Translated by
Microsoft from Deutsch
Microsoft from Deutsch
Conceptually brilliant, committed to his Subject with every Fibre, Kleinod had Been interested in me for a little longer, primarily due to the rare Premise. And now in The Bundle was finally the Opportunity to finally take Ether One with you spontaneously. And although I certainly expected an interesting Game, Ether One turned out to be one of the bigger surprises of late in the 12 hours spent with it.
For the relatively minor Press it got in my Knowledge, it's a remarkably well-designed Game.
What is particularly striking is the harmonious Interlocking of Theme, narrative and playful Part.
This is all the more striking because Ether One moves largely in a Genre where, notoriously often, this works rather suboptimally. This Circumstance probably only catches your Eye if you try to explore and solve everything that exists in the Game. Because arguably the most time-consuming Part of the Game, which is ultimately a Point & Click adventure From an ego perspective, is an optional one that just makes more Information accessible.
But Presenting Ether One, which without this optional Part is a typical ambient explorer somewhere between Eidolon and Dear Esther, based only on the ' Light ' part, would be a punishing Misrepresentation. The Point & Click Part forces a closer Examination of the World, research and Comprehensions, in Short: To Open up the Game world.
And already here shows the remarkable conceptual unity, because the Activity of the Player within these Puzzle Passages fully harmonizes with the overarching Story, which allows the Player as a "Restorer" in the tangled memories of one. Dementia sends Sick person to identify Patterns, merge Events, track Thought streams and locate the Node Whose Solution could make a Part of his own Person available to the Patient.
Searching for Details, Scouring the Houses, Cupboards, Letters and Notes in the Manifestation of those Memories, the Mining Tartup Pinwheel, fits seamlessly into the Motif of painstaking therapeutic Search. The All-encompassing loneliness, the fragmentary Information and The snippets of narrative harmonize in a subtle but logical way with the all-too-penettive theme of Dementia.
Even the sometimes erratic Patterns of P & C puzzles, which are mostly challenging, partly, as so often, frustratingly obscure, fit into the Motif Of tracking erratic Thought streams. While it may be negative In some other such adventure if you Visibly start tracking the ideas Of the Developers instead of thinking in The World, this Break in Ether One almost doesn't exist at all. To empathize with the erratic Traces of another Person's sometimes difficult to understand thoughts is exactly what you do in the Fiction of this Game.
So Ether One contextualizes typical Problems of P & C Adventures within Fiction and uses them to make the tangled Lines of a Dementia-sick mind palpable, rather than, like so many genre colleagues, referring to 4th Wall humour or plain Ignorance Withdraw.
All Aspects of Ether One's Gaming Experience are thus based on the History of memories of the Ill-fated, ill-fated, Village of Pinwheel and its Inhabitants, and the patient's slow, setback, uncertain path to Clarity Focused; And act together into an emotional, obviously heartfelt, Narrative about the strange World of Memories and the Pain and Loneliness of unstoppable Oblivion, which, despite or precisely because of the blind Dots and Gaps in their best Moments is really moving.