NOCLIP Pocket E24 - Miner 49er Death Maze - The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

You’re always in here, writing your weird little podcasts. Welcome to NOCLIP Pocket! And welcome to “Nancy June,” our Mystery May replacement for the year where everything seems to have gone wrong. Today, we’re going to be talking about The Astronauts’ The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. This is a walking simulator type adventure game, where you play the part of a psychic detective tasked with finding Ethan Carter, a boy who wrote to you and then, well, vanished. The game itself focuses largely around environmental exploration and puzzle solving to uncover the events that led to Ethan’s present circumstance. The beauty of this game is its presentation; set in the woods and with a striking use of visuals, the game succeeds in drawing the player into its world and never putting up quite enough of a speed bump to pull them back out. We’re talking about memorable puzzle set pieces, graphical fidelity lending a sense of atmosphere to an environment, and how this game is seasoned with just a peppering of ancient sci-fi secrets. Thank you for listening this week, and hopefully you weren’t thinking like “oh man, thank god they dropped that stupid Mystery May garbage. That was the dumbest and worst thing they ever did,” because we’ll be back next time talking about Her Story to cap off this enigmatic month and we’re very excited about it.