I’m not buying it, not enough gameplay. I would have donated if it was free with a donate button.
You want spoilers? Okay, here’s the very general, non-spoily version:
[color=black]You are exploring an island alone. The readings you hear are readings from the journal of a dead man, narrated in his voice, which you have along with you. Each one begins, “Dear Esther…” (well… nearly all of them). The man talks at length about Donnelly, an explorer who came to the shores of the island years before, and Jakobson, a shepherd who at one point lived on the island. It’s unclear what the significance of the island itself is. By the end of the game, you end up following the same path across the island that the man in the journal did, and the entries in the journal give you a very general view of the part of the story that’s rooted firmly in reality.
And here’s the super-spoily version:
[color=black]Esther Donnelly was the man in the journal’s wife. She was killed in a car crash on the M-5 by a drunk driver named Paul Jakobson. This next bit is my own personal interpretation, as a lot of the significance of the island and the narration is left intentionally ambiguous. In his grief, the Donnelly of the journal discovered Donnelly the explorer’s account of the island, and drew heavily on the parallels the island’s history held with the catastrophe that had killed his wife. He travelled to the island himself, already half-mad with grief, and began decorating it as a tribute to his Esther. He took to heart the stories of a hermit who had lived in the caves beneath the island, and the mystical connotations the caverns had, and attempted to descend the cliffs to the caves himself, but fell and broke his femur on the way down. He had brought with him a first aid kit, and dosed himself heavily on painkillers to keep himself going. Stricken with despair and barely lucid with all the drugs running through his system, he emerged from the other side of the caves and began climbing. First, though, he tore all of the pages from his journal - all of the letters he wrote to Esther after her death - and folded them into paper boats. He folded her ashes into the creases, and set the boats to sea. He then climbed this new side of the island, decorating as he went, until he reached the aerial at the island’s highest point. He flung himself from the cliff and plunged to the island below, rejoining Esther in death. Your identity remains ambiguous, but I’ve figured that either your identity is not important - you’re just a nameless non-entity playing witness to all that had happened - or you’re Donnelly, replaying the events of his stay on the island as he plummets to his death.
Thanks so much! No I have a much better idea of what happened.
The romantic word-play sorta through me off; thanks for clarifying. ^^
This looks very Myst-like…
Pretend to donate $9.99
work has a credit card for work related purchases. i hope you work in a book store. cause then its legit.