At the start of the game, the developers tell you they won't be holding your hand. That's fair, but you get thrown into a game unlike any other adventure game and they don't even tell you the 'rules' to play it? That's not nice. It took me a while to figure out how to play this game and only then did I start to have fun, so I want to explain the basics in this guide.

Note that the developers of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, too, must have gathered that most people could do with at least some information on how to play, as they made a video and posted it on the Steam Store page (it's the third video). But beware: that video shows the solution for a whole part of the game so I don't recommend watching it but I recommend reading this completely spoiler-free guide instead.

In The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, you'll be roaming an open world. It's not a big world but it is completely open, except for some of the buildings that start out locked for story purposes. All in all, the story unfolds in ten major scenes. How and where you will find each scene is up to you to discover, but you should know the following mechanics:

• Explore the entire game world. If you encounter an object you can interact with, that means you've found a scene.
  
  
• Click on an object to inspect it.
  
  
• When the name of an object (with a question mark behind it) appears multiple times on your screen, you'll notice that turning the camera causes the words to get closer together or to get further apart. You need to focus the camera so the words merge and you only see the item name once. This will tell you two things: first, the direction you're facing when the words merge is the direction the item is to be found in. Second, you can click and hold the mouse button or the controller button to see a scene showing you where the object is located.
  
  Sometimes, the game won't even show the name of the object but will only show a bunch of question marks instead. The principle is the same: move the camera around until the question marks merge into one single row of question marks, and then click and hold the mouse button or the controller button.
  
  
• If the game says you can hold button (mouse button or controller button), that means you can see a 'vision'. If the vision won't fully trigger (only a small part of your screen is covered with the vision), that means you need to investigate further and try again after you've found or done something else.
  
  
• Only when a Steam Achievement pops and the game saves, are you completely finished with a scene. If you think you're ready but the achievement didn't pop and you're still in 'vision' mode (night), that usually means you just need to find one more spot nearby with a subscene to trigger, which will point you to the next scene.