Dear Esther wins Best World/Story at IndieCade 2009 news

Dear Esther

Half-Life 2 mod | Released Jun 19, 2008

A deserted island... a lost man... memories of a fatal crash... a book written by a dying explorer. Dear Esther is a ghost story told using first-person gaming technologies. Rather than traditional gameplay, the focus here is on exploration, uncovering the mystery of the island, of who you are and why you are here. Fragments of story are randomly triggered by moving around the environments, making every telling unique. Features a stunning, specially commissioned soundtrack. Forget the normal rules of play; if nothing seems real here, it's because it may just be all a delusion. What is the significance of the aerial - What happened on the motorway - is the island real or imagined - who is Esther and why has she chosen to summon you here? The answers are out there, on the lost beach and the tunnels under the island. Or then again, they may just not be, after all...

Report article Dear Esther wins Best World/Story at IndieCade 2009

The cult Half Life 2 mod picked up the 2009 IndieCade International Independent Game award for Best Story/World at the ceremony in LA last night.

Posted by chineseroom on Oct 3rd, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Writer/producer Dan Pinchbeck and composer/audio designer Jessica Curry from the mod development team thechineseroom picked up the award for Best Story/World for the 2009 IndieCade awards at Sony Pictures in LA last night.

IndieCade, described by the LA Times as gaming's Sundance Festival, is one of the most prestigious independent gaming events in the world, and showcased some of the most innovative new games being made today. Pinchbeck said "The quality of the finalists was just amazing - there are some really fantastic games here and we can't believe Dear Esther was selected to win. The competition was really fierce, and so many other games could have walked away with the award and we'd have been happy for them to have taken it."

Dear Esther was the only mod selected as a finalist for the awards, which range from mixed-reality to iPhone apps. A full list of the finalists can be found at www.indiecade.com