Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

People who say "there is no sprint button" are wrong and have been wrong for 10 years. There IS a run button, but you build up speed gradually over 3-6 seconds, sprint only functions outdoors and outside of scene transitions. The game is meant to be leisurely explored and experienced, not rushed through. Turn the TikTok brain off and let yourself get lost. The map looks bigger than it is, it takes 12 minutes to go from top to bottom/vice versa with sprinting.

Hauntingly beautiful game set in an English small town where the player arrives 37 minutes after the world we know it has ended and works to unravel the mystery of the Rapture.

IT'S A WALKING SIMULATOR! You don't get to do anything as a player. You just walk around and find out things. You don't fight, you don't jump or run. Just walk. And walk. Huge map. If you have the time and patience, you walk around more than necessary to progress the game. If you are in a hurry (lol) you take one specific route, indicated to you by the game. It's a heartbreaking story and it has great graphics. Very beautiful game. Boring if you're not the walking simulator kind of gamer, but beautiful.

On roads where only footsteps echo, it feels like eavesdropping on other people's lives. Without any flashy events, the story still burrows into the heart, and when the voices of the empty village finally come together, it feels less like playing a game and more like visiting a place.

An unapologetic walking simulator where you explore the disjointed echoes of the lives of residents in a small UK village (and the surrounding area) following an event that occurred in June 1984. The Chinese Room has experimented with ambigious storytelling and unreliable narrators since their original Half-Life 2 mods (including "Dear Esther," later released as a standalone title) and it feels like they've really hit their stride here.

This game is not for everyone, and there are no meaningful gameplay mechanics beyond specific trigger points for certain memories (which you must unlock using a "sweet spot" mechanic similar to lockpicking in other titles). You do not interact with anyone and exist only as an observer. But I did rather enjoy it and appreciated what it attempted to do. If the concept of a radio drama in a videogame strikes you with some interest, I'd recommend picking it up on sale - I regret that there isn't really enough content here to warrant a purchase at full price, though most of what is here is beautiful and well done. Acting and writing are largely very good, the visuals are stunning (the Lakeside campsite is hauntingly gorgeous in particular), and the music is fantastic. There are many examples of atmospheric storytelling and it's clear that the game was crafted with great care (I noticed reuse of assets in the different pubs but nothing major).

I experienced lengthly loads, one instance of audio skipping and some minor framerate hits but nothing game breaking. I would recommend this game solely on the basis of how different an experience it is from most titles, and the strength of the story it largely succeeds in telling (though again, certain details remain intentionally vague and ambigious as The Chinese Room is historically inclined towards).

7/10.

One of the most moving and underrated games I've ever played. Unfortunately, it has a lot of negative reviews, and most of the criticism completely misses the mark because people judge it based purely on personal bias. They leave bad reviews simply because it's not their type of game, rather than judging whether it actually delivers what it promises. It's like playing a horror game, getting jumpscared, and then giving it a bad review just because of that.
Many reviews point out the minimal environmental interaction and the slow walking pace as downsides, but those are actually some of the best things about the game. The atmosphere of the English village is flawless, the characters are incredible, and the soundtrack is an absolute masterpiece that elevates every single moment of the gameplay. The emotional story unfolds like a puzzle, rewarding you the more you explore and piece everything together. The slow pace really immerses you; it encourages you to pay attention to every detail and absorb every bit of information as you move from point A to point B. For the right audience, it's one of the best games in the genre.
Just some extra things: the game is a bit laggy at the beginning, but it's mostly limited to the first chapter, and there are some guides on Steam explaining how to fix it. And if you really want to speed things up a bit, there is actually a run mechanic, but it works a little differently, you have to hold down the Shift for a few seconds before you actually start sprinting.

Its really hard to know what to say about his one. Not because it's dull or anything (although if you're after action, may I suggest Doom instead?) but more because I don't have the right words to enunciate how this game makes me feel. In case you haven't already guessed, this is a positive thing.

The people who made this game have successfully managed to capture the feel of a lazy English village at the end of a crisis. There's no one around, so what happened?

As you walk around a frankly gorgeous representation of a town in Shropshire UK, the plot unravels with flashbacks and people's memories telling a story without any actual people about. You'll see what I mean when you play it. It's when you start finding bathroom floors covered with blood, and bins filled with blood stained tissues that you realise something went badly wrong here. The blood is used sparingly however. This is not a gore fest. It's a story about normal people reacting to the end of the world.

The graphics here are sublime. Every detail, light effect (The sky in the final bits and the bit in the church!) and asset have been constructed with precision and love. This game has had thought and care poured into it at every point. It's set in the 80's and you can really feel the effort that went into constructing appropriate looking vehicles, TVs, Computers, heck, even the gas fire in one house was near identical to the one I had in my childhood home. Walking around the village the first time, I was actually gobsmacked.

That's not to say anything about the sound. Ringing phones and whispering voices. Birds and insects sing quietly. Water gurgles. Signs creak and the "events" are an absolute audio pleasure, inciting both wonder and fear in equal measure. Then there's the voice acting. Incredible. Each character is bought to life by some absolutely stellar writing and performances. by the end of the game there are people you'll love and people you'll hate and you never know what any of them look like.

Then there's the music. I don't know how they wrote the score, but it's perfect. Every choral note to driving instrumental speaks a thousand words without actually saying anything. One part especially grabbed me by the throat.

"Oh, there's planes coming"

I absolutely broke down and didn't pick the game up again for a week. I'm welling up again now just thinking about it. Such a perfect and powerful moment. It's not a spoiler to give the quote but it hit me in the chest like a hammer. Easily one of the most poignant and moving moments from my 40 years of gaming.

This isn't a game. It's an experience, and I urge you visit it for yourself. If you give it the time, you'll find a game that will stay with you long after the credits roll.

(NOTE - The run command is a bit of a fakeout., however if you use a controller and hold the RT at just the right amount of slight pressure, you do indeed start to run.)

I loved the game, it's atmosphere, story and music. If you know nothing about Gnostisism the story may be confusing, weird, dumb or boring to you. I consider it a sci-fi Gnostic story. The Chinese Room may not have intended this to be a Gnostic tale but they did it on accident not knowing what they wrote because "the answer is in the light". Spoiler alert. This game has nothing to do with the Christian Rapture. People complain about the slow pace but If you go in knowing you are buying a walking simulator I think it is unfair to bash it for being boring. Walking sims are probably not for you then. If you are getting low frame rates set Nvidia settings to low latency mode and that fixes the issue. I have no help for AMD user if they have the same issue