It’s been a very busy time since Dear Esther launched on 14th February, and we wanted to make a quick post and let you all know what’s been happening since.
Firstly, you may have seen the news that we repaid Indie Fund within 6 hours of launch, as the game has been successful far beyond our expectations. This is great, as it shows that there’s a real audience for this type of work, and responses have been amazing. Not only have we received amazingly positive reviews, but the response from fans has been outstanding. Within one week of launch, we sold over 50,000 copies of the game, which is an extraordinary amount for an indie release.
A few key things we should let you know about:
- Translation packs. We are hard at work getting both translated subtitle patches and instructions for adding new subtitle translations to the game ready for release, hopefully sometime next week.
- Patches. We’ve been tracking tweak and patch requirements and these will be added to Steam as they are fixed. You should be seeing some updates happening from your Steam accounts.
- FLAC OST – Lots of people have asked for non-Amazon/iTunes versions of the OST. We’re working at the moment on making both the game and the OST available from this site, which means we’ll be able to offer that soon.
- Steam forums are now up! Lots of very cool discussions going on over there, so check it out.
- Rob, Jess and I will all be at GDC from next week. There’s two Dear Esther presentations going on. On Thursday at 12.45, Rob will be talking about “The Art of Dear Esther – Building an Environment to Tell a Story” and also on Thursday, I’ll be delivering “Dear Esther: making an indie success out of an experimental mod”, which will focus on the experience design of the game. We’ll also be showing in the indie pavilion, and we’re up for the IGF awards on Wednesday night. Hope to meet some of you there!
Hello,
What is the status of Polish translation of Dear Esther? I am a translator myself so I could be interested in helping with that.
Regards,
Simplex
Great news, exciting times indeed.
It’s good to see you’re still working on it. I’m looking forward to Polish translation, so I’d be able to understand more of Dear Esther’s story. So far I’ve finished it only once and I’m waiting for Polish translation to give it a try few more times. Even I don’t understand all of English subtitles, I really enjoyed the game. It’s so relaxing and mysterious at the same time.
Thank you for Dear Esther.
First of, congratulations for your success, Dear Esther is an interesting and beautiful experience in my opinion.
“FLAC OST – Lots of people have asked for non-Amazon/iTunes versions of the OST. We’re working at the moment on making both the game and the OST available from this site, which means we’ll be able to offer that soon.”
Thanks a lot, I was waiting for a declaration on a release outside of Steam and I’m really glad it’s happening. I understand it will be DRM-free, isn’t it?
You might want to add the wikia I created for it so that people can help me building it…
http://dearesther.wikia.com/wiki/Dear_Esther_Wiki
I’m working hard to make it a nice environment and I also am creating all the basic templates so that people can easily create pages
I played and liked Trauma and this sounds like the same type of game, perhaps not in how it’s played, but in the kind of experience it’s supposed to provide, in the way it is a game that is not a game. If it comes out for Linux I’ll almost definitely buy it, especially if it comes in a Humble Bundle. I might even buy it if it remains Windows-only, but the chances are small. I do think I will have to wait until I buy a new computer.
This sounds like a game that might even be able to interest my father. He did try and enjoy World of Goo, but stopped playing after a short while. If it’s less a game and more of an atmospheric story he might not be so reluctant.
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