Firewatch celebrated its 10-year anniversary on February 9, 2025. Below, we examine the origins of the so-called “walking simulator” and why the fire appears to have died out.
When Firewatch launched on February 9th, 2016, it was easy to relate to the game’s leads, Henry and Delilah. These characters spent a summer staring down as fire spread, slowly filling the forest around their watchtowers with smoke. Observers of the “walking sim” genre saw a similar blaze burn across the decade. It began with Dear Esther, sparked to scorching flame with the friction of Gone Home’s release, and became a towering creative inferno with modern classics like Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch. As the 2010s came to a close, fans expected the fire to continue raging through the ’20s.
Instead, it burned out. A decade after Campo Santo released this deeply human game about paranoia in a national park, walking sims have fallen from mainstream prominence. It’s not that no one is making them anymore–there are tiny indies available on platforms like itch.io. But the teams that made the defining games have spun their wheels, sold their studios, or split. And The Game Awards nominations have dried up, too. Despelote is the only game in the genre to receive recognition this decade with two nods, compared to five for Firewatch, three noms and one win for Edith Finch, a Games for Impact nod for Sunset, and a Best Independent Game nomination for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter–all in a three-year span. In the 2010s, every year or two saw the release of an iconic, widely discussed entry, but we’re six years into the 2020s and still waiting.
