Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

People who say "there is no sprint button" are wrong and have been wrong for 10 years. There IS a run button, but you build up speed gradually over 3-6 seconds, sprint only functions outdoors and outside of scene transitions. The game is meant to be leisurely explored and experienced, not rushed through. Turn the TikTok brain off and let yourself get lost. The map looks bigger than it is, it takes 12 minutes to go from top to bottom/vice versa with sprinting. Hauntingly beautiful game set in an English small town where the player arrives 37 minutes after the world we know it has ended and works to unravel the mystery of the Rapture.

This is another brilliant PC game from the people who brought us Dear Esther. Less a game than an interactive story, Rapture relies largely on mood and atmosphere to beguile the player. The village of Yaughton is home to an observatory with several telescopes, and it is invaded by a mysterious other-worldly light source, a type of energy that seems to absorb the people of the village. The player arrives after the town is empty of people, and we get glimpses into their lives and personal troubles as we visit sites that still have particles of energy in them, and pieces of a story to tell. The player wanders for an entire day, from morning till nightfall, and can go just about anywhere, except when blocked by fences, hedge rows, blockades, etc. There is even a thunderstorm at one point, humourously added as one arrives at the lake and holiday camp. We are led through the game by a powerful ball of pure energy. If one gets stumped on where to go next, merely stand still for a few minutes and the energy will reappear and lead the way again. For PC gamers it's best to turn off the tuning system, otherwise too much time is wasted trying to retrieve messages at certain points. Onc…

[b]Slow as hell — and absolutely worth it.[/b] I somehow completely missed Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture when it originally released and only stumbled across it by accident in 2025. And hell, am I thankful I did. This is definitely not a game for anyone looking for constant action. It is incredibly slow, even by walking simulator standards, but once I got invested in figuring out what happened, I couldn’t stop. Walking through this completely abandoned English village, finding little pieces of people’s lives and slowly connecting everything together is an experience I won’t forget. The game doesn’t just dump the story in front of you — you have to piece it together yourself, and watching the bigger picture gradually emerge is incredibly satisfying. The atmosphere is phenomenal as well. The beautiful countryside combined with the complete absence of people creates this strange mixture of peaceful, melancholic and unsettling that I haven’t really experienced anywhere else. It’s a very specific kind of game and certainly won’t be for everyone. But if you enjoy slowly unraveling a mystery and letting a story reveal itself at its own pace, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is som…

I was willing to put up with the walking / running speed, not to mention slightly lagging frames in some areas, on top of time consuming collectibles & tasks to unlock achievements until I got softlocked in one of main story areas and cannot progress anymore. It made a checkpoint afterwards so reloading the game and waiting didn't work at all. It's a shame because I genuinely enjoy the story a lot but I cannot be bothered to do another playthrough due to the slow speed and having to recollect all of collectibles for achievements all over again. Don't get me wrong, I love walking simulators especially if they have good stories such as this. But this is really pushing the definition of *walking* in the walking simulator title. I'd just watch a video on this game instead of playing it and wasting your time.

There are many games out there which are jokingly referred to as 'Walking Simulators' but which offer rich, immersive, and relaxing explorations of wonderful new worlds or places, often telling a compelling story throughout. This is not one of them. 'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture' is an exercise in how easily a game can be hostile to the player. You nearly always move at a walking pace, which would normally be fine, until an hour in which you realize you are tethered to it and that every step in any direction means spending twice that time to go in any other--a toll which quickly ramps up to feel like an extreme cost. Imagine the feeling of carrying a full sack of cement with you everywhere that you go. That is precisely what you are in for here. Maybe there's a building back across the street you're not sure that you explored. In that case, prepare to lock in for a good five minutes of retracing your steps. This is not hyperbole. Or what if you discover that a particular object is interactable and remember that there was one in another house you recall from a few hours back? You may be in for a full hour of tediously dragging yourself all the way back to that locatio…

Totally confusing but addictive.