The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Indie Adventure Game Announced for PS4 & PC

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was one of the big Indie Games highlighted at Sony’s PS4 Gamescom 2014 Press Conference, it had previously been in development for PC. It is being developed by The Astronauts, an indie studio formed by ex-People Can Fly personal (Painkiller, BulletStorm, Fortnite).

Check out the debut Gamescom 2014 PS4 trailer for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

If you pre-order The Vanishing of Ethan Carter before its September 25th release, you can net The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Special Edition, which includes a number of digital extras including the full original soundtrack in lossless FLAC & High-Quality MP3, 4 exclusive HD Wallpapers, a Red Creek Valley Digital Map, a Making of PDF Album showing screenshots of the game compared with their real-life photography counterparts & a digital poster. All for $20.

Here’s The Vanishing of Ethan Carter image gallery.
Click on any of these image thumbnails to see the full-size screenshots:


The Vanishing of Ethan Carter takes the adventure game concept into new areas of focus on mystery, by allowing Ethan to not only examine objects, but get physical questions as you visibly see Ethan cycle through the various possibilities related to an object you are viewing in the environment.

Because of this, the game is less about puzzle solving, and more about contemplation. Additionally, once an object is viewed, Ethan can figure out what object he needs to find related to it, essentially the answer to the puzzle. He will then get a glimpse of where that item is in the huge, open-ended world (that can be completely explored from the beginning of the game).

In most Adventure Games, you have to comb through the environment, often frustratingly and with no real clues as to what you are looking for. In Ethan Carter, you get a glimpse of the item you are seeking and the immediate area surrounding it. Therefore, the focus of the puzzle solving remains on observation, observing the object, what the area around it looks like, and deducing where the item could be based on those clues.

It’s a really cool mechanic. You can see more on the gameplay of this absolutely drop-dead gorgeous game, in this video.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Synopsis

You play the game as Paul Prospero, an occult-minded detective who receives a disturbing letter from Ethan Carter. Realizing the boy is in grave danger, Paul arrives at Ethan’s home of Red Creek Valley, where things turn out to be even worse than he imagined. Ethan has vanished in the wake of a brutal murder, which Paul quickly discerns might not be the only local murder worth looking into.

Inspired by the weird fiction (and other tales of the macabre) from the early twentieth century, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter aims to significantly evolve immersive storytelling in games. While it features a private detective and quite a few mental challenges, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is not an especially puzzle-ridden game. Our focus is on atmosphere, mood, and the essential humanity of our characters.

Still, the discoveries won’t happen on their own, or without your help. Using both Paul’s supernatural skill of being able to communicate with the dead, and your own powers of observation, you will discover the mystery behind a trail of corpses, the roots of a dark ancient force lurking in Red Creek Valley, and the fate of a missing boy.

Key Features:

• EXPLORE
And interact with the beautiful yet ominous world of Red Creek Valley, which was created with the use of revolutionary photogrammetry technology that allows for nearly photorealistic environments.

• COMMUNICATE
With the dead and see how they died in order to gather clues that help you piece together the truth behind Ethan’s disappearance — and the fate of his family.

• EXPERIENCE
In non-linear fashion, a story that combines the pleasures of pulp, private eye, and horror fiction, all of it inspired by writers such as Raymond Chandler, Algernon Blackwood, Stefan Grabinski, and H. P. Lovecraft.

• CONDUCT
The investigation on your own terms and at your own pace. The game contains no combat of any kind, and a few scary bits in the game are less about terror and more about clammy unease.

I absolutely love, love, love this kind of game. To me horror is more about mood and, as they say, “unease”, than it is about gore and death. I love the focus on that with Ethan Carter, we need more games that eschew combat entirely and focus instead on storytelling and aesthetics to immerse you in the experience.

I’m definitely looking forward to this!

What do you think about The Vanishing of Ethan Carter? Are you excited for it?