The Vanishing of Ethan Carter dev releases creepy first screenshots

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter developer The Astronauts released the game's first screenshots today, showing off the beautiful but unsettling world of the macabre adventure game.

All four images are taken from the first few minutes of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and are gameplay screenshots, since The Astronauts isn't planning on including any cutscenes in the first-person title.

Players take the role of an occult detective named Paul Prospero, who receives an alarming letter from a boy named Ethan Carter; it turns out that Carter vanished after a brutal murder, and you have to explore the environment to glean clues as to his whereabouts. Prospero has a supernatural gift that comes in handy: the ability to see the final moments of a murder victim's life.

For more on The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, you can check out the prequel mini-comic that The Astronauts released online in July, and read our interview with the former Bulletstorm and Painkiller developers from back when they announced the project this past February. The game is in development on Windows PC, and the studio hopes to bring it to next-generation consoles as well. The eight-person team at The Astronauts has not announced a release window.