Each person who searches for computer games to use is guided by some interesting discovered elements of it. Likewise, popular games often single out only one detail in their children. All efforts are invested in the creation of the gameplay, others – in the story. But there are also games that capture gamers who are not captured by the gameplay or some kind of emotional messages, they capture on an emotional level.
In 2015, University of Zurich student Don Schmoker started a collection of games as his student project. During development, he was inspired by the games Little Big Planet and Journey. Gradually, his comrades joined the student, thus forming the Okomotive Studio and releasing the game Far: Lone Sails.
After the success of Limbo, atmospheric platforms without dialogue began to almost touch a genre in which few people successfully communicated. The Okomotive team went a slightly different way: the essence of salvation is about the same, only you need to travel in their games not on your own two feet, but in cars as if collected from garbage. This is true for both FAR: Lone Sails and the new FAR: Changing Tides. The sequel was a notably larger and more suspicious predecessor but remained the same soothing adventure about loneliness.
What is FAR?
The Far series is a 2D steampunk platformer set in a post-apocalyptic world. The game does not have any plot. There are no prefaces, no afterwords, no texts at all in the game. Even when starting the game, we are not displayed on the menu screen, but the gameplay begins immediately. FAR: Lone Sails, that released in 2018, proved that the “adventure” genre is very strong, even if the game does not have a single line of text and the slightest explanation of what is happening.
FAR games tell stories about children who travel through the ruins of civilization on unusual ships. The only enemy is the weather. In FAR: Lone Sails, the action took place on the surface of the dried sea. The events of FAR: Changing Tides begin in a flooded city. It sounds simple: swim and enjoy nature. But in reality, the gameplay is complex and requires constant monitoring and attention.
However, as in the first game, such understatement seems to be the right decision. Nothing distracts from the gameplay, from a simple journey into the unknown, during which you never know what awaits you next. Maybe I’ll have to leave the ship and swim in search of fuel – suitcases were thrown by someone and sunken rubber ducks will do. Maybe you will need to solve a simple puzzle by interacting with blue-colored levers and buttons.
One of the main complaints about the first part was due to the fact that it lacked moments of calm when you could just enjoy the beauty. The authors, apparently, took note of this and added episodes during which nothing happens for a long time – you just kindle fire or turn the sails, not caring about anything else. In my opinion, such episodes are boring – if they last longer than 20 seconds, you want something to finally happen, or you begin to understand that this is “the calm before the storm”.
It’s just a beautiful game
FAR: Changing Tides has a huge number of colorful locations, whether it be the ruins of a city, mountains, or ice-covered waters. The underwater world is no less beautiful. Fish, stingrays, and glowing jellyfish swim among the sunken technologies.
Sometimes the camera shows these beauties from the most favorable angles. Moreover, this is accompanied by a variety of soothing music, ideally suited to the situation. The game can be completed in two hours, but every minute you want to stop and take a screenshot!
The game also has excellent physics. The ship throws up waves, structures break, old mechanisms come into motion. All this is done at such a high level that you begin to feel the monumentality of the environment, and how small our main character is compared to it.
Well, now about the most important part of the game – its atmosphere. The visuals, sound and music provide complete immersion in this world, destroyed by a catastrophe unknown to the player. Personally, while playing, I felt this loneliness, somewhat sadness and depression, but depression is not “final”, so to speak, but with a barely perceptible hope, which sometimes manifests itself in music, in colors, for example, at dawn and in flickering stars at night. Emotions are the main thing in the game.
