I love love walking simulators. Five years ago, that statement would have had a lot of gamers looking at me funny and opening myself up to a scathing debate, but it feels like for the most part, this little genre of pressing “w” has come into it’s own and has been accepted into the video game fold. When I originally tried to defend walking sims back on my hobby blog in 2018 (and did a poor job of it), there still felt like more reason to. With Dear Ester creating the genre in 2012 and Gone Home bringing it into the spotlight in 2013, a lot of conversations were opened up about the nature of video games: could video games be art pieces in the same way some film, music, and books are, and what even counts as a video game?
The debate to these questions still rages on in some forums, but I feel like they’ve been answered for most people. While I don’t feel the need to defend walking simulators’ existence like I used to (as they more than speak for themselves), I do want to share my experience with them and maybe introduce more people to this quiet little genre.
Defining Walking Simulators
There seems to be some confusion as to what exactly makes a walking sim a walking sim, considering one video I came across listed Hinterland Studios’ The Long Dark as a walking simulator (GamingBolt), which I’d be hesitant to do myself. I’ve played The Long Dark, which while there is a heavy focus on exploration and story, I’d say it’s primarily a survival game. There’s a focus on inventory and crafting, and you can die in the game, even on easy mode, trust me. It doesn’t feel like a walking sim. I know that sounds like a really wishy-washy answer, but if you told an avid music fan that there was pretty much no difference between folk and country, between trance and techno, or between Heavy Metal and Rock, I promise you’d get yourself quite a reaction.
That said, how do we go about defining walking sims? There are games that are undisputedly considered walking simulators that have other game elements such as puzzles and stealth. Like with the music genre example above, some of it seems to be up to subjective taste, but there are some shared elements. There’s a focus on narrative, exploring and atmosphere with a lack of interactive gameplay. The experience is usually lonely with little to no other characters on-screen (usually in first person to which some people might cynically say is to avoid rendering any character models) and the game typically tackles “mature,” high concept ideas and themes (think grief and death ( as in Dear Ester, Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch), meta-commentary on video games (The Stanley Parable and Dr. Langeskov), and LGBT issues (Gone Home) just to name a few). Walking simulators are usually short, linear games, typically under five hours, some even under one hour (“A Brief History of Walking Simulators | Sidcourse.”). All that is still very vague and leaves a lot of room for developers to innovate.
Should We Call Them Walking Sims?
There is no secret that the term “walking simulator” started off as a derogatory one, likely coined by someone who wasn’t a fan of the genre. Just like how some feminists have tried to reclaim the terms “bitch” and “slut,” many gamers and developers have embraced the term, but many others are all for leaving it in the past. This Kill Screen article shares a collage of quotes from video game developers and writers for, against, or apathic to the term.
While I can’t come at the term from the standpoint of a video game developer, I can come at it as someone who’s studied language and writes. Let’s pull away from video games and talk about language for a second. I look at words like organisms that are birthed, grow, and change as much as a living thing. There are many articles you could look at for quick knowledge on word formation, such as this one here, and you may notice that new words rarely come out of the ether. They are borrowed from other languages, affixes and words are mixed and blended together, society and technology grows and changes and language grows and changes with it (think about how the word “picture” has gone on to encompass not only paintings, but movies, photographs, computer-generated images and more (Brinton and Arnovick)). What is important in looking at the term “walking simulator” is that words don’t remain stagnant upon their conception. While some more pretentious people may turn up their noses when the “incorrect” definition of “irony” made its way into dictionaries, the fact is language is dictated by the people who use it, not the other way around. Words become more general and specialize, become more negative or more positive, strengthen and weaken in meaning. For a few examples of this, “bonfire” used to specifically mean “fire of bones,” “harlot” used to just mean a “vagabond,” and to “adore” someone used to mean to “worship as divine” (Brinton and Arnovick). The point of this little linguistics lesson is to show that the origin of a word has no bearing on the denotations and connotations a word, term, or phrase might eventually acquire.
Personally, I’m all for keeping with the term “walking simulator.” Despite it’s origins, there seems to be a consensus between lovers and haters of the genre of what it entails, which will bring people who want these types of game experiences to them, and keep those who dislike them away.
Arguments Against Walking Sims
I feel it’s important when talking about the things we love to also analyze their negative sides or take in the opinions of those who dislike them. Over the course of watching several YouTube videos, the main arguments against walking simulators seem to be as follows:
- They are simple to make, meaning there’s a low bar of entry for developers (Sterling)
- There’s a lack of interactivity (Hollinger)
- With that lack of interactivity, there’s no fail state or challenge (“The History and Future of Walking Simulators | How they have Influenced Game Design and Storytelling.”)
- There’s a lack of replay value, and these games are typically priced higher but offer less gameplay (“A Brief History of Walking Simulators | Sidcourse.”)
- Why pay money for an overly expensive game when I can just watch a Let’s Play and get the same experience? (“A Brief History of Walking Simulators | Sidcourse.”)
When I originally tried to defend walking simulators, I basically handwaved these arguments away with a “so what?” and while that’s still my overall attitude, it’s better for the sake of debate to engage with these ideas. Sterling themselves notes that the low bar of entry for developers to create walking sims means that a lot of new developers will be able to begin wading their feet into game development with more ease for not only on their blossoming skills and technique, but be easier on their wallets as well. The negative of that is many more cynical developers may use that low bar to pump out games quicker with less polish. While I’d agree that the simplicity of walking sims is a double-edged sword and means there’ll be a lot of turds to wade through in the pool, I’d argue that that could be said about pretty much any creative medium: think about the boom of mediocre found footage films and vampire books after the popularity of The Blair Witch and the Twilight franchise, and that for every Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X that get discovered on SoundCloud or Tiktok, there’s armies and armies of young artists that make our entire bodies cringe and reminds us of the pitfalls of our own adolescences.
The lack of interactivity, fail states, and challenge seems to be the main sticking point for a lot of detractors, as the main thing that sets video games apart from mediums like movies, books, and music is the more active role players take. It’s argued here that walking sims can’t even be considered games, and are therefore lesser experiences. The Gamer Overanalyser argues that walking simulators do in fact have challenges and interactivity, just not in the way gamers are typically used to. Walking sims challenge us with the themes and ideas they pose (“The History and Future of Walking Simulators | How they have Influenced Game Design and Storytelling”) and the feelings the often cause us to face. The Overanalyser also brings up Brian Upton’s Game Developer Conference talk in 2015 “The Play of Stillness,” where Upton brings up different types of play such as anticipatory play and interpretive play, which are where walking sims excel. Anticipatory play exists in between turns like in that space between chess moves or attacks in turn-based RPGs or Real Time Strategy games, and interpretive play exists when players work to understand the narrative, like in the environmental storytelling we see in Gone Home and PT (“The History and Future of Walking Simulators | How they have Influenced Game Design and Storytelling”). I can’t argue against the lack of a fail state, but I’ve yet to find a walking simulator that plays itself for you. You in the least have to keep moving the character forward. When before games were mainly mechanics (think about Pong being only about the gameplay and the minimal plot of early Mario games), walking simulators simply flip that that on its head to be mainly story and atmosphere.
I think the question of the cost of the games and their replay-ability is perhaps the easiest to answer, and even the Leonardo di Sidci video, which I found the most critical of walking simulators, says that the amount of money you’re willing to play for an experience, any experience, is something entirely subjective. As I like walking simulators, I’m willing to pay $20 for an hour long game, but wouldn’t be willing to pay $60 for the 7-9 hour campaign in the new Call of Duty game because I wouldn’t enjoy it. I’d say whether a game is re-playable is subjective too. We re-watch movies, reread books and listen to our favourite songs over and over and don’t critique them for the lack of side quests or available DLC. You could say I’m comparing apples to oranges here, but every time I get the urge to replay Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch and even Gone Home again, I take something new away from them, just like I do revisiting my favourites in other mediums. Maybe some people read their favourite book and movie once and never return to them and they’re happy with that, but I feel we come back to the same media at different points in our lives with different experiences.
That being said, I think that you alter your experience with a game whether you are playing the game or not, which brings us to the Let’s Play question. Let’s Plays are useful on many fronts in that they let you look at a game before you buy it or in my experience, it can be nice to just have them on in the background while I’m doing something else. These Let’s Players feel like friends, and they bring their own experiences into these games. I didn’t really understand the point of Let’s Plays until I saw Markiplier’s playthrough of That Dragon, Cancer. It’s a very emotional game about one family’s experience dealing with their infant son having cancer. While I have experienced loss in my family, I’ve been lucky to not lose someone close after a long struggle with disease. As Mark states in the video, he lost his father to cancer, so watching him play through The Dragon, Cancer added something to it. There’s also something watching a Let’s Play doesn’t let you do: it doesn’t let you take in the environmental storytelling at your own place, or find the little secrets hidden away from the main story on your own, or immerse yourself fully in the stress and anxiety the player-character may be feeling. Let’s Plays are useful tools and a form of entertainment in their own right, but like detractors of walking sims have said, games are about interactivity, and by merely watching a Let’s Play of a game, even a walking simulator, you miss out on that interactivity.
Arguments for Walking Sims
Returning to that Leonardo di Sidci video, despite his criticisms of the genre as a whole, Sid does offer up many reasons why one may be pulled to play such games, such as they aren’t a time sink (allowing you the full experience of a game even if you have a busy lifestyle); they’re casually oriented; they frequently have “engrossing artistic visions” and “beautiful deep stories and are “made with love and attention,” but perhaps most important in Sid’s eyes in the conversations we can have around them. Walking simulators blur the definition of what defines a video game and got many people talking about their place in the art world. Video games are a coming together of music, writing, visual artwork and so much more, and it feels like the best video games know how to take the best parts of those art forms, blend them together, and pull you into it more than any of those mediums can do on their own. Video games are as much art as any other creative medium, and they should be treated as such by their audience, creators, and critics.
I personally come to games more for stories than gameplay, even if I do enjoy those aspects of video games too. The interactive nature of the medium allows me to interact with stories in a whole new way, and think about how I can add ideas from those stories into my own. I appreciate that walking simulators so often engage in more mature concepts, because it allows me a gateway to reflect on them on my own and with friends. I love how this genre allowed developers to explore different forms of gameplay and interactivity they may have not considered before, and how genres like walking sims show those developers looking at games as more than just a product and toy.
One thing I really adore about these games (and something I didn’t see mentioned in any of the videos I watched on the subject) is their accessibility and how they offer a different type of catharsis from your more violent games. Walking simulators aren’t typically large games with a need for an expensive graphics card, so you don’t need a state-of-the-art laptop or console to run them, and those who may be unable to get out into nature (where so many of these walking simulators take place), whether that be due to a lack of transportation or because of a physical disability, are offered an opportunity to experience a piece of nature in these games. Frequently, it feels like video games offer one particular type of catharsis. After a stressful day working in retail or food service, I perfectly understand the want and need to come home, pop in a game like Bioshock, Mass Effect or Alice: Madness Returns and slaughter your way through mutants, aliens, and aberrations, but sometimes I prefer to find a place of calm where it feels like everything around me is chaotic and loud, and my mind won’t stop long enough for mediation to work. Even the somber and sometimes scary atmosphere of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter allows me to just sigh, take in the beautifully rendered scenery, and relax.
What Makes a Walking Sim Good?
What makes something “good” is obviously subjective, but turning to video game YouTube again, we find some suggestions, and I believe they aren’t that difficult to achieve:
- Player-character should be active in plot and the narrative be engaging (Sterling)
- The interactivity in the game should should engage player in that plot and into the mind of the player-character (Davis)
- Even if there isn’t much to the plot, the game needs to get players to think and feel (Davis)
- The tone needs to vary and the environment needs “life” (Sterling)
Sterling notes that the story you’re playing has to be greater than the one you’re watching, or players will have wished they could’ve been a part of the latter. They point out The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as a victim of this, and while I did enjoy the game, I have to agree with them. You play as a paranormal investigator who receives a fan letter from the titular character which inspires you to journey to Ethan’s hometown, only to discover he’s missing. You are unearthing a story that has already taken place, that you had no direct action and no connection to. Regardless of how good that story is, it’ll be harder for players to engage with that story. That’s not to say that one can’t set a player-character in the aftermath of the main action of the story, but that connection will be needed. For all the criticism Gone Home has received, this is something that it does right: while you work to uncover the story, you are a member of family and thus the player-character has reason to be personally invested in how that action turned out (Sterling).
While one of the points to the walking simulator genre is the minimal interactivity, the interactivity that is there should place you in the mind of the player-character. Chris Davis gives us an example of this with What Remains of Edith Finch. In What Remains you play as Edith Finch, who comes back to her childhood home that has been left abandoned with many of the rooms sealed up. As you traverse the bric a brac left behind by your family members, you jump into vignettes from their point of view, and the example of this minimal interactivity being used well really shines through in many of these vignettes, but especially the one focused on Lewis, Edith’s brother. As Edith reads a letter sent to their mother by Lewis’ psychologist, you jump into Lewis’ perspective. He’s working an unfulfilling job at a fish cannery, and so his mind starts to retreat into his imagination and fantasies, as many of ours do while doing busywork. As you perform the repetitive motion of slicing off fish heads, Lewis’ fantasy begins to take up more and more of the screen, but you can’t progress in that fantasy unless you continue working (Davis). With one hand, you are slicing off fish heads while in the other you’re guiding Lewis’ fantasy character along on their journey that begins to take up more and more of the screen as you continue to work but focus more on the fantasy, which only adds to our connection with Lewis when the vignette ends (see? no major spoilers here). Like I’ve said above, video games have this great potential through their interactive nature to connect people more fully with their stories, and this is one very effective way to do that.
Davis also points out that many of the plots of these walking simulators could be explained in their entirety in a single sentence. With these plots’ simplicity it becomes obvious that the main point of these games is not necessarily the story itself, but the feelings they evoke (Davis). That goes without saying that walking sims need varied tones throughout, or they become exhausting or boring, which Sterling points out is the problem with the game Wander: the game sets a tone of “quiet explorative wonder” and keeps that same tone throughout while you pace through an environment that feels lifeless despite the fact it is set in a lush, tropical island forest. The main idea Sterling tries to put forth is that, if you’re going to take aspects of play out of a game, you have to raise play else where: lack of interactivity or traditional gameplay? Beef up the atmosphere, environment, characters, narrative, and make sure that players are able to interact with those things meaningfully.
Walking Sims I’ve Played
Below I list the 15 walking simulators I have at least some experience with, in no order other than alphabetical. Some of them I’ve placed multiple times, some I haven’t played for more than fifteen minutes. Some I think are beautiful works of arts, at least one leaves me confuddled. Maybe I’ll review some of these games in the future, but for now, I want to share a small blurb of my impressions of each game to perhaps pique your interest.
- ABZÛ by Giant Squid: This game sets it apart from other walking simulators by being a swimming simulator, and is from the same art director of Journey and Flower, and certainly is a gorgeous as those games. While there isn’t a straightforward narrative per say, as you swim deeper and deeper into the ocean’s depths, gathering collectibles and discovering new marine life species, the environment tells a story that can only be pieced together by your own imagination.
- Dear Ester by The Chinese Room and Robert Briscoe: I’ll be honest and say I don’t remember the story behind this one, probably because the beautiful environs you find yourself in aren’t actively connected to the plot, but because it’s the walking simulator prototype, I feel myself giving it a pass here. You’re reading fragments of your deceased wife Ester’s letters as you traverse a lovely if somber landscape.
- Dr. Langeskov, the Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Diamond: A Whirlwind Heist by Crows Crows Cows: If you liked the humour found in The Stanley Parable, you have no excuse to not check out this game, which is a very short 15 minute affair for free by William Pugh, who also worked on The Stanley Parable. You start the game thinking you’re going to participate in a great heist, only to find another player is playing it, and you are urged to help the harried offscreen narrator.
- Eastshade by Eastshade Studios and Do Games: This was one of my more recent purchases, and I don’t regret it in the slightest as I work to play through it. You feel like you’ve jumped inside the pages of a dusty, forgotten children’s book that’s grown up, least of which because of all the anthropomorphic characters. You play as a painter looking to fulfill your mother’s dying wish to have you paint several different paintings of the titular country Eastshade, but arrive with no money or resources, so you have to explore the island for inspiration and take commissions.
- Firewatch by Campo Santo: Working as the fire lookout Henry in the Shoshone National Forest, mysterious things start to happen not long into your tenure at the lookout tower. One of the most endearing qualities of this game is Henry’s relationship with his supervisor Delilah as you explore the beautiful wilderness around you with a map and compass as your main guides.
- Gone Home by Fullbright: You arrive home after a year abroad to find your family absent. You’ll have to unravel where they’ve gone by poking around the house, learning about your rebellious younger sister, and all your family’s hidden drama.
- Lost Ember by Mooneye Studios: I’ll be honest guys, I haven’t been able to play more than a minute of this one yet because my laptop is having trouble running it, though I was intrigued by the idea of being able to play from different animal’s perspectives as you discover what caused this world to fall.
- Marie’s Room by Like Charlie: Another free game, you play as Kelsey, remembering your friend Marie’s room as it was twenty years ago, but you can’t seem to figure out what happened to Marie.
- Oxenfree by Night School Studio: You play as Alex. You, your friends, and your new stepbrother Jonas are hoping to enjoy an overnight island party but unwittingly open a ghostly rift. While this is a supernatural thriller, the characters’ reactions feel grounded and realistic even with the branching dialogue options.
- Port of Call by Underdog Games: Yet another freebie, this time you wake up with amnesia, and the first person you meet is a grumpy old man who enlists you to work on his ferry boat that just materializes behind you, another mystery waiting to unfold.
- Proteus by David Kanaga: While the cutesy, pixelated aesthetic is endearing, there is no narrative, and while there may be a goal, you’ll have to go digging for it. It’s a unique environment that’s very minimalist. I didn’t find much use for it when I originally played it, but it is very meditative and I’ll perhaps have to return to it in the future.
- The Stanley Parable by Davey Wreden and Galactic Cafe: This is just an honest-to-god hilarious game that plays with gamer expectations. To explain any more would ruin the fun, just go check out this game.
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter by The Astronauts: As mentioned above, you play as a paranormal investigator who receives a fan letter from the titular character which inspires you to journey to Ethan’s hometown, only to discover he’s missing. This was my introduction to the walking simulator genre, and I think it was a reasonably good one. It is more on a spooky side with some jump scares as a warning.
- The Way of Life Free Edition by CyberCoconut and Fabio Ferrara: Has an interesting isometric style as you play through the same life experiences from the point of view of three characters at different ages.
- What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow: I don’t know if I game can be perfect, but this one gets pretty dang close. It combines story and gameplay in ways I could’ve never considered on my own while dealing with concepts such as death and grief, and because of the anthology-like structure to the game it feels like you get several well-crafted games for the price of one. As I said above, you play as Edith Finch, who comes back to her childhood home that his been left abandoned with many of the rooms sealed up. To say that your family is “quirky” is a supreme understatement.
Well, I feel like this essay redeems me for the post I made on my hobby blog. We’ve always had spaces dedicated to exploration and observation like hiking trails, museums and art galleries (Korol) where we can meditate, and walking simulators simply makes that space digital and accessible through your console or computer while exploring and innovating even farther than reality can go.
Works Cited
“14 Games That Were Unbelievably Good Walking Simulators.” YouTube. Uploaded by GamingBolt, 28 November 2018. Web. 26 January 2021.
“A Brief History of Walking Simulators | Sidcourse.” YouTube. Uploaded by Leonardo Da Sidci, 21 March 21. Web. 26 January 2021
Brinton, Laurel J. and Arnovick, Leslie K. The English Language A Linguistic History. 2nd Ed., Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Davis, Chris. “The Secret to a Great Walking Simulator (& a short rant about reviews).” Uploaded by Chris Davis, 23 June 2017. Web. 26 January 2021.
Hollinger, Ryan. “Top 5 ‘Walking Simulators’ | Ryan’s Theory.” YouTube. Uploaded by Ryan Hollinger, 18 February 2016. Web. 26 Janaury 2021.
Korol, Kacper. “Walking Simulators – What Makes Them Special?” YouTube. Uploaded by Kacper Koral, 27 March 2020. Web. 26 January 2021.
Kill Screen Staff. “Is it time to stop using the term “walking simulator?” Kill Screen. 30 September 2016. Web. 26 January 2021.
“The History and Future of Walking Simulators | How they have Influenced Game Design and Storytelling.” YouTube. Uploaded by The Game Overanalyser, 23 November 2018. Web. 26 January 2021.
Sterling, James Stephanie. “Walking Simulators (The Jimquisition).” YouTube. Uploaded by Jim Sterling, 17 August 2015. Web. 26 January 2021.