder, which Paul quickly discerns might not be the only local murder worth looking into.
Inspired by the weird fiction (and other tales of the macabre) from the early twentieth century, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter aims to significantly evolve immersive storytelling in games. While it features a private detective and quite a few mental challenges, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is not an especially puzzle-ridden game. Our focus is on atmosphere, mood, and the essential humanity of our characters.
Still, the discoveries won’t happen on their own, or without your help. Using both Paul’s supernatural skill of being able to communicate with the dead, and your own powers of observation, you will discover the mystery behind a trail of corpses, the roots of a dark ancient force lurking in Red Creek Valley, and the fate of a missing boy.
Explore and interact with the beautiful yet ominous world of Red Creek Valley, which was created with the use of revolutionary photogrammetry technology that allows for nearly photorealistic environments.
Communicate with the dead and see how they died in order to gather clues that help you piece together the truth behind Ethan’s disappearance -- and the fate of his family.
Experience, in non-linear fashion, a story that combines the pleasures of pulp, private eye, and horror fiction, all of it inspired by writers such as Raymond Chandler, Algernon Blackwood, Stefan Grabinski, and H. P. Lovecraft.
Conduct the investigation on your own terms and at your own pace. Although there are a few scary bits in the game, players will have no need for sedatives. Our game is less about terror and more about clammy unease.
Add-ons
Each DLC is estimated with the same model as a game, then summed — a modeled figure, not reported DLC sales.
Sums Steam only; PlayStation, GOG, Xbox, Epic publish no volume signal, so the true total is higher by an unknown amount.
| Store | Price | Audience | Score | Chart | Est. revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SteamYou are here | $19.99 | 9Kreviews | 88% | — | $3.2M |
| $19.99 | 8.4Kratings | 88% | — | not modelled | |
Updates
Build ids and update times come straight from Steam's PICS — the same source SteamDB reads. Patch history grows as we record new builds.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 807 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
está bien fumado, tomen precauciones
Unfortunately, this one really wasn't to my taste. The Environment sure is beautiful for a while. But you get dulled to it, and it honestly only get's worse after the first hour, after which you leave the beautiful sunset and most stuff get's only meh lighting. The location might be pretty beautiful, but everything's so stretched out, and it feels like you're exploring only to find nothing. The game is linear, but pretends not to be too much. I'd rather have had a tighter experience. But the game is about it's story, which I just didn't really like. Minor spoilers ahead There's a few little, disconnected stories, that all amount to the same message, a bigger mystery story, that's conclusion felt hollow to me, and then a big reveal, that fell completely flat for me. It's also got a horror section in the latter half, that felt very out of place to me. And ended up just being another one of the mini stories. In the end, the game was best in it's first hour, and got worse to me the more I played.
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Languages: English*, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Polish*, Czech*languages with full audio support
| $19.99 |
| 657ratings |
| 82% |
| — |
| not modelled |
| $19.99 | 401ratings | 82% | — | not modelled |
| $19.99 | — | 85% | — | not modelled |
Matched by title — a reused name can pair the wrong games. * is a critic aggregate. Prices and positions are each store's United States storefront; Epic charts worldwide. Audience and Score too, except Steam's, which is worldwide.
Hours played at review time, across 808 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
dear esther: the sequel...and it's not a compliment
90/100 - Wondered around for 1 hour. At that point I knew I was wrong, the "this game is not going to hold your hand" hit hard. Saw how to solve the first case in YT and came back, after that everything went smooth, the rest of the game is not hard with the proper tutorial. The world size is not overwhelming. Landscapes, graphics and ambience are beautiful and spooky. Story can be a bummer for some, be open minded. Controls are simple as any walking simulator. It's a nice experience for walking simulator enjoyers.
Same sort of review I did for the redux. Decent game but with more dated graphics.
Positive surprise. - Atmosphere and music is very good also environment and landscape and colors is superb beautiful especially with OLED screen so eye candy experience. - Story is very interesting and game play is good and interesting puzzle style of stuff. - Story still left me little bit cold after game ending so maybe 7/10 because of this but still story is very interesting and i recommend to play this if you like this type of adventure/story driven games.
I played the redux version for the better graphics I'm just going to go with a pros and cons list because i cant say i dont recommend this game but unless you use a guide you will not be able to play thought this game without getting stuck for hours as there is no direction whatsoever its an open world walking sim. PROS: *visuals are great (on redux) the original version has low graphics so i recommend only playing through the redux revision. *the story is great and mysterious *lots of things to interact with *overall enjoyable experience providing you use a guide to navigate *I liked how you figure out each characters death and the story behind it *I liked that there was only 1 jump scare the game is a casual dark walking sim other than that but i used a guide so the scare didn't get me anyway. ( I do not play games with jump scares) CONS: *There is no navigation whatsoever, no map, no compass. Nothing, can be very tedious. *Bugs. i had to play through a second time to get Missy's achievement because it decided to break and not unlock. I also had a bug where you throw the grenade and the diver is never there. *overall the devs expect you to know what to do with no guidance at all and for me that will P me off on games because i hate having to use a guide i want to play a game for myself UNLESS i am going for all achievements which i did. *The ending was meh.. like it was expected by the time i got to mid game SPOILER: [spoiler]Ethan is the sleeper and none of this even happened it was in his imagination so all that detective work was pretty much pointless as his family are alive he K0 himself by burning his house down.[/spoiler] I can't say it's a bad game. Buy it on sale its relatively short too only about 3-4 hours max depending how many restarts you get from annoying bugs.. my review is neutral i recommend playing it if you enjoy a walking sim
A beautiful looking walking simulator that I wish was a bit more fun to play. I still mostly enjoyed it...but I have forgotten a lot of it, and don't have a strong desire to replay.
Poorly optimized, constantly dropping frames, boring, and broken (especially the grenade throwing part). The game claims to be an experience that doesn’t hold your hand, but it really felt like a lame excuse for not having good game design. The core mechanic is boring, there are too many dead ends, and achieving “stories” isn’t satisfying at all, making it feel like you’re not actually advancing in the game.
без гайдов из интернета невозможно пройти и понять что делать вообще нужно и как играть, очень ограниченый геймпле, из возможностей у тебя есть только ходить, либо ходить чуть быстрее (в игре это называется бегом). сюжет дер**о, приплели к детективу инопланетян и магического ктулху, и зомби. каким н**уй образом. Картинка классная
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