Summary
You can criticize The Chinese Room for a lot of things, but lack of innovation certainly isn’t one of them. Despite its small portfolio of games, the studio’s consistent inventiveness has kept it a major player in the modern games industry. One could even credit them with the creation of an entire genre, that of Walking Simulators, if one were so inclined.
Said games are all concerned with video games as an artistic medium, often pushing them to new heights with their top-notch aesthetic presentation and boundary-stretching gameplay. Or lack thereof. Of course, even within such an elite lineup, some games are better than others. If you’re wondering where to start with these fearless innovators, read on to find out.
6So Let Us Melt
Ten Million Years Of Solitude
Probably the most obscure of all the titles in The Chinese Room’s output, you’d be forgiven for never having heard of So Let Us Melt. That’s because it was released back in 2017 as an exclusive title for the DaydreamAndroid VR headset. VR never really took off the way many thought it would, so neither did this game. That’s a shame, because, flaws aside, it’s a very compelling VR experience.
The story follows Custodian 98, a “world-building” machine in the literal sense. Almost certainly a cheeky nod to the studio’s strengths. Over the span of ten million in-game years, you’ll terraform the new planet of Kenopsia in advance of its new human inhabitants’ arrival. Gameplay-wise, it’s largely a linear story sequence with a few tiny interactions, which is a weakness not just here but in the studio’s wider portfolio as well. That said, it’s a visual and aural treat all the same.
5Little Orpheus
A Bold Stride Into The Second Dimension
For most developers, the big move consists of switching from 2D to 3D gameplay. For The Chinese Room, things went in the other direction. Their typical style being story-driven 3D adventures, the jump to a 2.5D platformer in Little Orpheus was a major gamble. Luckily, it largely paid off.
The game was released as an Apple Arcade exclusive in 2020 before coming to all platforms later in 2022. The story this time was that of Soviet cosmonaut Ivan Ivanovich, sent into the Earth for research purposes and inadvertently stumbling upon incredible lost worlds. Expect riffs on adventure classics from Jules Verne to Ray Harryhausen in this one.
Despite the switch to a more traditional genre, you can also expect a story:gameplay ratio similar to that of other Chinese Room games. That is to say, lots of the first, not much of the second. While this game was certainly a ride in the visual sense, the basic touch-based gameplay left a lot to be desired.
4Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs
Get Ready To Meat Your Maker
Amnesia: The Dark Descent was one of the most revered Survival Horror games of its generation. Taking the reins from original developer Frictional Games for the sequel, then, was certainly not an enviable task. Yet it was one The Chinese Room tackled head-on for this one. A Machine for Pigs carried on the twisted story structure from the first game, but unfortunately lost some of the overall magic along the way.
Gone were the inventory management puzzles and limited-fuel lantern that made Dark Descent so fiddly and tense. Even more tragic, the original’s signature Sanity Meter was also removed, in turn removing a lot of its charm. The result was an undeniably solid Survival Horror experience, but one that, in its attempts to streamline its gameplay, lost a lot of its rich texture.
For those who didn’t enjoy the original, or fans of anice spooky narrativein general, A Machine for Pigs is still an excellent time. It just can’t help but feel somehow lesser in the shadow of its predecessor.
3Still Wakes The Deep
The Game Was Rigged From The Start
It’s always great to see video games embrace specific cultures beyond those that typically hog the limelight. Still Wakes the Deep does just that, putting a largely Scottish cast on a North Sea oil rig and setting some horrifying eldritch beasties on them. The dialect from protagonist Cameron “Caz” McLeary and his coworkers is wonderfully authentic. The option to play the game with Gaelic subtitles, if you so choose, adds to that further.
Outside of its fun Scottish trappings, Still Wakes the Deep is typical Survival Horror fare. You’ll run from monsters, solve light puzzles, and slowly unravel a complex, emotional narrative as you do so. As with most Chinese Room games, it’s very linear, with little deviation from the main path possible. It doesn’t do anything particularly new gameplay-wise, but what it does do is enough to support the stellar story, which is clearly the focus here.
2Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture
A Successful Spiritual Successor
When one thinks of The Chinese Room, they typically think of two games in particular. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is one of those games. As a spiritual follow-up to the studio’s breakout title, Dear Esther, Rapture is the quintessential Walking Simulator experience, with the dials turned up to 11. Set in the fictional English village of Yaughton, the story here follows a duo of scientists attempting to solve the mystery of the titular Rapture, which has caused the village’s residents to disappear.
Gameplay-wise, you’re in for a lot of exploration here as youslowly piece things togetherover multiple chapters. The spirits of missing villagers can be interacted with for nice world-building voice notes, which adds a lot to the game’s primary strength: its atmosphere. Everything here feels ethereal and mysterious, perfectly building up the intrigue on which games such as this live or die. While Walking Simulators are a controversial genre, few would argue that Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture isn’t one of the very best among them.
1Dear Esther
A Once-In-A-Generation Game Changer
Sometimes, when it comes to ranking games, the quality of a specific title needs to take a backseat to something more important. That’s 100 percent the case with Dear Esther. While it’s certainly not the best-looking game from The Chinese Room or the most compelling gameplay-wise, it needs to be recognized for the fact that it essentially created the Walking Simulator genre. Before Dear Esther, the idea of a game consisting solely of exploration and dialogue was unthinkable. After that, it became a hot new trend.
Dear Esther started out as a Source engine mod from an early version of The Chinese Room, then a research project at the University of Portsmouth. You can see the experimental, academic influence of its origins right away. Gameplay is nothing but walking around and listening to voice notes, and the story is a heavy yarn about grief, alcoholism, and depression. It doesn’t sound great on the surface, but the result was an intoxicating cocktail without which the likes of Firewatch and Gone Home would never have existed. Dear Esther was truly a pioneer of modern gaming, and for that, we salute it.
