Firewatch celebrated its 10-year anniversary on February 9, 2025. Below, we study the origins of the so-called “walking simulator” and why the hearth seems to have died out.When Firewatch launched on February ninth, 2016, it was simple to narrate to the sport’s leads, Henry and Delilah. These characters spent a summer time staring down as fireplace unfold, slowly filling the forest round their watchtowers with smoke. Observers of the “walking sim” style noticed the same blaze burn throughout the last decade. It started with Dear Esther, sparked to scorching flame with the friction of Gone Home’s launch, and have become a towering inventive inferno with trendy classics like Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch. As the 2010s got here to an in depth, followers anticipated the hearth to proceed raging by way of the ’20s.Instead, it burned out. A decade after Campo Santo launched this deeply human recreation about paranoia in a nationwide park, strolling sims have fallen from mainstream prominence. It’s not that nobody is making them anymore–there are tiny indies accessible on platforms like itch.io. But the groups that made the defining video games have spun their wheels, offered their studios, or cut up. And The Game Awards nominations have dried up, too. Despelote is the one recreation within the style to obtain recognition this decade with two nods, in comparison with 5 for Firewatch, three noms and one win for Edith Finch, a Games for Impact nod for Sunset, and a Best Independent Game nomination for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter–all in a three-year span. In the 2010s, yearly or two noticed the discharge of an iconic, broadly mentioned entry, however we’re six years into the 2020s and nonetheless ready.So what occurred? Where did video games like Firewatch go? Where did they arrive from within the first place? And what even is a strolling simulator anyway?FirewatchFirst Things FirstIf you wish to perceive how strolling sims captured gaming’s creativeness within the 2010s, Firewatch is a superb place to begin. Like most titles within the style, it’s a combat-free, story-focused first-person recreation a couple of lone character exploring an unpopulated house. In Firewatch, that house was a largely empty Shoshone National Park. In Fullbright’s Gone Home, it was an deserted household house within the Pacific Northwest. In its follow-up, Tacoma, it was an area station within the wake of its crew’s mysterious disappearance.Isolation was a characteristic, not a bug, however these video games used off-screen characters to melt their inherent loneliness. In The Stanley Parable, a complicated narrator described your each transfer, encouraging or discouraging sure programs of motion. In Tacoma, you watched hologram recordings of the station’s lacking inhabitants. In What Remains of Edith Finch, you grew to become every of the characters who had deserted the sprawling home, enjoying as them by way of quick vignettes.Firewatch casts gamers as Henry, a person who takes an remoted job at a lookout tower within the Wyoming woods to flee a tough marriage. As you discover the forest, compass and map on the prepared, you converse to your charismatic supervisor, Delilah, by radio. And that, mechanically talking, is mainly it. Firewatch is a wonderful story with well-realized, flawed, human characters. The few stuff you do are autos for Campo Santo to inform that story.The style’s lack of mechanical depth made it attainable for indie groups to make video games with excessive manufacturing worth, and that was actually the case for Firewatch. Though it was made by a small crew–Campo Santo was simply 12 builders sturdy as of 2018–it seemed and appeared like one thing made by a a lot bigger studio. Its artwork type was painterly, emphasizing beautiful colour over realism. Its UI was minimalist however fashionable. Its script boasted pages of sturdy writing; if Henry noticed one thing on the earth, he may pull up his walkie-talkie and Delilah would have one thing to say about it. And although there have been solely two main voice roles, each had been acted to perfection.Side observe: Though the “walking simulator” identify has since been used to explain video games like Death Stranding and Baby Steps, which discover and derive problem from the mechanics of strolling, the video games that gave the style its identify weren’t all that involved in strolling. It was simply the principle motion left over as soon as builders stripped out taking pictures, puzzle-solving, and different acquainted game-y actions.A Lost TechnologyThe devs that ended up making this type of recreation had been both scaling up or cutting down. Early titles like Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable began out as Half-Life 2 mods, earlier than their builders reworked them as standalone releases. And Gone Home and Firewatch had been each made by triple-A expats, devs who had left greater studios behind to blaze their very own path. The core Fullbright group began working collectively at 2K Marin whereas making BioShock 2’s Minerva’s Den DLC. And Campo Santo’s Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman each hailed from Telltale, the place that they had helped lead improvement on The Walking Dead.FirewatchWith that method, it looks as if strolling sims may proceed to thrive within the 2020s. With widespread layoffs, there are extra unemployed builders with triple-A expertise than ever earlier than. And with established devs having honed their abilities within the 2010s, it appeared affordable to anticipate them to return within the 2020s with extra superior, extra sophisticated, extra mature expansions of the style.But that hasn’t been the case. The builders who pioneered the style principally stopped making games–either within the style, or altogether.Fullbright cut up in two after allegations of poisonous conduct towards co-founder Steve Gaynor. The studio’s strolling sim follow-up, Open Roads, was launched in 2024 underneath the studio identify Open Roads Team. It made little impression and earned middling opinions. Gaynor maintained the rights to the Fullbright identify and has used it for his personal tasks, like 2024’s Fullbright Presents Toilet Spiders–a horror recreation about, you guessed it, spiders in bathrooms. His subsequent recreation, Springs, Eternal, appears to be like to be extra in step with the video games that put Fullbright on the map, a PS1-inspired horror title about exploring a “a secluded hot springs in the dead of night.” But Fullbright, as we knew it, would not exist anymore.What Remains of Edith Finch turns 9 this April, however its creator, Giant Sparrow, has mentioned little about its nature-focused subsequent undertaking since 2017. According to its barebones web site, it plans to workers up in mid-2026. Davey Wreden, who co-developed The Stanley Parable, made a strolling sim follow-up, The Beginner’s Guide, in 2015. Outside of small video games launched on itch.io, Wreden was largely quiet till final 12 months’s Wanderstop, a comfy recreation. Brendon Chung, who made the small however influential Thirty Flights of Loving reversed the method that led to the creation of the strolling sim, including mechanics again in. His newest, Skin Deep, is an efficient, old school immersive sim.And Campo Santo, which was set to evolve its tackle the style with an Egypt-set first-person journey titled In the Valley of Gods, was acquired by Valve in 2018. The recreation was placed on ice. Its Steam web page continues to be up, although its launch date is ready to the faraway December 2029 and, so far as we all know, it stays on maintain. That acquisition wasn’t completely unhealthy information. Several members of the group performed key roles on the wonderful Half-Life: Alyx. But it does imply {that a} main participant within the style has taken itself off the desk.The Chinese Room, which made Dear Esther, is likely one of the few studios that continues to make first-person adventures. But it has caught to horror with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Still Wakes the Deep, giving its video games an easier-to-sell style part. It additionally highlights how simple it’s to make video games that are not strolling sims. When a style is outlined by what it excludes, it is simple for a recreation to iterate its manner out.We Need A Nice, Long WalkAn inhospitable business hasn’t helped. As talked about above, layoffs have been widespread within the 2020s, with many builders leaving the video games business completely. The “indiepocalypse” that many feared within the 2010s is right here: The market is overcrowded, and standing out is tougher than ever. Walking sims had been excessive on manufacturing worth and lightweight on mechanics, however the breakout indies of the 2020s have reversed that method. Balatro, Vampire Survivors, and Megabonk seem like they might have come out in 1998 however hook gamers with inviting mechanical depth.Walking sims, greater than most genres, would profit from business stability. A recreation like Firewatch requires endurance to create and endurance to understand. When it launched in 2016, a number of critics in contrast it to guide. It is not flashy, would not have a giant high-concept mechanical hook, and will not make gamers say, “Just one more round.” But it rewards your time with a narrative well-told, an abiding sense of environment, and unforgettable characters. If that is not price investing money and time in, what’s?
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