Q. Will Dear Esther be available for the Mac OS or other platforms?
A. Initially Dear Esther will be a PC release due to a lack of funds to support anything more at this point. However, if it goes really well, and we generate enough income to be able to port to other platforms, it’s certainly something we’d love to do.
Q. What system requirements are needed to play Dear Esther smoothly?
A. Rob: “Although it’s still too early to give a solid answer on this just yet, I can tell you that the requirements will be very reasonable. At the moment my benchmark is to run it at 30fps on my humble 2-year-old, duel-core laptop at 1900×1080, and over 100fps on my desktop machine, both at max settings. I’m hoping this will allow most mid range machines to run it flawlessly. I can give some minimum requirements though, and that is you will need at least a DX9 card capable of SM3.0.”
Q. Which languages will be available for the subtitles?
A. This is something we will announce formally in March. We had lots of offers as a mod (about 12 languages) but it’s only fair to let those people decide whether or not they still want to contribute to an indie. We have confirmations on French, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Russian and Ukrainian so far.
Q. How much will Dear Esther Cost when it is released?
A. Although we can’t really talk figures at this point, we can say that it will be very affordable – we’re certainly not talking about a full-price $50 game!
Q. Which authors (novels, movies) inspired the script of Dear Esther?
A. Dan: “To be honest, most of my inspiration came from games. I did a doctorate in FPS games and this led to the questions that inspired Esther. But I guess in terms of authors I most identify with: Boris & Arkady Strugatsky, William Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood, Andrew Greig (if you haven’t read “That Summer” you haven’t lived), J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Sebastian Faulks (particularly Human Traces)… I love Soviet-era Russian sci-fi too: Kirill Bulychev and Dmitri Bilenkin are fantastic. Although they haven’t made it into our games yet, I’m a massive fan of good steampunkers too: G. W. Dahlquist and Stephen Hunt are superstars and I want to make a full-on Victoriana steampunk shooter before I die.”
Q. I want to convince friends to try Dear Esther in a few words, how can I describe it at best?
A. Dear Esther is a poetic ghost story told using game technologies. You explore a deserted island, uncovering a tale of love, loss, grief and redemption, delivered through stunning voice-over and soundtrack and set against one of the most beautiful environments yet created in a game. -How’s that sound?
Q. Will there be an official trailer to present the game to those who know nothing about Dear Esther?
A. Yes, when the game is closer to release, that is the plan.