Dear Esther

The gameplay in Dear Esther is minimal, with the only task being to explore an uninhabited Hebridean island, listening to an anonymous man read a series of letter fragments to his deceased wife, Esther. As the player reaches new locations on the island, the game plays a new letter fragment relating to that area. Different audio fragments are revealed in each playthrough of the game, presenting a slightly different narrative each time. Several other characters are referred to by the narrator: a man named Donnelly, who charted the island in the past; Paul, who is suggested to be the drunk driver in the accident in which Esther died; and a shepherd named Jakobson who lived on the island in the 18th century.

As the player explores the island, they find the derelict remains of buildings, a shipwreck, and a cave system whose walls are adorned with images resembling chemical diagrams, circuit diagrams, neurons and bacteria. At various points, a figure is seen walking away from the player in the distance, but disappears before they can be reached. As the game progresses, the identities of the characters become more blurred and the player is made to draw their own conclusions of the story.

The original rendition of Dear Esther was one of several Source Engine mods developed by The Chinese Room while the studio was still a research project at the University of Portsmouth. The project was funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Dan Pinchbeck, a professor and lecturer at the university. The story and script were composed by Pinchbeck, who cited the works of William S. Burroughs as influential in the writing: "... looking at the way William Burroughs worked structurally was a big influence, but also I was really interested in moving towards a quite image-heavy, symbolic, poetic use of language rather than the normal descriptive tone we find in games".

Independent games artist Robert Briscoe began work on completely redeveloping Dear Esther in 2009, with the full support of Pinchbeck. Briscoe and The Chinese Room worked in parallel on the game's remake, with much of the level design completed solely by Briscoe based on concept art done by Ben Andrews. In redesigning the island's landscape, Briscoe aimed to eliminate the confusion caused by the original game's layout, and to fill out the environment with "richer, visually interesting" features to improve on the barren landscape of the original mod. In March 2011, while the game was still in development, The Chinese Room lost the financial backing of the University it had relied on.

The original free release of Dear Esther was selected for the Animation Exhibition at the 2008 Prix Ars Electronica and made Mod DB's top 100 mods of 2008. In 2009, the game won the award for Best World/Story at the IndieCade Independent Game awards.

Reviewing the game for Honest Gamers in 2009, Lewis Denby praised the game's original tone, saying that the game "taps into an emotion that few games dare to approach: unhappiness" and stated that Curry's soundtrack created "an impressively ethereal atmosphere". Despite commendations for its premise and story, the original mod release received complaints of poor level design and numerous glitches or bugs in moving about the terrain.