Five best walking sims, selected by Visual Effects, Digital Arts & Animation Programme Lead

Walking simulators have challenged and altered how video games are played, experienced and defined. In an attention greedy industry, their break from traditional game mechanics bought criticism. Since their introduction, perceptions of the genre have shifted focus from what they don’t have, to what they do differently. Today gamers playing walking sims have come to expect strong narratives and engaging exploration, while the industry on the whole has adopted their ideas.

Our second year Visual Effects, Digital Arts & Animation students are assigned the project of building their own. Today we’re sharing Programme Lead Awu’s top five walking sims. We’ve identified what makes them truly special – both as gaming experience and as learning tools for our students.

Originally created as an academic experiment by Dr Dan Pinchbeck, Dear Esther might seem like an unlikely game to reshape the industry – but that’s exactly what it did. Released commercially in 2012, this haunting first-person experience broke the mould by stripping away traditional game mechanics. There are no puzzles to solve, no enemies to fight – just a voice reading letters to a woman named Esther as you explore a remote, windswept island. As you journey toward the summit, you slowly piece together a story of love, loss and longing. What started as a university project has since become a landmark title that influenced how developers use exploration, space and atmosphere as storytelling tools in modern games.

Dear Esther presents a powerful lesson for students on both our Visual Effects, Digital Arts & Animation and our Film Production programme. The game offers a powerful lesson in how to build a story through space. The island isn’t just a backdrop – it is the narrative. Every flicker of light, weathered cave wall and distant landmark adds depth to the emotional landscape. Without NPCs or cutscenes, the story emerges through mood, colour and movement. This is an immersive, visual poem that unfolds at the player’s pace. It is rare to find such a good example of world-building, where the world itself does the talking.

Firewatch is a first-person, single-player mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness. Players start by learning and making decisions about the life of protagonist Henry. Then, over the course of the summer, Henry has to unravel a years-old mystery with another fire watcher and boss, Delilah. So what can our students learn from Firewatch? Aspiring digital artists will be interested to hear the starting point of Firewatch’s outstanding visual language.

The starting point for the visual language of Firewatch tells an interesting story for artists interested in gaming. The game was directed by Sean Vanaman and Olly Moss, best known for reimaginings of movie posters, and produced by Gabe McGill and artist Jane Ng. The starting point for Jane when modelling the game’s environment was based on a single painting by Olly, resulting in impressionist-like scenery. The design then drew further inspiration from iconic 1960s National Park posters and field research conducted in Yosemite National Park.

Firewatch reminds us that great game design begins not with code, but with imagination and artistic intent.

Creator Jenova Chen designs games to provoke emotional responses and move beyond the typical "defeat/kill/win" mentality. Journey invites players to feel small in a vast, awe-inspiring desert as they travel toward a distant mountain. Along the way, they may encounter others on the same path. but with no speech or text, communication happens only through a musical chime that shapes the environment and enables progress. Critically acclaimed for its visuals and emotional impact, what stands out most for us at Catalyst is how music plays a central role in that experience.

The music, composed by Austin Wintory, acts as an emotional co-pilot. The soundtrack feels responsive, adapting in real time to your actions and interactions within the game. Instead of assigning themes to places or characters, Wintory scored the entire game around a single theme that evolves with you. The cello – representing the player – weaves through an orchestral landscape that shifts like sand around you. The soundtrack  was nominated at the 2013 Grammy Awards and has gone on to be recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra.

For our Music and Sound for Visual Media students, Journey offers a masterclass in scoring with intention, emotion and immersion.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a pushes forward narrative design and emotional storytelling. At its core, it’s about legacy and loss, memory and mystery. You step into the shoes of Edith Finch as she returns to her sprawling, strange childhood home. With each creaking door and hidden passageway, you uncover the lives – and untimely deaths – of her relatives. The house itself becomes a kind of living scrapbook, echoing with stories waiting to be told.

One of the extraordinary features in this game is the storytelling methods. Each chapter is a first-person vignette that shifts in tone, visual style and gameplay mechanics, offering a kaleidoscopic look at mortality. In this way, the game explores fate, free will and the blurred lines between memory and truth. For our students, it’s a powerful reminder of how interactive storytelling can defy convention, elevate emotion and blur the boundary between game and art. That’s exactly why it earns its place on our top 5 – as a benchmark for what’s possible when narrative and design work hand in hand to deliver a lasting emotional impact.

Of course, bringing these ideas to life takes a whole team. Now imagine this: a Screenwriting student writing a character’s emotional arc – while a VFX artist brings it to life through a shifting environment. This is the world we're building at Catalyst.

The Stanley Parable puts you in the mind-numbingly beige shoes of Stanley, whose job is to push buttons... until one day, no instructions come. His coworkers vanish. The office is empty. And then, we hear the narrator. But here’s the twist: you can listen to him – or you can disobey. Take the door he tells you to? Or sneak off and see what happens? Each decision leads to wildly different outcomes, all laced with absurdist humour and philosophical undertones. This is storytelling that breaks the fourth wall, bends expectations and dares the player to ask “what if?” at every turn.

At its core, The Stanley Parable is a clever interrogation of traditional game design, presenting a looping maze of questions about choice, agency and control. And behind all the surreal twists lies something vital for everyone involved in creativity: problem solving. As we’ve seen in the other top picks, taking well considered risks can have a big reward. The Stanley Parable shows how subverting expectations can lead to some original storytelling moments, as well as subject for discussion after the fact.

At Catalyst, you'll learn the tools and techniques to bring your ideas to life and apply them to the demands of the film, gaming and design industries. We value the inherently creative process of storytelling, both on the dedicated Visual Effects, Digital Arts & Animation BA programme and across the programmes taught at all of our Schools. What better place to grow as a creative than one in which you are within arm's reach of broad-minded musicians, talented screenwriting specialists, up-and-coming filmmakers and actors ready to step onto the set.