The intention was to explore the limits of the first-person shooter genre. This was the idea that drove a small group of researchers at the University of Portsmouth to develop the original version of Dear Esther in 2007. Set on a remote Hebridean island, the game offered no puzzles, no peril, no allies or enemies to interact with. The player progressed through the haunted, barren landscape while a tragic story of love and loss played out around them. They walked, they listened, they watched.

It was minimal, it was experimental, but there was something about the game – its beautiful environments, its haunting soundtrack, its sullen, almost despairing atmosphere, that caught people’s attention. This was a genre associated with fast-paced blasters like Doom and Unreal, but here was a game about a man descending into grief, the nature of which remained elusive, but centred on the titular Esther. It generated enough interest that co-creators Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry were able to set up their studio, The Chinese Room (named after the philosophical thought experiment), as a commercial venture to develop a standalone version.

Turned out dark again, dear … Dear Esther’s despairing atmosphere. Photograph: The Chinese Room

Almost a decade later, a sub-genre of experiential games, often dismissively termed walking simulators, has emerged from Dear Esther’s foundations. Titles like Gone Home, The Stanley Parable and Firewatch, use a similar minimalist approach to game design, toning down traditional interactive elements to concentrate on story and environment. The emergence of this hybrid approach – part interactive fiction, part visual novel, part adventure game – has proved controversial and divisive. But with an era of consumer virtual reality fast approaching, it has also quietly become a staple. Dear Esther was at the beginning of this history – and now it is coming back. UK publisher Curve Digital is releasing an enhanced version of the game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year.

“We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” says Pinchbeck. “When we were working on [PlayStation 4 title] Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, it came more to the forefront. Rapture did really well so we thought it made sense to get the original game out there.”

The team considered updating the game themselves, but realised it would detract too much from their current project. Instead, they decided to work with Curve, a small publisher that has specialised in updating and converting interesting, cult games to new platforms. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game are entirely faithful to the PC incarnation, with a few graphical tweaks. “It’s the same game. The whole thing has been lifted on to Unity, which Rob [Briscoe] did a lot of the work on before handing over to Curve. They’ve looked at the codebase and tidied it up, smoothing off some of the rough edges, taking care of a couple of glitches in the game. It’s an equivalent experience, just slightly smoother.”

The new version will, however, feature an optional director’s commentary provided by the original development team of Dan, Rob and Jessica. “It’s been exciting to go back and review the game,” says Pinchbeck. “I actually don’t think it’s dated in terms of production values, which speaks of the extraordinary job Rob and Jess did, as well as Nigel [Carrington] with the voice over. It doesn’t look like a game that’s over three years old. It still stands up.

“At the time, we didn’t have any huge expectations, we just wanted to make it. But it’s nice to go back and see that things like the randomised narrative, and the fact that object placement is slightly randomised too, really works. It tells an interesting story in an interesting way. Now I look at it and think, wow, three people made this!”

A moonlit nocturnal setting in Dear Esther. Photograph: The Chinese Room

What Pinchbeck says he didn’t foresee was how Dear Esther’s approach to narrative gaming would prove so influential, or would at least be at the forefront of a coming wave of experimental games: the so-called walking sims. From the very beginning Dear Esther drew derision from some areas of the video game community who challenged its identity as a game. While Dear Esther was winning awards and garnering plaudits from critics and, interestingly, the hardcore first-person shooter modding community, it was also meeting resistance and fuelling controversy about what games were or could be.

“I have no problem with the term walking sim,” laughs Pinchbeck. “I’m just owning that now. For me, the game grew out of our love for first-person shooters. We just looked slightly to the left of the genre. We felt we were drawing on ideas that have a long heritage in first-person games. There are a lot of ideas drawn from System Shock and even Doom in the way the game works. We just wanted to change the mix a little bit. We didn’t think when we made it that it would be influential.”

Pinchbeck says that the important thing about Dear Esther’s 2012 release as a standalone game, was that this was a period of wider narrative experimentation in the games industry. “It was almost like a return to storytelling,” he says. “During the 1980s, you had text-based adventures, you actually had more experimentation with storytelling than was happening in games a few years before Dear Esther. But then came games like Far cry 2 and System Shock 2, games that were doing amazing things with story; the time felt right to ask, ‘What if we take this one step further? Will that still be interesting?’”

A tranquil and beautiful post apocalypse … Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Photograph: PR

It was. Dear Esther went on to sell over 800,000 units, and its spiritual successor, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture – about how an apocalyptic event affects a small Shropshire village – has performed well on PlayStation 4. The later game, though built for console, retained the quiet, almost tranquil drama of Esther, through its visually beautiful rendering of a tiny community, and the extraordinary score by Curry.

It seems fitting for those who have come fresh to The Chinese Room’s work through Rapture to experience the game that started it all. It is always difficult in games, just like any other medium, to pinpoint the start of new movements or genres – the edges are always blurry. But Dear Esther, along with Gone Home, set in place the fundaments of an approach to interactive narrative that is now informing a whole host of interesting titles like A.Part.Ment, Fragments of Him and Town of Light.

“I was lucky enough to interview John Carmack a few years ago,” recalls Pinchbeck. “He said about Doom, if we hadn’t done it, someone else would have. I said to him at the time, ‘Yes, but it was how you did it.’ I think there probably would have been something like Dear Esther, the time was right for it. But what I’m proud of is how the team did it. There was something special about the passion that Rob and Jess and Nigel brought to it. That really made it.”