Farlands

Farlands carries the feel of a world made for wandering, which is usually enough to tell you the game is about exploration, discovery, and moving through open space at your own pace. By our assessment, that kind of setup works best when the map itself is the main attraction, because the pleasure comes from seeing what lies over the next ridge or beyond the next patch of terrain. The downside is that exploration games can turn thin if the world is only pretty and not dense, since walking from place to place becomes the whole activity. In practice that means slow movement, attention to landmarks, and a lot of reading the space rather than fighting it. Farlands sits somewhere between a relaxed survival world and a pure wandering game, and it will suit people who enjoy atmosphere more than escalation.