REVIEW : FAR: Lone Sails (PC)
FAR: Lone Sails is a vehicular adventure game developed by FAR. You journey through a dried-up ocean in a peculiar vehicle, following the traces of a once-thriving civilization. You must keep your vessel moving against a variety of barriers and inclement weather.
There are no dialogue options, no NPCs, no timeframe, no failures, and no other restrictions. You and your Okomotive are alone across a huge terrain dotted with dried-up seabeds and abandoned industrial structures. The artwork is stunning. FAR: Lone Sails is a 2-D puzzle/platformer in the vein of Inside, with the main gameplay loop centred on the operation and upkeep of a dieselpunk landship.
The world is a bleak, damaged, and abandoned place. You arrive soon at the vehicle that will be your home for the rest of the journey, a landbound ship propelled forward by petrol, fire, breeze, and its massive wheels and sails. You now steer the ship in a straight route away from your house, unclear of your destination or purpose—it appears as though you’re just attempting to get as far as possible.
Taking a screenshot at any time will result in a great wallpaper. Despite its post-apocalyptic scenario, the game is really evocative and unexpectedly serene and zen-like, thanks to the calming soundtrack. The tempo is fantastic. The core game loop is straightforward: you must constantly collect fuel and press buttons in order to keep the ship going ahead. F:LS is worth playing at least once because of its outstanding art style, fantastic sound production, intuitive gameplay, and effective use of music, images, and the creation and breaking of routine.
Lone Sails is a 2D puzzle game with no enemies, few challenges, and a deliberately ambiguous story. These are all concepts we’ve seen tied to a number of different indie platform puzzle games, and we articulated them in the first few minutes. Above all, everything feels quite familiar. But, because to the ship you’re piloting, it doesn’t take much time for Lone Sails to develop its own unique voice and identity. You’ll spend nearly half of your time going around within your ship, which is portrayed from a bisected perspective when you enter it, pushing the enormous red buttons that control its many operations. Before starting the engine, you’ll need to make sure you have enough fuel in the tank, which means you’ll have to stop and collect canisters from the roadside .This is a well-made game with only a few minor flaws that I discovered. An object in the front would occasionally hinder my vision of certain areas of the ship, however the ship’s structure is simple enough that this was only a small stumbling block. I had to restart my most current station twice because I became stuck—once due to my own fault, and the second time due to a rare unseen wall trapping me.
Due to short duration and lack of replayability, many players are likely to find the fundamental game loop a chore, the puzzles too simple, and the price point too high. The game employs immersive storytelling tactics as well, but the few hints provided combine to create a frustratingly weak story. There are numerous moments in which the ship should be brought under control so that you can exit and mess around outside clear a passage or re-start the engine. These are Lone Sail’s puzzles, and they’re usually fairly simple, involving little more than figuring out how to hit a succession of red buttons in the correct order or attaching your ship’s winch to anything. Even if they aren’t difficult, these set-pieces are usually enjoyable, either because of how much your tinkering alters the world around you, or because the world’s panoramas spread out from behind you, or just because the end with your ship receiving a useful upgrade. FAR: Lone Sails is continually engrossing, with a physical pleasure in pulling boxes, tapping buttons, and interacting with the game.
In the game, you can only do two things: jump and grab. You can also move a character around in a two-dimensional plane. Within your generally silent vessel, you’re loading boxes, barrels, and flipping switches. It’s possible that the main character is the ship/boat/wheeled conveyance, rather than the one you control. I’m not sure what the game’s purpose is, but you should presumably head to the right. New components are introduced each time the gameplay becomes repetitive: new upgrades for your ship to make your job easier; new trinkets to acquire for decorating your cabin; new breathtaking landscapes to admire; new natural catastrophes to avoid; new riddles to solve, and so on. Instead of being uninterested, I become irritable when the travel finally arrives.
On the ship, you can do a number of subtle things. Onboard, you might not see the storage hooks right away. However, you can store gasoline there to prevent it from coming off when travelling through rugged terrain, or hang lamps to see in the dark. Although being a single match, FLS is appropriate for local co-op and is family-friendly. It’s a lot of fun to play it with my partner. We take turns controlling the character so that we can both enjoy the interactivity while also taking in the gorgeous environment.
Even though the planet is slightly post-apocalyptic, with much of the area consisting of a drained seabed and abandoned structures, the world is lovely. There are indications here and there about what might have happened to the world, but the world outside of your spacecraft doesn’t matter all that much until near the end of the adventure, when the game’s final act unfolds in a way that explains everything that has gone before it. One of the biggest pleasures of Lone Sails is learning to appreciate the long lengths of tranquilly that it frequently offers.
Short and sweet, having a level design that is fully linear. Ideally (and even strongly suggested) to be completed in one sitting, possibly on a calm Sunday evening. The monotony of pressing buttons to proceed becomes old quickly, and while there are a few puzzles that provide some interest every now and then, they are too few and far between. The atmosphere is moderately intriguing, but it isn’t enough to carry the game, therefore I can’t suggest it. Lone Sails is a captivating, charming experience that takes familiar indie game clichés and turns them into something new and enjoyable. It’s short enough that you can finish it in a single two- or three-hour session, but it’ll stay with you for a long time.
REVIEW : Blow & Fly (XBOX Series X)
