Everybody's Gone To The Rapture GOTY.

Hear me out guys.

This game, I've noticed, has been left off every list that I've read. But It's on mine. Fairly near the top.

I understand that mechanically it's not a traditional videogame. I imagine it to be a large canvas painting, but one that allows you to reach inside in order for it to tell it's story. I guess we can liken it to PT, and having said that, I understand even more so why it's not on any list. 'PT' was free and does the same job in essence and caused a larger ripple in the community. It also didn't have the same issue as 'The Rapture' when it came to movement speed and pacing. However, 'The Rapture' didn't make me soil my pants.

Perhaps it's because I'm English. I don't know, that might be a wildly moot point but I loved this game. The setting was inspired, a place so simple and mundane, yet so enrapturing to be in. Helped along by the intrinsic ambient sounds, a sound design so good that whenever I put the dualshock down and stared at the TV; the sound of trickling water, the wind, and birds made me not want to pick it up again. And the soundtrack... the soundtrack... it's the first game soundtrack that I've ever bought separate to the game. It's hauntingly beautiful and I make sure I listen to it regularly. It fit the game so well, when it kicks in after one witnesses the memory of an argument between two random people, or when the weather and time of day shifts when you move to a different area, It kept me glued to the screen. The visuals were also stunning. One can argue that given the setting and simplicity of the game; it wasn't that difficult to replicate a quaint English village and make it look good, also due to this the framerate never seemed to take a hit, I assume running at 30fps.

The story and sub stories are simple. Much like the majority or our lives. It involves love, prejudice, mistakes, and complex family relationships. No more. But this is what made the game even more interesting to me. The gameplay and progression, accidental at best still made me happy. I made a note of where the orb that you follow to forward the story became stationary and went off on my own path, stumbling across side stories and beautiful environments. I first played this game in my small detached bedroom at the end of a garden in the leafy suburbs of Wimbledon in London (a glorified shed really), I would open the window to get the breeze that came through the large apple tree, a breeze that mimicked the one in the Yaughton village. Now that I'm living in Melbourne for a little while, nothing makes me miss home more than remembering this game.

I could easily jump back into this game, even with the knowledge that I wouldn't run into any story beats that I hadn't seen before. The more the game drew me in the more I became invested in wanting to know more, I bought the soundtrack, and began reading up on the studio and the developers. It became clear that Jessica Curry and team really put their heart and soul into this project, at the sacrifice of personal well-being, and I'm so glad that they did. Very much an imperfect art piece, but one that had so much love and attention to detail injected every inch of it.

I'm not suggesting that this should be game of the year, by any stretch. It's just the game that I had the most love for this year. It's not necessarily underrated or not respected enough, and if I echo my earlier point; nor am I surprised that I haven't seen it on any lists.

With all its flaws and lack of interaction in a medium and industry that by it's very nature, now more than ever, yearns for a deeper level of interaction, 'Everybody's Gone To The Rapture' is very unique (in a good way to some, in a bad way to many).

I just believe we shouldn't forget about this one.

I'm not trying to profile you here or anything (you even mention it yourself), but I have noticed that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has been pretty high on a number of british top 10 goty lists like Eurogamer's and Edge, but is pretty nonexistent in lists from elsewhere.

I think there might just something inherently appealing to the British mentally in the writting and the setting of this game.

@dragon_puncher: Oh really? I'm sorry, ironically I haven't checked any British outlets reviews. But I can understand that. I think you're right, that does make a lot of sense.

Different strokes for different folks I suppose but I think Rapture exemplifies everything wrong with this particular style of game. As you said, games are an interactive medium, which allows for some very unique storytelling methods that you simply cannot experience when reading a book or watching a movie. Rapture makes a very poor case for "how did this story benefit from being made into a game?"

@humanity: Absolutely, I agree. At points I forgot I was playing a game, I came to appreciate it more for its design. Which, would place it firmly outside any best game discussions.
As pointed out, perhaps being English it had a weird hold over me. I can't explain it, but I do like it.

@joeasis: Great write up. I bought the game because I'm actually from Shropshire where this is based but haven't actually started it yet. I will definitely have a crack at this now because I've heard a lot of interesting things.

if only they didn't force you to move at 0.0005 mph....

@samuelrgreen: Thanks. You should play it soon! Admittedly, and I'm sure you'd gathered this, but it's an acquired taste. I can't tell if I'm in the minority or majority here to say that I like it, especially after the fact of it possibly appealing to just us Brits. But yeah, LOTS of reasons to hate it and dismiss it completely, but many reasons to like it too.

@onarum: Yep. One of the things that made me sigh a lot.

I think it's my favorite game of this year. I'm not much for finishing games (no matter how brief) in one go, but a single afternoon/evening pushed me down those beautiful roads until I found the end. I couldn't stop taking screenshots, like an over enthusiastic tourist. I'm going to the U.K. for six months in about a week and a half, and this game made the wait that much more difficult.

@a_cute_squirtle: That's awesome. Don't get your hopes up though. The game sometimes looks better than real life England!
But if you know where to go, there are some ridiculously idyllic places that you genuinely can't find anywhere else. I need to make the most of them when I head back to the UK.

I gave it an Honorable Mention on my playthrough. I'm American and have no particular fondness for any period in British history, but felt the game immediately captured a sense of violated place. I could tell how the place should've been (a priest out painting in his yard, children playing in the lot, patients in the doctor's office), while also the many ways it was deliberately wrong (bloody tissues in the waste bin, an unexploded bombshell in the pond, there being no human anywhere). The way the narrative dripped out was good, the voice acting generally hit, and there was high intrigue.

The walking speed also never bugged me, but that was partially because I played it with a friend. Whenever there was a slow period in progression, we filled the time discussing what was going on with each other. It's probably the best way for a lot of people to play such a thing. It worked for Gone Home, too.

There's no shame in it being a personal GOTY for you. If anything, I think it's a shame people would come at you.

@joeasis: I totally agree with everything you've written here. This game is pretty high on my GOTY list, as well, and many people seem quite surprised when I say that. Granted, some of them have yet to play it, but, even so, I think this reaction coming from these people is partly a reflection of the general absence of this game from a lot of GOTY discussions and lists. Or any discussion, really.

This "game" felt real to me, down to earth, human, and had an impact that I believe will be lasting in a way that very few games, without the quotation marks, have had. And that's in great contrast to most "end of the world" games, too, which makes it stand out even more.

I also didn't mind the pacing. It gave me time to soak in the atmosphere and reflect on what was happening. I totally get how that might turn people off, though. I should also add that I usually play games at a very slow pace, anyway, so it wasn't until a couple of hours in that I realised that was the maximum walking speed! (Although, after finishing it I read that you can go faster with one of the triggers, the game just never tells you about it. I haven't checked it out myself.)

PS: For the record, I'm originally from Greece, but I live in the U.K. and I love it, so there might actually be something to the notion that there's a specific audience for this game.

@john_wiswell: The voice acting was very naturalistic. Disregarding the various subject matters, it was barely "acting", it just felt like two people having a discussion, not unlike one you would hear in the real world. It really sounded great. and relate-able.

Happy to hear someone else who wasn't bothered by the speed. For me a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was so engrossed in the music and environment, I was in no rush to get anywhere.

I'm going to play it with a friend in the future too, hopefully I'll have the same experience.

Thanks. I do have an affinity for it, that's for sure :)

@volemaulder: Glad to hear that :) Just to clarify lol, I have no connection to the developers, I just feel like it should be noticed. Especially after reading up about them, and I seems like it is. Which is great.

Yeah, I held the trigger in the entire time, but it doesn't drastically change anything. And yes, there does appear to be more recognition for it this side of the pond.

I have mixed feelings about this game, and no, it's not because of that same old, super boring argument of whether or not it's a game.

There's no doubt about how goddamn gorgeous Rapture is or how majestic is its soundtrack. It's one of the most aesthetically pleasing games I've ever played. I have over 130 screenshots saved! It actually made me feel like an amateur photographer with how pretty everything is.

My issue is with how detached I felt to the very human struggles the characters went through, no matter how interesting some of the narrative threads got. It really is much like hearing stories of people long dead that I was never truly emotionally invested in any of it. I was certainly drawn in to explore as much of the game as I could and to uncover the bits of story there was. I didn't even mind the movement speed an hour in, as there was almost always something either beautiful or intriguing to look at.

But yeah, there was just no deep hook in regards to the little narratives strewn throughout the game. I guess the total lack of immediacy was the root cause for that problem.

The last part also just felt way too "big picture" for me and was delivered with such an air of awe and importance that I couldn't buy at all because of how detached I felt.

It's like it really tried hard to be meaningful. But without something that I could latch onto that felt real to me, it came across as empty platitudes.

So yeah, production value is off the charts as I was mesmerized the entire time with how it looked and sounded. It just didn't click for me internally unlike other narrative-focused games from 2015 like Life is Strange, Her Story, Until Dawn, or Tales from the Borderlands.