All games from The Chinese Room, best ranking

Highlights

• The Chinese Room is known for innovative, story-driven games that push the boundaries of gameplay and aesthetic experience.
• From VR world building to 2.5D platforming, the studio takes risks that pay off visually but may lack gameplay depth.
• Their pioneering work with walking simulators, such as Dear Esther, paved the way for a new genre in modern gaming.

There are many things that can be criticized about The Chinese Room, but a lack of innovation is certainly not one of them. Despite its small portfolio of games, the studio’s consistent ingenuity has made it a major player in the modern gaming industry. If you like, you could even credit them with creating an entire genre, namely walking simulators.

These games are about video games as an artistic medium, often pushing them to new heights with their top-notch aesthetic presentation and limitless gameplay. Or lack thereof. Of course, even within such an elite lineup, some games are better than others. If you’re wondering where to start with these fearless innovators, read on to find out.

6 So let us melt away

Ten million years of loneliness

You’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of So Let Us Melt, perhaps the most obscure title to come out of The Chinese Room. That’s because it was released in 2017 as an exclusive for the Daydream Android VR headset. VR never really took off like many thought it would, and that’s true of this game too. That’s a shame, because flaws aside, it’s a very compelling VR experience.

The story follows Custodian 98, a “world-building machine” in every sense of the word. Almost certainly a cheeky nod to the studio’s strengths. Over the course of ten million game years, you’ll terraform the new planet Kenopsia before its new human inhabitants arrive. In terms of gameplay, it’s largely a linear story sequence with a few tiny interactions, which is a weakness not only here but in the studio’s wider portfolio. Nevertheless, it’s a visual and aural treat.

5 Little Orpheus

A bold step into the second dimension

For most developers, the big step is moving from 2D to 3D gameplay. The Chinese Room went in the other direction. Their typical style is story-driven 3D adventures, so the jump to a 2.5D platformer in Little Orpheus was a big gamble. Thankfully, it paid off for the most part.

The game was released exclusively for Apple Arcade in 2020 before coming to all platforms later in 2022. This time, it was the story of Soviet cosmonaut Ivan Ivanovich, who was sent to Earth for research and accidentally stumbled upon incredible lost worlds. Expect nods to adventure classics from Jules Verne to Ray Harryhausen in this game.

Despite the move to a more traditional genre, you can also expect a story-to-gameplay ratio similar to other Chinese Room games. That is, a lot of the first, not much of the second. While this game was certainly an experience visually, the basic touch-based gameplay left a lot to be desired.

4 Amnesia: A machine for pigs

Get ready to pamper your creator

Amnesia: The Dark Descent was one of the most revered survival horror games of its generation, so taking the reins for the sequel from original developer Frictional Games was certainly an unenviable task. But The Chinese Room rose to the task with aplomb. A Machine for Pigs continued the twisted story structure of the first game, but unfortunately lost some of the overall magic in the process.

Gone were the inventory management puzzles and limited-fuel lantern that made Dark Descent so fiddly and exciting. Even more tragically, the original’s signature sanity meter was also removed, which in turn took away much of its charm. The result was an undeniably solid survival horror experience, but one that lost much of its rich structure in attempts to streamline the gameplay.

For anyone who didn’t like the original, or fans of a good horror story in general, A Machine for Pigs is still a great way to pass the time. However, it somehow feels less worthy in the shadow of its predecessor.

3 The depth still awakens

The game was rigged from the start

It’s always nice to see video games embrace certain cultures beyond those that are usually in the spotlight. Still Wakes the Deep does just that, sending a largely Scottish cast to an oil rig in the North Sea and unleashing some terrifying, sinister beasts. The dialect of protagonist Cameron “Caz” McLeary and his colleagues is wonderfully authentic, and the option to play the game with Gaelic subtitles adds to that.

Aside from its fun Scottish elements, Still Wakes the Deep is a typical survival horror game. You’ll be running from monsters, solving light puzzles, and slowly unraveling a complex, emotional narrative along the way. Like most Chinese Room games, it’s very linear, with only minor deviations from the main path. In terms of gameplay, it doesn’t offer anything particularly new, but what it does do is enough to support the stellar story that’s clearly the focus here.

2 Everyone has gone to the rapture

A successful spiritual successor

When you think of The Chinese Room, you usually think of two games. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is one of those games. A spiritual successor to the studio’s breakout title, Dear Esther, Rapture is the ultimate walking simulator experience with the dials turned up to 11. Set in the fictional English village of Yaughton, the story follows a duo of scientists trying to solve the mystery of the titular rapture that led to the villagers’ disappearance.

In terms of gameplay, there’s a lot of exploration to be done here as you slowly piece things together over multiple chapters. You can interact with the ghosts of missing villagers to receive nice world-building voice messages, which greatly enhances the game’s main strength: its atmosphere. Everything here feels ethereal and mysterious, perfectly building the intrigue that games like this live or die by. While walking simulators are a controversial genre, few would argue that Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture isn’t among the very best of them.

1 Dear Esther

A unique turning point

Sometimes when evaluating games, the quality of a particular title has to take a back seat to something more important. That’s 100 percent the case with Dear Esther. While it’s certainly not The Chinese Room’s best-looking game or the most engaging in terms of gameplay, it does have to be given credit for essentially creating the walking simulator genre. Before Dear Esther, the idea of ​​a game consisting solely of exploration and dialogue was unthinkable. Afterward, it became a hot new trend.

Dear Esther began as a Source Engine mod of an early version of The Chinese Room, then a research project at the University of Portsmouth. The experimental, academic influence of its origins is immediately apparent. The gameplay involves walking around listening to voice messages, and the story is a heavy tale of grief, alcoholism and depression. On the surface, that doesn’t sound great, but the result was a heady cocktail without which games like Firewatch and Gone Home would never have existed. Dear Esther was truly a pioneer of modern gaming, and for that we pay tribute to it.