Ether One from White Paper Games
I've long awaited the day I would finally get to play Ether One. It seems like an eternity ago that I stumbled across it on the Steam Greenlight. It peaked my interest as a genre that just isn’t really tackled anymore, in the same vein as all the first PC games I ever played. In hindsight, ones that really formed my thinking and attitude as to what games can be. Games live Riven and Myst, both of which I still own in their big box packaging on my top shelf where my old PC games live, and that whenever my Mum comes to tidy, she asks me why don’t I throw them out. When I dignify her with response, it’s a firm “no”.
Ether One is a exploration game at its core, but it takes a while to realise you aren’t really exploring the small fictional Cornish town of Pinwheel. Sure, you are moving through its streets, opening the doors of its houses and the small towns haunts, but what you are actually exploring, in the words of developer White Paper Games, is the fragility of the human mind.
Unfortunately, many of us have been effected by afflictions of the mind, personally or in family members. It’s tough subject matter, but imagine for a moment if you will, that you could save precious memories or thought from the ravages of time? That’s precisely what the games eponymous company: Ether have discovered. Enter the player into the role of a Restorer, people who delve into patients memory with the guidance of a mysterious narrator, never seen, ever watching over our your every action. I’m a fan of silent protagonists and it’s welcome here, I feel spoken lines would have ruined the immersion, and it accentuates the feeling of paranoia, that all is not as it seems at Ether.
As you go deeper into the game, and it’s a game of so many layers, it dawns on me: where are all the people? Suddenly it feels creepy that these empty streets and empty buildings lay as if abandoned in a moment, left untouched for us to find. The town is rich with life, despite being devoid of people, with notes left to give us an insight into the lives of the townsfolk, and even more telling, objects strewn around. There’s an ominous feeling, dread I would liken to seeing Pripyat in Ukraine.
I enjoyed talking with the developers and Designer Pete Bottomley provided alot of insight into the nature of the game. The main section of the game can be completed in around a shortish 4 or 5 hours, but that’s not to say that the game is complete by a long stretch of the imagination. The game features optional puzzles, that take the form of film projectors, that provide an even deeper level of insight. Accessibility was a word that kept coming up when I enquired as to the nature if the puzzles, and I was worried that this would mean the puzzles wouldn't really provide much of a challenge, as I was looking forward to challenging my own brain in a game exploring the nature of the mind. These fears proved unfounded, with a range of difficulty. I found myself making notes in an old pad for each puzzle, feeling a need to know more and delve deeper.
As I explored, I fell deep into full on loot mode early on, quickly filling the shelves of my Case. Then it dawns on me, I'm doing it wrong. I don't need to loot everything in sight, I need to think, to be selective. Most satisfying of all, the puzzles never feel forced or that they've been placed there to find or solve, they feel natural, a real world.
Graphically, it's of extremely high production value. The art style fits perfectly into the games tone. The environments look like you’re exploring inside of a painting. It's not really cell shading, but that's the best way I can describe it. It's an indie game and the small team of 6 that worked hard for so long on this clearly poured their heart and soul into it. It's not fair to compare the graphical fidelity to a game a team of hundreds worked on with an enormous budget for years on a AAA game in my view, but White Paper Games have used their limited budget and manpower well here. N.J. Apostol, who worked so tirelessly on the Sound Design for the game, told us that he wanted the sound to be less conventional and the soundtrack is beautiful. it's a minimalist approach, leaving the player to explore the sounds of Pinwheel for themselves, and you'll frequently find radios and musical instruments that make music an important part of the game, even some of the puzzles are based on sounds.
I've been playing mouse and keyboard, but the game also supports gamepads and more interestingly Oculus Rift. This is exactly the sort of game that I would love to play with Oculus Rift and I hope that other developers can take note that this is exactly the sort of genre that I feel the Oculus Rift was ready made for, less so Mark Zucherberg's talking to a doctor with the headset on or watching sports...
Usually in games, you find yourself fighting against something. Killing bad guys, defeating evil, overcoming great obstacles to save mankind, the world, the galaxy or the universe. In Ether One, you realise you aren't doing any of these things, you're trying to save one person and that way, it's extraordinarily personal. It left me thinking, what would my life be life projected in this way? The game left me thinking about one of my favourite quotes, it’s from the Talmud and it goes “whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world”.
It's personal, it's deep, it's thoughtful, it's magnificent.
Ether One is available now on Steam, with a launch week discount of 15% or you can also get it at GoG.com and the HumbleBundle Store
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- Charlie