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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter begins by telling you that it is not going to hold your hand, and it is true to its word. As you emerge from a railway tunnel into an area of woodland in the shoes of detective Paul Prospero, there is no convenient low branch under which you must PRESS CTRL TO CROUCH, nor any low walls inviting you to PRESS SPACE TO JUMP. As far as the developer, Adrian Chmielarz's The Astronauts, is concerned, you can look up the buttons and then figure it out on your own. When you do, you discover there is no jumping in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter whatsoever. It's not that sort of game.What sort of game it is remains splendidly elusive for some time, allowing you to simply enjoy your surroundings. The first thing that happens is you find yourself being snapped at by elaborate mantraps in the woods. They never quite get you, but you can feel the tension in every creaking branch as you walk slowly through the brush. Beyond the treeline is an old railway bridge that gives you panoramic views of a huge lake - more of an inland sea - and the dam, town and hills beyond. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is set in one of those permanently autumnal corners of America where the late afternoon sun paints everything with a mixture of warmth and sorrow, and the game's artists wield this evocative palette like the old masters, sending you to Steam's screenshot button every few seconds.
You have been summoned to this place, Red Creek Valley, by a letter from a boy called Ethan Carter. "There are places that exist that very few people can see. Ethan could have drawn a map," says Prospero, whose noirish intonation is a cool match for the sparse, brilliant writing throughout. (Anyone who thought Alan Wake was an airport potboiler with delusions of grandeur will feel thoroughly vindicated by a couple of hours with The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.) But there's no one around, only suggestions of what might have happened. Over the railway bridge you find quite a graphic suggestion: a pair of severed legs, a blood trail, a corpse and some scattered debris.
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