Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - This Is England

Aug. 19, 2015

Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture – This Is England

In this age of hyper realistic graphics, slick 1080p resolutions and cinematic presentations in games, why am I so focused on a stretch of tarmac?

This isn’t any stretch of tarmac. There’s no cars screaming down it, no barriers set up for a cover based shoot out and most certainly no mutilated corpses on this stretch of tarmac. No, it’s just a stretch of road, which is what makes it so special. There’s a pot hole in it, worn down road markings and a Give Way sign at a junction. It’s real and it could be any road in England.

Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture is resplendent in these little details as it perfectly simulates rural English life in the fictional Shropshire village of Yaughton (probably based on Laughton). This isn’t an action game, rather a mystery that needs to be unraveled. You start the game staring out over the English countryside, by the side of an observatory, with no on screen messages, no obvious direction and just the sound of a radio static but therein lies the genius.

The game directs you subtly from clue to clue as you begin to piece together a scientific experiment gone wrong, which results in the people of the village disappearing into thin air. A ball of light bounces around like an excited puppy leading you from clue to clue, but it’s never intrusive, never obtuse and doesn’t get annoyed if you don’t listen to it.

Discovering the story is completely up to you. You could follow the trail of light or instead you could wander into someone’s pristine back garden to admire their flower beds, or hang around in the village pub marveling at the price of a curry and a pint of beer (£2, in case you’re wondering). If you’re particularly interested, you could try and place the date of the game’s setting by looking at the accurate licence plates on cars (1981 is my current working theory). Everything is meticulously researched and recreated with stunning precision.

Talking any more about the game would be spoiling it’s secrets and surprises, but look at it this way, in the first half an hour of the game you will go through curiosity, amusement, sheer shock and absolute bafflement. Trust me when I say, if you get the opportunity to play this game then do it. You’d be mad to miss out on it.

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JudasBlitzkrieg

The town is as much a character as anything else in the game. Truly superb work

I can appreciate that hyper attention to detail, similar to Bioshock. I love it when the environment becomes its own storytelling element.