The rise in popularity of so-called ‘walking simulators’ in recent years propagated an existential crisis in the gaming world. In video games like Dear Esther (2012), Firewatch (2016), and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2016), the absence of an overriding purpose troubled gamers used to goal-oriented fetch quests and destructive tasks. In this new genre, nothing much happens. The player wanders around a finite environment – an island in the Hebrides; Shoshone National Forest; a 1980s Shropshire village – with no aim other than exploration as a means to convey an unfolding narrative. In each case a poignant story is revealed, delivered by a narrator or visual cues. In Dear Esther, a bereaved man reads letters to his dead wife. Firewatch has a forest fire lookout coming to terms with early onset dementia in his partner. In Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, an English village has been abandoned and the player must discover why.