Environmental Storytelling and Active Spectatorship in Walking Simulators and Exploration Theatre

Environmental storytelling in exploration-based immersive theatre and walking simulators is the subject of this study, which argues that both forms place the surrounding environment at the centre of narrative meaning and offer participants exploratory freedom without the power to alter the story's events. The central claim is that these media cast audiences and players as "active spectators": they move through spaces, interpret traces, and feel atmosphere, yet their agency is confined to interpretation rather than intervention. The analysis draws comparisons between Punchdrunk productions such as Sleep No More and The Burnt City and walking simulators including Dear Esther, Gone Home, Firewatch, Proteus, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.

The work identifies two principal environmental strategies. The first is indexical storytelling, in which objects and spatial arrangements function as cause-and-effect clues that invite participants to reconstruct past events, casting them as detectives. The second is atmospheric storytelling, in which mood and sensory qualities communicate meaning affectively and aesthetically. Drawing on Jenkins' account of embedded narrative and Böhme's theory of atmosphere, the study maps these strategies onto two modes of engagement: the "seeker," who pursues clues and engages in voyeuristic exploration, and the "wanderer," who responds to felt atmosphere.

A key finding is that these strategies are not mutually exclusive but operate together as synaesthetic processes, in which sense-making and sensory experience blend. The author contends that the wanderer mode, in particular, involves disinterested contemplation and respectful distance rather than narcissistic participation. Drawing on Romantic conceptions of the sublime, the analysis situates this mode within a longer aesthetic tradition.

The study concludes that combining game studies with theatre studies offers a richer framework for understanding environmental storytelling in both forms than either discipline provides alone.