This is *exactly* what I thought Firewatch was about the first time I heard about it. Really hope someday there's a game like this.

In the meantime, I'll gladly simulate my walking with Firewatch (whenever I clear my backlog a bit, that is :S)

hmm, for one, i don’t agree with your assessment of ‘it’s not a game’ – that’s a bit too narrow a definition for my taste. by that definition, every winnable ‘real’ game would stop being one as soon as the participants decide to ignore the win condition and play for play’s sake, because it removes the allegedly objective criteria from the interaction. (two people just playing a shuttlecock back and forth aren’t somehow playing ‘real’ badminton wrong, there is no score, there is no win, yet they are playing)

minecraft would also not be a game (or would have arbitrarily started to become one with the addition of the ender dragon, but just building stuff and interacting on a mp server with all kinds of rules with regards to role playing would somehow still not qualify), narratively focussed role play would not be a game (because there are no skill trees, dice, and indeed any mechanism to determine an encounter’s outcome, other than making up the narrative), but one could still make a plausible argument for job interviews being games. (or whatever else some gamification book tells you is practically a game)

but whether to classify it as a game or not, the big difference it makes for me is what interactivity does as a medium. it’s a trivial notion that storytelling changes depending on your medium: prose works differently from comics, and they work differently from theatre, or film. each medium brings its own characteristics about what it lends itself to better or worse, or by which means it achieves certain effects, and in what way it needs to be interacted with. (see also: ‘the book was better’ or alan moore’s stance towards film adaptations of his comics.)

games are just one more medium that lends itself well to some things, thanks to its peculiar way of working. just as prose can put you ‘more immediately’ inside a character’s mind than media that have a performance element you must watch, having been made complicit in the unfolding of story in a game-y way, even if it’s a completely linear affair, makes a difference in how story happens to you. i’d say one could become a fan of that kind of storytelling just as much as one could be a fan of any one medium (a bookworm, a movie buff, etc.), or just like the medium’s unique storytelling capabilities.

example: think of the end of metal gear solid 3, after you beat the boss. she’s lying on the ground, snake stands over her, gun pointed at her head. there’s the usual metal-gears-y long monologue, and all of a sudden, nothing happens. they just stand there. until you realise you have to push the button you use to fire guns, to put a bullet in her head and make the game advance. there is no could-have-chosen-differently or anything like that, but it could have just as well been part of the cutscene. god knows a lot of things are told in cutscenes in mgs.

plot wise: zero difference. the wikia page would mention snake having shot the boss just the same.

gameplay wise: that one button press doesn’t present any challenge, or any obstacle towards the win condition, so it could have been omitted, no appreciable difference.

but think of the difference it makes in how it involves you in the coming-about of snake killing the boss. we use the shooting button during play without thinking too much about it. the ‘meaningful’ moments usually happen in cutscenes. (uncharted got criticised for exactly that: drake killing people in gameplay vs drake having story moments in cutscenes that imply he is an adventurer, not really much of a killer.) you did your share of game-y shooting at the boss during your battle, but it makes you pull the trigger when she’s down, and all obstacles are overcome. you as the player don’t get the luxury of watching the hero character having to kill his former mentor character from the outside. you stepped into the hero’s shoes during gameplay, killing however many characters you killed, and it won’t let you get away with not being in the hero’s shoes for that part.

whether you think that instance done well or not, or a stupid artsy appendage to a sneaking puzzle game, i’d say we can agree that game-ish interactivity tells story in a different manner than film. and one could be a fan of that just as well as one could not really play games for story at all.

both fair game.

looks great

will wait for a 50/60% discount and then get it

Postal 2 lets you start fires and piss them out. That's close enough.

I just bought it, but developers should do a better job with simultaneous releases. GOG release was delayed because they were waiting for "dust to settle".

I'm glad though that Linux version wasn't butchered like in Dying Light and other games. Downloading it now.

Hopefully the game will be 64 bit and won't have any large partition bugs ;)

Hahaha, yet again another awesome game I already bought on Steam because I had no idea it was coming out here. I'm not even mad or anything, just amused. Enjoy it GoGers! It's a goodie!

In such case you can contact developers and ask them if they are planning to release on GOG. Campo Santo confirmed that they plan GOG release but not right away. So you could have waited :) Don't help developers treating GOG users as an afterthought.

Hm, heard of this one a few times, nice to see it available here.

Any opinions from people who have already tried it? The only review so far is bullshit, and it's hard to figure out much about the game just by looking at the screenshots and description. ( Doesn't help that the feature list is basically just a list of game development "celebrities". )

Might pick it up eventually, just to see what it's all about, but not at the current price.

I've heard good opinions from many people, with only downside that it's rather short.

Another reason why GOG's "In Development" section was a good idea. At least now people know way ahead of time that certain games will be available here, even if they don't want to buy them before they're finished.

So from what I gather from the answers is that people like... well, looking at things. I still don't get it. I mean, I like looking at thing as well, but there is no way a low-fi virtual forrest is going to have enough content to be interesting to look at for more than five minutes.

Now you're just strawmanning, there are plenty of games that don't involve blasting enemies and still offer a grown-up experience while still being a game. In SimCity you are building a city and it's still a game, you make a decision and the game responds forcing you to make other decisions to keep the city running.

Your definition of game is something that has some goal. I don't take it that narrow. I see games like sports: you do something, your opponent does something, and you keep challenging each other back and forth. There does not have to be a fixed end goal, you could play football until you decide you have had enough, but it is still a game because the process of playing has the constant back-and-forth making of decisions. Every step you make impacts the game in countless unpredictable ways. If someone were to just put a bunch of balls on a field and you started randomly kicking them then it wouldn't be a game because there is no point to any of it, nothing substantially changes.

I have played a game called Orcs & Elves on the DS, it's a tile-based 3D dungeon crawler, but the problem is that the game is so over-balanced that every enemy and every item is exactly planned out for you. The only choice you can make is not to play according to plan and thus lose. That's not an interesting choice either and consequently Orc & Elves is not a real game either. It's like painting by numbers, you do what you are supposed to do, but in the end effectively you haven't done anything.

So yes, you need a challenge, so way of making the wrong decision. That doesn't have to mean that an enemy has to kill you, it can be something abstract like your city running out of electricity in SimCity. But the point is that something must keep you on your toes and force you to make the right choice without you knowing what the right choice is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ33e9BK9aU

Not sure if this counts as a spoiler, so here is your warning

LGR - Developing Firewatch's In-Game Photographs!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmG3g3Ey_Es

Dust? What dust?
Now im hesitant to buy the Game. (Linux Version) Im really hoping gog gets galaxy ready soon.
Could you please tell me if its running well? I dont trust gogs Quality Control(most games have missing dependencies etc).

It's 32 bit? That's annoying. Developers should stop doing it. If they want 32 bit for supporting vanishing rare cases of people using it, it should be an addition to default 64 bit. Not the other way around!