I'm a big, big Dear Esther fan, it's one of my favorite "interactive... thing" and it marked a shift on my videogaming tastes. Everybody's gone to the Rature is the spiritual sequel and in almost every way feels like a Dear Esther 2.0, so I did enjoy it very much, although it didn't have the same personal impact as aforementioned game.

Visuals are fantastic, voice acting is excelent, a very intriguing story and AMAZING music, but I gotta talk about the elephant in the room: the walking speed. Bloody hell it's atrocious and its detrimental to the experience itself cause it discourages exploration that is the heart of the experience. If there's a mod for it, by all means, use it.

I won this game through SteamGifts.

"We have each other.
We lived apart from them; we understand now.
Our failure to touch, to belong.
But it doesn’t matter anymore.
Everybody is gone, and we will join them."

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture combines elements of a walking simulator to a classic science fiction story with added drama of a small town in an English countryside. You walk through the empty village of Yaughton, learning the story bit by bit through telephones, radios and small specks of light that produce memories of the people that lived there.

The game comes from the same developers as Dear Esther, which piqued my interest right away. Dear Esther was a great walking simulator, and I feel like this game didn't disappoint in the slightest. The story is intriguing and the way everything unravels as you move forward is almost always unique to the person playing, as the order you can do things in is entirely up to you. There is different side storylines you can follow that wrap around the main story perfectly and as you go further into the area you learn more and more. I was quite disappointed however, that the walking speed was quite slow, and the "sprint" button, didn't really help.

The graphics of the game are absolutely stunning! I just couldn't keep my eyes off of everything, there were so many beautiful little details to look at and all of the scenery was wonderful. Sadly there is some optimization issues which caused a lot of stuttering and dropping of frames, but there were a few fixes in the community guides on steam. The game is definitely a screenshotter's dream and well worth checking out in that regard.

The soundtrack was something I absolutely adored and it often moved me to tears for how well they implemented the soundtrack with the story and the memory points you were watching. It's a beautiful combination of sounds, emotions and harmonic music.

Now, something that I did not like, was the achievements...many have claimed to have troubles with the achievements popping up, I had no problems in that regard, but the content of the achievements itself were quite annoying. If there were a way to walk faster, then perhaps it would have been more enjoyable, but the slow pace and the fact that you can't complete the game 100% in a single playthrough, made me annoyed. I did it however, and I feel like it was worth it in the end.

It's a game that you will enjoy if you are a fan of slow paced walking simulators with beautiful scenery and intriguing story elements. If you are not a fan of that, I don't think this game is for you. For me, it was exactly what I thought it would be, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I 100% recommend this game to anyone who is planning on getting it.

Premise and gameplay
What a way to spend an evening! In typical walking sim fashion, this one can be completed in one sitting. I took my time and spent about 5 hours from beginning to end, which is actually quite lengthy for a walking sim. A lot of this is thanks to the extremely slow movement speed, but I think it fits both the mood and the story. After all, this is not a high octane action game by any stretch of the imagination, but rather a narrative experience for a relaxing evening.

Without spoiling any of the story, you're playing an unknown person or entity, leisurely walking around a quaint, but deserted, English village and watching the ghostly figures of the residents relive their last day alive. The reason for everybody's disappearance is a mystery, and it's up to you, the player, to piece together the clues based on what you hear and see around you. You may well reach the end and find yourself utterly confused, but that's to be expected of a TCR game. The story needs to be considered and analyzed before you can make sense of it from start to finish, which I'm still in the process of doing.
By the end of the game, you know a bit about everyone in the village. You follow a handful of people more closely than others and get a close look at their relationships with the people around them, which made me feel like they were real people. As a result, I felt more intimately connected to them and cared about their stories.
In case you're scarred by The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and are apprehensive about possible scares in this game, I can assure you there are none. No horror.

There is actually quite a lot of content here, but you have to find a lot of it on your own. You're guided through the village and its surroundings by a floating orb of light, but you won't see all of the story by simply following it along. You have to go off the beaten path and explore on your own. Check out houses, sheds, cars and you'll occasionally find another plot point. These are just as important as those on the guided tour, so don't be afraid to stray. The way you experience the story isn't designed to be linear anyway.
Actually, the orb somehow got stuck in the hedge outside the pub in the last chapter of the game, so I had to explore without a guide. I thought that was just as well, because I would have to check everything to find all the plot pieces anyway. Still, it's handy in case you've missed something major, as it will lead you to it.

Presentation
This is definitely among the most beautiful games I've ever played. All aspects of the presentation are spot-on and I've never before seen the English countryside so accurately represented in interactive digital form. It's one of my favorite settings and EGTTR absolutely nailed it. The attention to detail in the environments is just staggering. From the gardens and exterior of the houses, to the road markings and signs, to the clutter of garages and lived-in interiors, it all feels extremely realistic. Everything is placed with a purpose and there's quite a bit of story to be gleaned from observing the environment with a keen eye.
Effect-wise the game also delivers. Made in CryEngine, it boasts a lot of eye candy that it uses to full effect. The atmospheric and lighting effects really sells the countryside vibe and the detailed and (quite) high resolution textures look great. Yaughton feels like a real place.

The voice acting is superb. The actors cover a range of british dialects and the interactions between characters in conversations are very believable. I'd say this is probably the strongest point of the game, fitting enough for a voice focused narratively driven game, as I was completely sold on these characters thanks to the great emotional range and general acting talent of the voice actors.
Sound design is great. The wind in the trees, the chirping birds, the player character's footsteps, the rumbling light orb. It's just great.
The soundtrack deserves special mention. It is absolutely fantastic. It's melancholy, beautiful and haunting. It mostly takes a back seat and sets the mood, but swells up during important moments. The pieces draws on a variety of styles, but the choral arrangements are probably the most powerful for me.

By the end, these elements all come together to create an uneasy mood that had me on edge for the entire last chapter of the game. The mood was very well crafted. Mission accomplished.

Controls
The controls are as simple as they come. Playing with a controller, you use the analog sticks to move and look around, A or X/Cross to interact, LT or L2 to activate manual story segments and RT or R2 to "make haste." You can't run or jump, but RT/R2 makes you gradually walk slightly faster, which is nice for the longer stretches of road.
You can invert the Y-axis, but be aware that this also inverts Y for mouse control as well.

Value for money
This is a recurring topic when discussing walking simulators. Due that lack of "game" in these titles, the price point is under a lot more scrutiny than other games. I got it at -50 % for $10, which I found to be a fair asking price for the amount of care that had gone into the creation of the world, its sound design and the story, but anything more than that is too much for the amount of content it offers.
Get it on sale.

Summary
All in all, this is an excellent walking simulator. If you like walking simulators and are looking for a relaxing and intriguing experience, look no further.
It might not be everone's cup of tea, but that's totally fine. Just be aware of what you're buying and don't complain afterwards if you feel understimulated. This is a purebred walking sim, after all.

I have never played a game quite like this. It truly is a fascinating way to tell a story and the setting is so lovingly crafted that it lingers in your memory each time you put it down. Clearly the creators have spent a bit of time listening to BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Archers’.

Did I grasp the complexities of the narrative in their entirety? Certainly not. Yet I would replay this game again to better my understanding. That is not something you can say often in the world of videogames.

I have no earthly idea how it benefits the tale to have you unable to walk/run at a normal pace for a videogame. It isn’t a massive problem but on the couple of occasions I found myself lost, having to backtrack for minutes on end left me somewhat frustrated.

I really enjoyed the graphics and style of the game; for me games where you discover along the time the lore of it by yourself is a really cool way to approach a game! I liked the way it was set up, and the concept I enjoyed too, but for my complaints, I have a few. I didn’t enjoy the snail walking pace, I feel like there should’ve been an option to speed up. I understand wanting people to take their time to enjoy the game, but eventually it becomes boring and excruciating to be going that slow the entire game. Besides that, the mapping of the game is a bit confusing and it felt like I went in circles a couple of times. I think it would’ve been beneficial to have added a map widget to refer to instead of just sort of guessing your way through , hoping to find another map table somewhere. Last but not least, I understand the concept, that people sort of just vanished but I think some clips of people just actually in their human forms would’ve brought a lot more interest into the game. Even at the end if they had shown even just one overlapping imagery of the people who lived in the town, just for an informational visual, I think that would’ve greatly improved the storytelling. But besides all my complaints, regardless I enjoyed the game.

Right off the bat: I will say that I knocked a whole two stars off because of technical reasons. Unless you go into NVIDIA Control Panel in the Program Settings tab, select this game, and set Low Latency to Ultra, this game runs TERRIBLY. I am using an i7-8700k and 3070ti build with 64gb of ram and was getting frame drops down to 15-22fps. Really immersion-breaking. Some other critiques: walking speed is way too slow at some points, "sprint" button does virtually nothing, and the direction I was supposed to go wasn't always clear, even though I knew I needed to follow the glowing light. I ended up missing the end of one of the character's story arcs because I ended up getting lost, and then at a later point, I thought I was following the light and took a wrong turn and ended up getting lost in a previous area for about 30 mins where nothing happened. So yeah, there's a few things they could have done a lot better technically.
Artistically though, phenomenal work! The voice acting is among some of the best I've seen in a while, kudos to all the actors involved because they killed it! Music was also incredible, definitely going to be listening to a good chunk of these songs on repeat. And the overall map was absolutely gorgeous, full marks there. Loved the vibe of this small rural british town, made me wanna go and live there. And when it rains during the later parts of the game was chef's kiss. So good.
This is an interesting one because I would absolutely LOVE to play it one or two more times to try and pick up on things I missed, but the walk speed and light guidance thing was confusing enough that I'm not sure if I wanna deal with it again just yet. I'll probably come back to it in a month or two.

Naturally a very divisive game due to it being a walking simulator. Personally I thought it was a cool one time experience, made even better by how much the first town reminds me of Hot Fuzz. The game looks stunning and the visual storytelling created a neat little journey.

That said the games biggest problem is the walking speed. They took the walking simulator aspect a little too seriously and made the speed realistic which makes the game so much longer than it needs to be. It’s a 2 hour game that takes around 4 hours. Add on top of that the multiple playthroughs and tedious things you need to do for the platinum and it drags down this experience heavily.

Simulátory chůze to nemají lehké. Z principu jsou vylidněné, pomalé a musí stavět na vypjaté atmosféře "co se tady stalo", imerzi a příběhu, který je zpravidla vyprávěn nepřímo skrze různé deníky, dopisy, audiozáznamy apod. Stojí a padají na tom, zda si onu fasádu tenze udrží, zda se iluze Potěmkinovy vesnice nerozsype a zda děj chytne za srdce či je natolik tajemný, že touha po poznání to utáhne. To vše je důvod, proč většinou jde o kratší intenzivní zážitky. Protože čím delší a rozsáhlejší to je, tím větší je riziko, že se jeden z těch stavebních kamenů rozpadne a celé se to sesune k zemi. A pokud to nastane, tak to není čím zachránit, protože jiné herní/interaktivní prvky se v tomto žánru z logiky věci nenosí. Je asi jasné, že to skutečně není žánr pro všechny.

Tento titul má tu smůlu, že byť dělá vše správně, tak ho prokouknete v podstatě záhy. Čímž se především druhá polovina chtě nechtě stává pouhým plahočením se za něčím, co již dávno víte. Ano, to plahočení se po anglickém venkově osmdesátých let je v nádherně realizovaném prostředí, které působí reálně a uvěřitelně a byla by bývala radost ho prozkoumávat a poznávat. Ano, to plahočení doprovází jeden z nejikoničtějších videoherních soundtracků vůbec. Ano, je to citlivě odvyprávěno a umně se balancuje na tenké hraně emocí, spirituálna, sci-fi a prostých mezilidských vztahů. Jenže je to podryto tím, že jakmile prokouknete "o co jde a k čemu to směřuje" (což není problém odhalit v úvodní lokaci), tak se rozpadne ona pro žánr tolik stěžejní atmosféra, pocit tajemna a postupného odhalování. Rázem nemáte pocit ponoření a imerze, ale držení šipky/páčky a neustálého přání, proč, i když jde o simulátor chůze, je ta chůze tak proklatě pomalá.

Pokud máte tento svébytný žánr rádi, tak není důvod se tomu vyhýbat. Jde o solidního zástupce, který však nic nového nepřináší a ničím nevyčnívá. Tedy až na fenomenální soundtrack, který je ve výsledku lepší (a dlouhodobější) investicí než samotná hra.