# on the design concepts behind ether one ether one while technically successful its underlying ideas seem entirely forgettable quotes from the official website ether one(tm) is a first person adventure that deals with the fragility of the human mind love that use of the trade mark - signalling that this is a franchise with ideas(tm) worth protecting yet why is it in first person? how is it an adventure? how does this garme deal with the supposed fragility of the human mind? what is this mind ether one seeks to engage with? there are two paths in the world you can choose from. at its core is a story exploration path free from puzzles where you can unfold the story at your own pace why are there two paths - as opposed to just one or three? if it's possible to avoid puzzles why do they exist at all? how does avoiding them mean the story unfolds at my own pace? there is also a deeper more adventurous path in which you can complete complex puzzles to restore life changing events of the patient's history in order to help the validation of ir life this is information content zero. a deeper more adventurous path - what even deeper and more adventuresome offered by puzzle solving than by the actual story? these elements seem disjointed - at odds. also what could validation mean in this context? the choice is left to you why - what's so great about having a choice? has the developer nothing firm to say themselves? // video here note how such a nice graphical style signals absolutely nothing about the state - and therefore meaning - of teh garme as a system and seem to exist merely to attract easily distracted players while there's little wrong with its serious initial premise teh garme as a whole seems a trivial attempt to understand engage with or say something important about dementia as for the (perhaps inherently) awful voice acting: notice how they says "i'm impressed" - like your skill at bad video garmes is a turn on. (is this the message teh garme wants to express? it might be more interesting than what's on offer) improving ether one via memory if the designers wanted to say anything interesting about dementia about the highly personal feeling of loss faced by someone with it or the loss of a loved one they could have used memory and memorization as a mechanic example: remember a short sequence of items personal to the patient (perhaps for use elsewhere); then ask the player if they'd like to remember a longer sequence - the idea being that the more you remember the greater the benefits to the player / patient while generally a (nice looking) garme conceptually ether one feels a ripoff - a parody of the false ideas of what an indie title should be - eg. 'address serious issues'; in this case darius kazemi is right // republic of bob