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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter key art: a dark-haired figure on an autumn forest path, the scene torn open to a grey, ruined world beneath

Psychological horrorCosmic and Lovecraftian horrorHorror puzzle

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

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An occult detective relives a family's murders in a beautiful, empty valley.

Platforms
PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
Stores
Steam, GOG
Price
Paid
Rated
Very Positive on Steam (88% of 8,979 reviews); 82 on Metacritic for PC; 4.39 of 5 from about 2,600 ratings on the PlayStation Store
Players
1
Made by
The Astronauts
Released
2014
Get it on Steam GOGPlayStation Store (PS4)XboxNintendo Switch

What frightens An occult detective arrives in a lonely Wisconsin valley after a boy's disturbing letter and finds bodies along the railway, a bloodied handcar and an abandoned mining village. With paranormal sight he relives each grisly death, uncovering a family turned on itself by a being called the Sleeper.

Content: gore and dead bodies, a child in danger, occult themes.

A first-person weird-fiction mystery from The Astronauts. Paranormal investigator Paul Prospero comes to Red Creek Valley in 1973 to find a missing boy, and uses his gift to reconstruct the grisly deaths of the boy's family and the thing they woke.

About The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a first-person horror mystery by the Polish studio The Astronauts, released on PC in 2014. An updated Redux version followed on PlayStation 4 in 2015, Xbox One in 2018 and Nintendo Switch in 2019; buying it on Steam or GOG gets both versions.

In 1973 the paranormal investigator Paul Prospero receives a letter from a twelve-year-old fan, Ethan Carter, and travels to the boy's home in Red Creek Valley, Wisconsin. Ethan is gone. The valley is a gorgeous stretch of forest, lake and mining village, built from photographs of real Polish mountains, and it is empty except for signs of recent violence.

The game tells you at the start that it will not hold your hand. You roam freely, and when you find a body you use Prospero's gift: sense where the missing objects of the scene belong, put everything back, then order the ghostly moments of the crime to see what happened. Side stories are puzzles of their own, and one has you avoid a presence. There is no combat at all.

It is horror in the weird-fiction sense rather than a scare machine: a family destroyed from within, a being called the Sleeper, and an ending that recasts everything. It suits players of story-driven mysteries who want dread and atmosphere, and its gore is shown at the crime scenes.

How to play The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

  1. Buy it on Steam, GOG, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox store or the Nintendo eShop.
  2. Explore Red Creek Valley freely in first person; nothing marks where to go.
  3. At each death scene, find the objects that belong there and put them back.
  4. Touch the body to see moments of the crime, then put them in the right order.
  5. Find and solve the valley's side stories to unlock the full ending.

Screenshots

A man crawls along railway tracks in the forest as a railway handcar with a lamp comes up behind him
A rusty yellow railway handcar smeared with blood in the woods, the words Blood and Enter floating beside it
A ghostly blue figure with a lantern by a stone crypt under a full moon
A wooden church and graveyard among trees in the valley

Tips

  • Look around carefully when words appear on screen; they point toward clues.
  • Explore everywhere before heading to the end; some stories are easy to miss.
  • Take your time; there is no combat and no rush.
  • Play it with sound up; the valley's quiet is part of the mood.

Questions

Is The Vanishing of Ethan Carter a horror game?

It is a horror mystery: grisly deaths, an occult presence and steady dread, with no combat and few jump scares.

What is the difference between the original and Redux?

Redux is the updated version made in Unreal Engine 4. Buying on Steam or GOG gets both.

How do the puzzles work?

At each death scene you restore missing objects and then order glimpses of the crime to see what happened.

  • first person
  • detective
  • paranormal
  • open world
  • 1970s
  • wisconsin
  • weird fiction
  • no combat

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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is played on store.steampowered.com and its makers' stores; this page links to them and is not part of it. Pictures are from the game's own pages and remain its owner's. Terms and pictures.

Sources: store.steampowered.com, en.wikipedia.org, xbox.com, store.playstation.com, gog.com