Sights & Sounds
- A very scenic game that invites you to stroll through the woods and take your time. The lush trees, swaying grass, and babbling brooks all serve as a direct counterpoint to all the game's dark themes
- The sound design also plays into the pretty-scenery-with-horibble-backstory dynamic. It's a little unsettling to experience a flashback featuring someone's brutal demise only to pop back to bright sunlight and twittering birds
- The voice acting is well done and competently performed
- The music was nice as well, but nothing I'm going to add to a playlist. Hope you enjoy somber piano tracks
Story & Vibes
- The central thrust of the game is an investigation of the disappearance of a little boy (hope you inferred that from the title), so I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise by dropping plot points. I will say that it's a fairly intriguing supernatural mystery that'll show you the skeleton of the plot early on, but fills it in piece by piece in a way that keeps you guessing
- Given the mysterious air, there's a certain sense of foreboding that permeates the game. You know for a fact that something is wrong, but you don't know exactly what until the end
- Beyond that, the game can feel a little bit "sterile". There's no danger or imminent threat (outside of a single location). It's not that I was looking for a survival horror experience, but a thrill or two wouldn't hurt. You mostly just walk around and ponder a crime for a few hours
Playability & Replayability
- It's a walking simulator in the same vein as What Remains of Edith Finch or Call of the Sea. You poke around a large wooded area looking for clues, solving puzzles, and talking to yourself
- Occasionally, you'll come across some ghostly forms that require you to determine the sequence of events that unfolded in that setting. You'll have to comb the environment for clues and deduce the proper order to see the cutscene play out and progress. Some of the more obscure puzzles will require trial and error or filling in the blanks
- Some of the non-ghost puzzles are tricky, too. One involves a pair of houses with mismatched layouts that requires some good spacial memory and recall to complete successfully. I wound up just scribbling a rough layout on a piece of paper to make it easier
Overall Impressions & Performance
- I normally like investigation games with a good mystery, so The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was always a game I was going to like. That said, I was a little disappointed by the game's protagonist. I'm all in favor of the world-weary, pensive gumshoe archetype, but it's important to add at least a little flair. The protag in this game was incredibly bland and emotionally flat despite his ties to the game's story. If a character is going to be VA'ed, they should have something resembling a personality
- The game ran well on Steam Deck, or at least the Redux version did. I did experience occasional stuttering, though
Final Verdict
- 7/10. It features a really good mystery and a nice set of puzzles, but the milquetoast main character and lack of danger take some shine off an otherwise worthwhile game
- A very scenic game that invites you to stroll through the woods and take your time. The lush trees, swaying grass, and babbling brooks all serve as a direct counterpoint to all the game's dark themes
- The sound design also plays into the pretty-scenery-with-horibble-backstory dynamic. It's a little unsettling to experience a flashback featuring someone's brutal demise only to pop back to bright sunlight and twittering birds
- The voice acting is well done and competently performed
- The music was nice as well, but nothing I'm going to add to a playlist. Hope you enjoy somber piano tracks
Story & Vibes
- The central thrust of the game is an investigation of the disappearance of a little boy (hope you inferred that from the title), so I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise by dropping plot points. I will say that it's a fairly intriguing supernatural mystery that'll show you the skeleton of the plot early on, but fills it in piece by piece in a way that keeps you guessing
- Given the mysterious air, there's a certain sense of foreboding that permeates the game. You know for a fact that something is wrong, but you don't know exactly what until the end
- Beyond that, the game can feel a little bit "sterile". There's no danger or imminent threat (outside of a single location). It's not that I was looking for a survival horror experience, but a thrill or two wouldn't hurt. You mostly just walk around and ponder a crime for a few hours
Playability & Replayability
- It's a walking simulator in the same vein as What Remains of Edith Finch or Call of the Sea. You poke around a large wooded area looking for clues, solving puzzles, and talking to yourself
- Occasionally, you'll come across some ghostly forms that require you to determine the sequence of events that unfolded in that setting. You'll have to comb the environment for clues and deduce the proper order to see the cutscene play out and progress. Some of the more obscure puzzles will require trial and error or filling in the blanks
- Some of the non-ghost puzzles are tricky, too. One involves a pair of houses with mismatched layouts that requires some good spacial memory and recall to complete successfully. I wound up just scribbling a rough layout on a piece of paper to make it easier
Overall Impressions & Performance
- I normally like investigation games with a good mystery, so The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was always a game I was going to like. That said, I was a little disappointed by the game's protagonist. I'm all in favor of the world-weary, pensive gumshoe archetype, but it's important to add at least a little flair. The protag in this game was incredibly bland and emotionally flat despite his ties to the game's story. If a character is going to be VA'ed, they should have something resembling a personality
- The game ran well on Steam Deck, or at least the Redux version did. I did experience occasional stuttering, though
Final Verdict
- 7/10. It features a really good mystery and a nice set of puzzles, but the milquetoast main character and lack of danger take some shine off an otherwise worthwhile game