Exploring maps and navigation in videogames. Discover games with interesting or unusual cartography, navigation and exploration mechanics.
See also Cartogaming on Steam.
This is a sailing game where you use traditional tools to navigate by dead reckoning. A great level of detail make this an excellent (but difficult) game.
Terra incognita (not yet played). A seafaring adventure where you must "use strange objects to find a path through unpredictable currents". Lovely art.
A spatial audio game where you must follow the audio cues to navigate a 2D space. Difficult to understand generated voices make the story confusing at times, but the concept is great.
Terra incognita (not yet played). Explore a forest to gather spirits, manually mapping the world as you go. Looks beautiful.
An innovative way of building a town; slide tiles to merge into various town objects. Cute graphics and a fun, short puzzler.
Terra incognita (not yet played). Described as "a chaotic map observation game designed to let anything happen". Intriguing.
Terra incognita (not yet played). Essentially an open-source Civilization; the classic map-based strategy game.
Terra incognita (not yet played). A planet simulation where you can explore procedurally-generated planets, with a few (150!) secrets to find.
A tile-based city builder, set in a hellish occult setting! With deckbuilder elements and a fast-paced roguelike feel, Hellscaper is perfect for a quick game during your lunch break that'll keep you coming back for more.
Terra incognita (not yet played). Inspired by Scanner Sombre. Scan objects and environments with a LiDAR gun to view them. Looks wonderful.
An adorable, cozy, cooperative multiplayer city builder. Build a communal tile-based world, helping others build theirs, or creating your own area for others to find.
Terra incognita (not yet played). A single-player tabletop pen-and-paper game. If it's anything like Tiny Islands, which it's inspired by, it'll be great.
A really fun pen-and-paper tabletop "illustration focused catacomb mapping" RPG, with a slight horror element. All you need are 2 six-sided dice and a coin.
A surprisingly deep card-based logic-puzzler; build your own archipelago using the available cards, then draw lines to create a coastline. Each card has guidelines about where it's best-placed. Delightful.
A fun logic-based pathfinding game with (very) light shop management. Guide customers to their locations on a map while following their travelling restrictions.
A really enjoyable grid-based map-making puzzler, where you follow instructions in your journal to map the surrounding area. Reveals an amusing tale as you progress.
Another innovative puzzler. Move the landmass to collect eggs to grow. Avoid being seen by ships to prevent pieces of the landmass being locked in place. Essentially a cartography avoider! Quite stressful at times.
Navigate through a procedurally-generated world, viewed through gorgeous circular slices, using an arcane interface to find various mysterious goals. Brilliant!
A great little cartography simulator. Try to draw an accurate map based on directions within logbooks. Nice historical style and an enjoyable self-paced puzzler.
