Ether One

Ether One is a first-person adventure game, with a focus on exploration. The player controls a "Restorer", an individual with the ability to project himself into the mind of someone suffering from mental illness, in the hopes of restoring their memories. Gradually, the player makes sense of the patient's chronology and reassembles the timeline of events, aided by mysterious artifacts that appear in the various memory simulations. After the game's premise is introduced, access to the harbour-side town of Pinwheel, the game's central location, is allowed to the player.

The town features many buildings that the player is encouraged to explore in order to retrieve memories. Other explorable locations throughout the game include industrial mines and factories. The player's primary objective is to collect red bows tied to objects. Players can explore at their own pace, although to actually progress through the game, ten red ribbons must be located in each location.

Ether One begins with an introduction to the Restorer, an employee at a futuristic memory-retrieval company known as the Ether Institute of Telepathic Medicine. The Restorer’s mission is to delve into the mind of Jean Thompson, a 69-year-old woman diagnosed with dementia, to recover her lost memories. The Institute has the capability to generate 3D simulations of damaged memories, and the Restorer must reconstruct them using the fragments that remain. The project is led by Dr.

Phyllis Edmunds, who guides the Restorer through the memories. She warns that the project is on the verge of losing its funding and that Jean’s case will either secure or endanger the future of the Institute.

Ether One was developed by a core team of six at White Paper Games, a studio based in Manchester. This was the studio's debut game. Several team members met at university and began collaborating on ideas that led to Ether One's conception in 2011; the studio was officially formed in 2012. The game was influenced by the studio's desire to create "rich, narrative experiences" and game designer Pete Bottomley's goal to craft a story in which he could personally invest.

In the planning stages, the team prototyped "50 or 60" puzzles, discarding those that could not be integrated engagingly into the level design. The game also underwent numerous conceptual changes, starting as an action platformer before the team shifted focus to exploration. The narrative also evolved through several iterations, including a more science fiction-themed version.

Ether One received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to the review aggregator website Metacritic, with an average score of 82/100 for the PC version and 75/100 for the PlayStation 4 version. Reviewers frequently praised the game's atmosphere and immersive experience. Sam Prell of Joystiq highlighted the haunting quality of the environments, and favourably compared the game's narrative structure to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Kotaku noted that Ether One evoked the feel of a '90s adventure game. Richard Cobbett of IGN admired how the game crafted a "hauntingly cryptic atmosphere", gradually revealing the town of Pinwheel for exploration.

The narrative, however, divided critics. Cobbett felt that the story's fragmented and confusing delivery suited the central theme of dementia and its unfolding revelations. Phil Goins of Geeks Under Grace also noted the game's occasional detachment, attributing this to its cumbersome puzzle-solving mechanics. Angus Morrison of PC Gamer described the narrative as a "tragic saga of dementia, death, and industrial decline" that players discover rather than are told.