FAR: Changing Tides

In 2018 we received the adventure game FAR: Lone Sails from the Swiss development team Okomotive as the first project of the team founded in 2017. The team returns to us this year with another adventure, FAR: Changing Tides, while FAR: Lone Sails took us on a wheeled adventure across deserts and lands. FAR: Changing Tides takes us on an adventure across the seas in a post-apocalyptic world. How was the experience?

FAR: Changing Tides – A Beautiful and Calming Adventure

Who needs the story? FAR: Changing Tides doesn’t seem to need it, as the game offers no explanations or clues about the story or goal of this little boy sailing the seas. On the graphical level, the game offers us a beautiful and simple artistic direction that instills calm and presents the environment beautifully despite your driving. Set in a world inundated by floods, you’ll drive through beautiful areas of ice and other areas with signs indicating what cities and facilities used to be there, and we’ve never seen anything like this beautiful depiction of a post-cataclysm world! On an auditory level, the melodies offer a good collection of calm melodies that fit the artistic direction and serve their purpose.

The Gameplay Mechanics of Sailing the Seas

The gaming experience depends on whether you can steer your ship in the desired way while sailing on the sea, in two ways: either with the sails, when there is wind, or with the ship’s engine, which relies on fuel is. When using the sails, you must monitor the surrounding area to ensure that the sails or anchor do not collide with any object in the area. This can cause damage, reduce work efficiency, and sometimes stop operations altogether. The problem with this option is the time the reaction time you can react when you see an obstacle in the way is very short, and it is often difficult to lower the anchor before it takes damage, and the two-dimensionality of the game often makes it difficult to be aware of whether certain elements present in the environment will set sail or not.

The second option is to use the ship’s engine, which you learn early on and which allows you to sail quickly as long as fuel is available and you keep blowing the fire, allowing you to reach top speed. While using the engine, you need to pay attention to the engine temperature, for which there is a special indicator and the temperature can be quickly reduced by a water hose. If you use this option, you will find that the engine’s fuel consumption is fast. Therefore, you must monitor the radar that will show you the presence of waste around you that you will burn as fuel. If you do not pay attention to these resources, you will quickly find yourself running out of fuel and having to rely on the sails again. The speed is not comparable to that of the engine, although resources are available in abundance when you use them find. So you have to make sure your treasury is full of these resources and don’t miss the opportunity to collect them.

Challenges and Obstacles Along the Way

While driving, your vehicle gets damaged and you find a maintenance kit that you can use multiple times before it runs out. In addition, you will encounter many obstacles on your way, and here the challenges of jumping between platforms and some simple puzzles await you that you will perform to remove this obstacle from your path or give the ship a new ability, despite the many improvements that have been made. The ship will maintain these until it sails using sails or uses the engine. These are the two processes that make up the majority of this experience, with these improvements representing some simple additions to the process.

A Monotonous Process with Lack of Instructions

When you spend most of your time watching the sails or paying attention to the engine temperature, and the need to stop whenever you notice the presence of resources for fear of running out of fuel, sailing becomes one monotonous process, if you continue with the progression of the experience despite its brevity, the lack of other activities or puzzles and challenges of greater difficulty, even if only slightly, makes the experience a lack of enjoyment. In the last few hours the other negative in the game is the almost total lack of instructions or hints, which in our opinion is not necessary for such a simple experience, but there are many situations where you are confused because of the Not knowing the next step or why the ship isn’t moving because you haven’t done a certain thing, which drives you to do whatever it takes to figure out what the right step is.

A Beautiful and Relaxing Experience, but Lacks Adventure

We finished FAR: Changing Tides in 5 hours and can say that it is a beautiful and relaxing experience. It is aimed at those who want a short and pleasant experience away from the usual challenges and pressures, but it does not necessarily provide the enjoyment that fans of adventure games crave and it is difficult to recommend to most fans of these games.