ether-one
Latest
Ether One to rebuild memories on PS4
Back in April, we reported that White Paper Games, developer of Ether One, was in talks to bring its first-person puzzle / adventure game to PS4. It looks like those talks have been successful, with White Paper announcing that Ether One is indeed headed to Sony's platform. Rather than releasing the game as a direct port, the studio will be entirely re-building Ether One in Unreal Engine 4, which designer Pete Bottomley says will "make it feel great on console." Sadly, we don't know how long it will take to make Ether One feel great on PS4, as Bottomley failed to reveal a release date. We lauded the PC version of Ether One for its demanding puzzles and its story, which we found "both heartbreaking and horrifying." In it, players take on the role of a Restorer, an individual who dives into people's fragmented memories to repair their minds. [Image: White Paper Games]
Ether One studio in talks to bring first-person thriller to PS4
Ether One, the first-person, mind-plundering thriller from White Paper Games, may bring its special brand of brain-busting to PS4, designer Pete Bottomley told Joystiq during our livestream this week. "Officially at the weekend I found out that I could say that we are licensed Sony developers," Bottomley said. "I met with Guy [Richards] from SCEE at the weekend when we were at Rezzed. The guys at Sony have just been awesome, so so nice, just always checking in and seeing how development is going. So we were chatting at the weekend about possible PlayStaiton 4, so we're gonna look into that." Bottomley adds that there is "nothing confirmed yet," but the option is on the table. In Ether One, players are Restorers, professionals able to jump into the minds of people suffering from mental disorders. The patient you're helping this time around has dementia, and as a Restorer, you must traverse the person's memories, collecting red ribbons scattered around the landscape to repair that mind. It's part puzzle, part exploration, and the ending hides a surprising twist that we found to be brilliantly pretentious (in a good way).
Joystiq Streams: Losing our minds in Ether One with White Paper Games [Relive the stream!]
"There are no dangerous thoughts," said Hannah Arendt, the philosopher who died writing The Life of the Mind, "Thinking itself is dangerous." Her words ring loudly while playing Ether One. The protagonist of White Paper Games' surreal adventure, called The Restorer, literally has to go into broken minds and try to put them back together. The concept alone is unsettling. Naturally, Joystiq Streams wants in on that juicy, psychologically harrowing action! That's why we're digging into the game's guts alongside its designer, Pete Bottomley. At 4PM EST on the Joystiq Twtich channel, Joystiq's Sam Prell will be playing through Ether One with Bottomley in tow to discuss the game and the inspiration behind its spooky brain spelunking. Anthony John Agnello will be on hand to feed your questions directly to the man. Joystiq Streams broadcasts every Tuesday and Thursday at 4PM EST. [Images: White Paper Games]
Joystiq Weekly: Facebook buys Oculus VR, Bioshock Infinite DLC review, GDC videos and more
Welcome to Joystiq Weekly, a "too long; didn't read" of each week's biggest stories, reviews and original content. Each category's top story is introduced with a reactionary gif, because moving pictures aren't just for The Daily Prophet. If GDC and this past week has taught us anything, it's that almost no one's happy with the present state of reality. Virtual reality headset Oculus Rift now has a pretty cushion-y parent company, the comparable Project Morpheus potentially has Sony's developers behind it, and Microsoft might be toying with their own ideas for augmented reality. The common consensus seems to be "let's reach the future, even if it means strapping displays to our faces." We're starting to wonder what Nintendo's non-wearable health technology is going to look like. If it's not something to block out our primary reality, and if it's planned to launch through Nintendo's fiscal year of 2016, will it be something to supplement devices we already own? Maybe we'll face a line of AdventureTrek treadmills, where we run and jump our way through iconic Nintendo universes. Maybe it will involve a Pokemon MMO played with pedometer devices like the Pokemon Pikachu, with dungeon raids consisting of a dozen people throwing their devices into dryers for the best possible attack speed. Or maybe neither of those ideas! Because they're garbage. What isn't garbage is the slew of news, reviews and original content we've lined up for you in this week's Joystiq Weekly. Even if you don't care about VR, there's news of a legal tussle between 3D Realms and Gearbox over Duke Nukem, a hint of The Last Of Us reaching the PS4 and a review of Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea Episode Two. There's also video features from GDC for Fantasia: Music Evolved, Goat Simulator and Videoball, in case you like moving pictures with your words. We've summarized all that and more for you to delve into after the break!
Ether One review: Off to see the wizard
White Paper Games' Ether One may be one of the best video game adaptations of The Wizard of Oz, despite having absolutely nothing to do with it. In the classic 1939 film, a young girl leaps between the dreary physical world and a dreamlike dimension of color, wonder and magic. Ether One too has its player leaping between worlds, one being the painful reality of dementia and the other being a hand-painted, cel-shaded vision of a pristine harbor town called Pinwheel. You play as a Restorer, someone contracted to dive into peoples' minds and repair them from within. The patient you're helping is suffering dementia, and their memories are fragmented. Your job is to travel through the patient's recollection of Pinwheel, scavenging these memories as represented by red ribbons. Collect them all and, in theory, the mind will be restored. Dementia, for all its agony and seeming invulnerability, will be cured. In theory.
Ether One looks like a peaceful romp through dementia patients' minds
Ether One seems like a nice, calm exploration game – until it doesn't. Most of the gameplay takes place in the memories of dementia patients, where skilled Restorers repair broken images and minds. Restoration is a standard task in this technologically advanced world, but it retains the potential to go horribly wrong. And as the launch trailer shows, things do go wrong. Really wrong. Ether One is a first-person exploration and adventure game that recalls BioShock or Portal in its mechanics and unmistakable "something is not right here" tone. It was Greenlit in June and is due out for PC on March 25 from UK studio White Paper Games. [Images: White Paper Games]
Ether One cures mental illness with telekinetic projection on March 25
Ether One takes place in the middle of the 20th century, when an advancement in telekinetic technology cures certain cases of mental illness and memory loss. Specific people, called Restorers, are able to enter a person's memories and restructure broken images. Traversing a person's memories can be tense and frantic, and it involves a point-and-shoot camera, apparently. It's a first-person exploration game with layers: It's an exploration of the fragile human mind, an exploration of a new world, and an exploration of complicated puzzles. The mechanics themselves are up to the player. Ether One can be completed as an exploration game alone, or as an adventure in deciphering riddles "to restore life-changing events of the patient's history in order to help the validation of their life." Talk about responsibility. Ether One was Greenlit last year and is due out for PC on March 25 from UK indie studio White Paper Games. The teaser trailer shows off what looks to be a sterile, industrial-style dentist chair being lowered into a mechanized containment sphere. The screenshots, however, display markedly different settings: a rustic seaside village and a large water facility. Ether One's website reads, "Welcome to Pinwheel." We're not sure why, but that seems ominous. [Images: White Paper Games]
Steam Greenlight sneaks out six more games, one more app
Steam let six games and one piece of software through its Greenlight service last week during E3, granting each the ability to be distributed on the platform. The greenlit games were Assetto Corsa by Kunos Simulazioni, DreadOut by Digital Happiness, Benjamin Hill's Ether One, GunZ 2: The Second Duel by MAIET Games, Stonehearth by Radiant Entertainment and Ben Falcone's first-person survival horror game for Oculus Rift, The Forest. Stonehearth, a sandbox strategy game, recently raised $751,920 on Kickstarter. Heaven Benchmark by Unigine was the lone piece of software that community approval last week.
