FAR: Lone Sails

A chill, relaxing experience with intuitive game mechanics.

The images do justice to the game: this is a typical beautiful, moodie indie game with a unique premise and a sense of discovery and wonder. Great, I loved all of that. It's also very short (I beat it in under four hours) and there's not really any major surprises. You get your vehicle, you pilot it, you micromanage it a bit ("Wind's up? Put on the sails. Winds down? Take them down and start the engines. Fuel low? Fuel it up, and restart the engines. Oh, gotta get rid of the steam") which feels a bit like busy work to keep you from realizing there's whole stretches of nothing but (beautiful, hand-painted) scenery. Then you run across a few very basic puzzles and then... you're done. Typical to moody, beautiful indie games, it explains nothing, so you're left to just enjoy the imagery and come to your own conclusions. I feel like the $15 price tag is high. I paid $8 and I feel like I paid too much. That said, I don't think I'd hesitate to recommend it to the right sort of person, though I lean closer to $5 than $10. It feels more like a quick sketch of a neat idea than a full game (and I've played a lot of moody, beautiful indie games in my time).

I enjoyed every single minute of this short, beautiful game. The premise is simple, but engaging, with gorgeous artwork, atmosphere by the bucket load, interesting and fun puzzles and a fabulous soundtrack. At the outset, I had no idea of how it all worked and how to solve (what turned out to be) easy problems - each of the tools to get to the goal were introduced at a good pace. In retrospect, I think this was the best way to enjoy the experience. I'm not sure about replay value. I'll probably leave it a year or two, and then try again ... perhaps next time with a bottle of wine, on a dark winter's evening. Probably the best gaming experience I've had since Stardew Valley, despite all of the AAA games I've played since then.

Quite enjoyable, very atmospheric. Very nice music. Might be longer though.

Usually, someone would start the review by talking about the story and how the game starts. But even though it is about 4 hours of play, a bit short, with nothing to say, I would talk about how disappointing the end it was to me. You start the game with the idea the trip is going you somewhere, but the story does not celebrate your expectations. The player is surrounded by a handpainted animated background showing different and breathless scenarios. The soundtrack is "just" good, compared with those graphics and gameplay, but overall the game is so attractive. Could I recommend it? Definitely yes, it was a great gaming experience for platform lovers.