Dear Esther Releases Today
The indie remake of the cult mod Dear Esther releases today for PC and will be available on Steam.
Dear Esther started as a mod for Half Life 2, an interactive ghost story with randomly generated audio telling a tale, created by Dan Pinchbeck and with a soundtrack by Jessica Curry.
The visual overhaul comes from professional game artist, Robert Briscoe., and the remake of Dear Esther has been supported by the Indie Fund, an investment model which aims to support the growth of gaming and indie developers.
Dear Esther – First Trailer
Dear Esther is the reimagining of an interactive ghost-story by the same name, originally created using the Source engine and released as a mod for Half Life 2, by Dan Pinchbeck and The Chinese Room, a development research project at the University of Portsmouth, UK.
With an overhaul of the graphics and level design from Robert Briscoe, a professional game artist, the project became so much more than a simple mod, and then with the support of Valve the team were granted a license to turn Dear Esther into a completely independent release. The Indie Fund have also helped by providing investment funding for the project.
The first trailer for the game shows off some of the beautiful environments on the island:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7VJ4lP-05A]
Dear Esther is planned for release on Steam on the 14th Feb 2012.
Q.U.B.E. goes live on Steam!
First-person puzzle game Q.U.B.E. (Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion), by Toxic Games, is now live on Steam!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABxhj0ExA0]
Players begin the game by being dropped into an all-white room, and with little instruction, they must find and use coloured blocks to solve the puzzle and discover the way out of each level. Q.U.B.E. has drawn comparisons with Portal.. but you can see for yourself by trying out the demo.
Toxic Games is a UK-based independent games developer; Q.U.B.E. started out as a part of the developers’ student project in 2009.
Q.U.B.E. is also the first Indie Fund game to be released! Indie Fund is an investment fund backed by a team of successful indie developers, providing the investment new indies need to help cover ongoing costs and get their game finished. Other games being backed are Steph Thirion’s Faraway, Robert Briscoe‘s re-imagination of Dan Pinchbeck‘s Dear Esther, and Pocketwatch Games‘ MONACO.