Dear Esther is a narrative-focused game with almost no interactions between the player and the world, a design which was controversial on release but later proved influential.

[1] The player's only objective in the game is to explore an unnamed island in the Hebrides, Scotland, listening to a troubled man read a series of letters to his deceased wife.

[6] The original rendition of Dear Esther was one of several Source Engine mods developed by The Chinese Room while the studio was still a research project at the University of Portsmouth.

The project was funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Dan Pinchbeck, a professor and lecturer at the university.

[8] Independent games artist Robert Briscoe began work on completely redeveloping Dear Esther in 2009, with the full support of Pinchbeck.

[13] Within six hours of the remastered release on Steam, over 16,000 units had been sold, allowing the developers to pay back the full Indie Fund investment.

In the remake's development, Curry overhauled and re-orchestrated the score to be fuller and longer, featuring more instruments and reaching nearly double the length of the original soundtrack.

[22] Despite commendations for its premise and story, the original mod release received complaints of poor level design and numerous glitches or bugs in moving about the terrain.

Maxwell McGee of GameSpot claimed that "[the] story in Dear Esther works well in video game form—possibly more than as a book or movie."

Destructoid's Pinsof stated that "[the] ironic thing is that the most pedestrian of stories can be convincing when coupled with intelligently applied interaction—something Dear Esther stubbornly stands against.

"[27] PC Gamer did not find the basic gameplay to be a problem, stating that "the lack of puzzles is necessary: it's crucial to the experience that you're allowed to keep moving at your own pace.

Reviewing for bit-tech, Joe Martin called the game "a graphical masterpiece", commenting that "what gives Dear Esther's visuals such a poignant edge is how masterfully it extends the sense of loneliness and isolation that's conveyed in the script".