Tag: everybody’s gone to the rapture

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What’s going on over at The Chinese Room?

A lot is going on at The Chinese Room at the moment. Perhaps not as much as before Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was released, or necessarily more than any other studio out there, but what is going on is being documented in surprisingly personal and honest blogs. This is going to start off grim and then slowly get less grim, so stick with it. We begin with the studio’s co-founder Jessica Curry who had a “horribly hard post to write.” In short, she’s leaving (sort of), but will continue to compose music for the studio’s games.  “I was so…
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This week’s Playlist pick finds beauty in the end of the world

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (PS4)  BY The Chinese Room and SCE Sonta Monica Studio The reclaiming of the term “walking simulator” is a great example of a community turning something derogatory into something positive. The label, given to games that focus on environmental storytelling like Dear Esther, was meant to deride interactive experiences that lack high scores and point systems. Walking is boring, the joke assumes, and thus any game that merely simulates this mundane activity is not worth anyone’s time. Creators like…
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Breaking: Walking simulator features a "run" button

We were keen on Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, the Chinese Room’s spiritual successor to Dear Esther and a furious, beautiful audio-visual experience. The game is literate, subtle, and adult, all qualities missing from a lot of the games we come across, even those that aspire to such descriptors. We (by which I mean I) also called it “the Gran Turismo of walking simulators,” in that it obstinately keeps the player moving at a fixed clip through a fairly sprawling world. While I enjoyed this restraint, many other critics thought it sullied the entire experience.  In a blog post, Chinese Room creative director…
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Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’s launch trailer reveals nothing

The launch trailer for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, an exploration game that juxtaposes the mundanity of human lives with the apocalypse, has been released. While it’s clear the game focuses on the few left behind after most other people have gone missing, the cause of the tragedy is unclear. perhaps this was not god but humans trying to play god The video juxtaposes religious and secular overtones. It begins with a recording of an astrophysicist declaring, “It’s over. I’m the only one left,” before a moving light draws our attention to the places there should be people. There’s been…