I won’t hold it against you if FAR: Lone Sails managed to slip under your radar. It’s a quiet little game from a quiet little studio called Okomotive. However, it’s also a friggin’ masterpiece, visually stunning and packed with emotion.
One of the big surprises of the PC Gaming Show at E3 2021 was FAR: Changing Tides, which is a follow-up to FAR: Lone Sails. It looks to do a lot of the same things, only with a journey across a flooded world rather than the deserts and tundras of the first game.
Do you need to have played the first game to appreciate the second? Well, probably not. It doesn’t seem like this is a direct sequel (though it is set in the same universe), and it seems that neither is required to fully enjoy the other.
That said, FAR: Lone Sails is incredible, and you’d be doing yourself a huge disservice if you let it pass you by.
The basic premise is that you take control of a tiny little character who’s got a house-sized mechanical transport. The game never really tells you why you’re doing any of this, but you must guide this transport from left to right across a vast post-apocalyptic world filled with junk and abandoned outposts.
The basic gameplay has you managing fuel and watching wind direction to make sure your wheeled machine keeps chugging along. The game throws obstacles in your path, which you’ll have to problem-solve your way around, and quite often you’ll be putting out fires and making simple repairs to make sure your vehicle is in working condition.
It’s actually a lot simpler than I’m making it sound, and it never throws anything completely new at you until you’ve started to get a handle on the previous thing.
One of the brilliant things about FAR: Lone Sails is that it doesn’t actually tell you anything about itself. You pick up a controller and find yourself compelled to begin the journey it’s created for you. Because of this, you’ll sit down and figure out all of the mechanics on your own. It doesn’t hurt that they’re remarkably intuitive, and that the only words in the game are the labels on the various interactive parts on your craft. But even so, the game sort of tugs at your curiosity and trusts you to do the rest. I wish more games trusted the player enough to do this.
The pace might be a little slow, but it’s slow in a hypnotic way and not a tedious one. I’d even go so far as to say that there’s not a dull moment in all of its three-to-four-hour runtime (it took me just under four hours to complete a full playthrough).
FAR: Lone Sails is a game that’s hard to put down once you’ve picked it up. Its world is just so compelling, and its soundtrack is just so soothing. While it’s probably not required for anyone who wants to jump right into FAR: Changing Tides, it’s an incredible little game in its own right, and you shouldn’t miss it.
