The principle oddity in this experience for me, other than myself, was the save game system. The game saves when you're deemed to have solved a puzzle (and at a couple of other notable moments). This means that you can spend ages wandering about Red Creek Valley not achieving anything, leave the game, and come back in a completely different location - the location that you last solved a mystery. This was an ambiguity in the game that I didn't enjoy so much. When I'm forced by the demands of the outside world (you know, making meals, putting people to bed, going to work, that sort of mundane reality), to break from the suspension of reality that is involved in such an absorbing world, I do at least want to be sure that I'm not going to lose my place in the story - and the exploration of the world is a large part of the story in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, so losing that sense of progress is a problem.