FAR: Lone Sails (PC)
By now, the phrase “It’s the journey, not the destination” has been bandied about enough it’s practically a truism. While a touch cliche, it does connect pretty well to the purpose of a video game, making the adventure through it enjoyable with the end just being where the game stops, but FAR: Lone Sails is a game that embodies the spirit of the phrase much more than your typical fare.
There is no lead-in for or explanation of the world in FAR: Lone Sails, just a simple scene of a small person in red at the grave of an unknown individual. Your only option is to set off to the right, and without ever telling you where you’re going or really telling you much on how to get there besides a few button tutorials to get you started, you begin your trek across the mysterious world of FAR: Lone Sails. Environmental storytelling is a big factor in the gradual understanding of the world you find yourself in. Much of this world is almost entirely devoid of color, the backgrounds to your journey filled with details, buildings, and meaningful settings but they’re often cast in dull colors like black and grey or stark use of brilliant whites. Meaningful items both of hope and warning stand out in red, but they often stand out as even more bold declarations of their meaning because of their contrast with the often monochrome world. When you come to the shoreline on your journey, you find that the ocean is all but gone, with the small amounts of water that do remain not enough for the the boats that are now resting on dry land. Taking out across the dry seabeds, you’ll find many melancholic sights, the visuals telling an unfortunate history with their implications and the music setting the tone for an adventure that is both taking place across a graveyard of the past but carries hope for the future.
One of the few breaks in the black and white of the spoiled yet beautiful world around you is your means of conveyance. A large red vehicle will be your main means of traversal, the vehicle able to build up the speed needed to get across the wastes while also having the power to smash through gates and debris blocking your path. Almost your entire journey is spent inside this odd steam-powered mixture between a train and a boat called an Okomotive, and while there are plenty of interesting sights to step out of your machine and marvel at, there’s also a simple enjoyment to keeping your Okomotive running efficiently. Our unknown protagonist in red needs to operate the entire device on their own, leaping about it to hit switches, depress large buttons, and ferry important items around the interior, the inside viewed through a cross-section of the vehicle. The Okomotive is simple enough that you can glean its many systems and uses just from experimentation, and once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you gradually learn the flow of the action. Feed objects from the dry seabeds into the engine, release the steam to prevent it from overheating, and repeat to keep the vehicle moving, the play starting off simple enough to get you used to the basics before new considerations start getting added. Damage to your vessels can start fires, systems can break down and require a later repair module to fix, and when the sails get added to the Okomotive, what began as a somewhat tranquil task that allowed you to soak in the environments while keeping busy can then become almost hectic as you can build up incredible speed or end up in much more dangerous situations.
The dry lakebeds of this unfortunate planet have many things standing in the way of our lone sailor’s journey. Harsh weather will hit your vessel, asking you to accommodate hail damage or try and outpace an incoming tornado, and after spending so much of your journey delicately balancing the Okomotive’s many needs, these moments where it is jeopardized can be surprisingly impactful. You don’t want your hard work building up this machine to go to waste, and any moment that makes you venture out from it too far comes with the worry that your vessel might not make it all the way with you. While there are no hostile enemies to impede your adventure, there are ways both you or your vehicle might get destroyed, causing progress to be set back to the last checkpoint. There are plenty of roadblocks the machine can’t smash through, but popping out and messing with nearby mechanisms in mild puzzle segments not only open the way to continue your journey, but they can lead to the new additions your Okomotive gets along the journey that make the task both easier in one way but harder in another as you must juggle more to succeed. There is a sense of your hard work and devotion paying off as you get further along, and while not many puzzles are particularly strong on their own merits, they serve to break up the driving that could certainly get too dull if it was leaned on to carry the experience entirely on its own. Instead, a good mix of long stretches of pushing forward and still moments of problem solving keep the game mostly well-paced across its somewhat short 3 or so hour run time.
The story being told only with sights and tone can lead to some very impressive setpieces, but quite a lot of the game does tie into the quiet contemplation of your next task and the mostly empty world around you. Keeping your eyes open for fuel sources, slipping into the rhythm of managing the Okomotive’s systems, and dealing with an unexpected error born of either your own mistakes or an environmental factor keep FAR: Lone Sails moving along rather than grinding to any halts that aren’t interesting in their own rights. Little extra touches can be found around the wastes as well, like a radio you can hang in your vehicle to listen to at times where the background music isn’t playing, a little bell that sadly won’t jingle once hung up but can still add a touch of personality to the Okomotive interior, and lights that can make navigating at night easier. Even the achievement goals here add small touches rather than breaking down the somewhat relaxed play of the game, tied to things like carrying a mailbox along on the journey or disposing of explosive barrels instead of playing in ways counterintuitive to the quest. It is an atmospheric adventure meant to explore not just the world, but the player’s emotional reactions to it, the Okomotive rooting them to something they are responsible for as it pays off its constant maintenance with simple delightful sights like roaming musk oxen as the towering hulks of derelict ships provide a dramatic counterbalance. The gameplay here is the tool used to see it, so while the tasks aren’t too enjoyable in isolation, they are what truly ferries you to the next impressive moment of FAR: Lone Sails.
THE VERDICT: Melancholic yet triumphant, serene but sometimes bombastic, FAR: Lone Sails takes place in a spoiled world where the ocean is gone, but the journey of the small protagonist in their Okomotive has an energy of discovery to it that can’t be quashed by the road bumps along the way. By getting you invested in the maintenance of your vehicle it becomes your anchor in this world, your journey to a mysterious goal not just motivated by a curiosity that’s being built up well through lovely environmental storytelling but also by your constant commitment to keeping the Okomotive moving. There isn’t much to solving the puzzles along the way and working on your vehicle can have some slow moments, but FAR: Lone Sails is about its constant push into the unknown, the small gains, the road blocks, and the intriguing sights along the way, making this a multifaceted and ever-changing journey. It is a game about the experience of exploration with the gameplay systems capturing the ups and downs one would expect on any journey worth taking.
And so, I give FAR: Lone Sails for PC…
A GOOD rating. We find ourselves with another case of a game where the emotional impact of images, sound, and implied story can swing your personal evaluation of it, but the mix of elements in FAR: Lone Sails is definitely effective on a few levels. While tending to the Okomotive at times can feel a little bland, it connects you to your strange wasteland vehicle in a way that makes setbacks and threats to its safety emotionally impactful. It provides safety, speed, and a way to view the world whose mysterious state tantalizes you to want to know more about its past, so stepping out of it comes with a level of vulnerability and unease even when you’re leaving it specifically to help it move forward with a puzzle or piece of fuel. The starting and stopping can be a bit unfortunate when fuel is low and the environmental puzzles to lift gates or add modules don’t often ask much of the player’s creativity, but the world of FAR: Lone Sails doesn’t ever lose its appeal, especially since its mixes in both images of a world lost with quiet messages of hope and life persisting. Yours is surely a journey of purpose, the game not needing to tell you directly that’s the case as its world says it without ever uttering a word.
The short length of the game definitely keeps things from growing too routine, the maintenance of your vehicle already touching on being a touch repetitive, but the evolution of the Okomotive along with the metered introduction of interesting backdrops and progression shakeups fit well in the few hours the adventure takes, the player’s attachment to the world and their ride maintained well enough to make the journey impactful.