The Death of Erin Myers Review

A brief but meaningful peek into the life and death of a troubled woman

Category: Reviews.
Written by: Cindy Kyser on May 1, 2019
Developed by: Viperante
Published by: Viperante
Release Date: April 26, 2019
Genre: Point-and-Click Short Story
Platform: Windows

Based in Yorkshire county, England, Viperante is an indie development group formed in 2003. Their stated goal is to “create deep, engaging, thought-provoking, narrative-driven games.” Founder Daniel Lee Peach believes that story and character are the most important elements to draw the player into a game. To this end, Viperante is focused in three areas: (1) ‘standard’ games, (2) short story series games, and (3) experimental games.

Their first “standard” game, Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting, was released in 2012, and an enhanced edition became available on Steam in 2015. It received positive reviews, including accolades from Just Adventure . In 2013, Karla interviewed Daniel and he shared his passion for gaming and writing.

The Death of Erin Myers is Viperante’s first foray into a planned anthology series of point-and-click adventures based on short stories. The game opens with one salient fact: Erin Myers is dead. We do not know how or why she died.

Erin’s story unfolds through nine short segments that flash back on specific events and dreams from her life. Each is presented in a unique location with a set of find-and-use inventory problems to accomplish a task (e.g., entering a building, opening a safe, performing a chore, etc.). Each is a stand-alone scene that provides clues about what happened to Erin Myers. Because each segment is self-contained, there is no trekking around in search of active objects. Everything you need for a specific situation is found within the current setting. When the end arrives, we have our answer based on the information revealed as we’ve participated in these nine scenarios.

The game is played from the first-person perspective of Erin. In some scenes, we observe her interactions with others. In all scenes, we are privy to her thoughts. You begin to sense that Erin is a woman who is fighting personal demons and that there is an undercurrent of emotion that you can’t quite figure out. The scenes feel disjointed until they begin to form a pattern and you have the ‘Eureka!’ moment when the proverbial puzzle pieces fall into place. I will say very little about the ending other than the fact that one cannot help but have empathy and compassion for Erin.

As advertised, The Death of Erin Myers is a short story and the game took me about 90 minutes to complete. The graphics are 2D with traditional point-and-click navigation. There are no voiceovers, with Erin’s conversations and thoughts presented as text that can be clicked through at your own pace. However, I would still recommend headphones as the game includes a mood-setting soundtrack of instrumental music by Kevin MacLeod.

When starting up the game, a controls screen is displayed with everything you need to know about gameplay. Clicking on hotspots in the environment reveals information about an object or person. Some objects can be picked up and placed in inventory for later use. Inventory is accessed by moving your mouse to the lower part of the screen. Items in inventory can be used, combined, or examined by clicking the mouse. I’m happy to report that The Death of Erin Myers has an explicit save function with mutiple slots. There is no auto-save and you are warned that progress will be lost if you exit without saving.

I enjoyed The Death of Erin Myers and appreciate the way the narrative unfolds through the nine segments. Erin’s story drew me in from the beginning and I liked the fact that, in less than two hours, I had uncovered the truth about her death. All in all, it is an artfully crafted adventure with a mystery to solve and a character that you will reflect upon after you’ve finished playing.

Grade A-

+ Creative format packs a lot of story (explicit and implied) into a brief adventure + Disparate scenarios come together into an unexpected conclusion, leaving few loose ends + Find and use puzzles make sense within the context of each scene – Grammarians may cringe reading “informal” English (gonna, wanna, outta, etc.)

Trailer:

OS: Windows 98/XP/Vista/7/8/10
Processor: Dual Core 2 GHz
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: 128 MB DirectX compatible graphics card
DirectX : Version 9.0c
Storage: 200 MB available space
Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card
Additional Notes: Display capable of 1280×720 resolution, mouse, and keyboard required