Adrian Chmielarz, a former creative director at People Can Fly, is now heading up The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as a game designer. Bullets are traded in for a ‘deeper immersion’.
It’s inspired by ”weird fiction,” which is a sort of ‘pulp and surreal’ mix, but ”there’s an explanation for everything” that happens in the game. It’s not going to ‘just because’ us.
”We were inspired by other things too, though, and again you’re right, as King is among these inspirations. I consider him mostly a weird fiction writer anyway. Other things worth mentioning is the comic book series “Locke & Key” or games like “Amnesia”,” Adrian Chmielarz told Worlds Factory in an interview.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter revolves around a detective with paranormal abilities investigating the disappearance of a young boy, Ethan Carter, who happened to write him a letter claiming his life was in danger in the fictional Red Creek Valley. It’s certainly a break from People Can Fly’s catalogue of bullet shooters.
”Designing a game that does not rely on a core gameplay loop like shooting is very, very hard. Templates have the tendency to kill immersion, and without a template you have to almost design multiple games in one. But I think the end result is worth it, and I certainly hope we will see more and more of this kind of games in the next few years.”
Chmielarz continued: ”Games that merge story-telling and gameplay into one cohesive experience. We’ve already seen great examples, from Portal to Journey, so I am fairly optimistic for the future.”
Check out the full interview between Adrian Chmielarz and Worlds Factory for more.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter releases on PC September 25th, and on PlayStation 4 in 2015. A nice lengthy gameplay walkthrough with commentary is available below to give you a better idea of this open world detective game.
