by Hey, turns out cartography is hard.
Miasmata is a unique game. You begin, shipwrecked on an island, with nothing but your empty hands and a case of the plague. Apparently, you’ve been exiled, and it’s up to you to use whatever you can find on the island to cure yourself from your inevitable disease-ridden death.
I expected the focus of the gameplay to be on free-form exploration, crafting and fighting–but much to my surprise, it’s focus is on careful, methodical exploration, herbology and cartography. Because you’re sick, you have to move about carefully–a tumble off a small hill in your condition may increase the severity of your symptoms, leading to a quicker death. Since you’re looking for a cure, the game is focused around finding plants and fungi, bringing them back to a lab and distilling them into something useful. Lastly, there is no auto-map or radar; you must determine where you are by using triangulation of known landmarks. Similarly you use triangulation to discover the distance of unknown landmarks relative the known ones.
I’ve tried and failed several times as of now to brazenly dash off into the island, nary a care–only to find that the game is sufficiently designed to punish such actions through the use of the gameplay itself, which is fantastic. The designer clearly wanted you to move slowly, take your time and identify distant landmarks–but they never force you to do so. You’re allowed to travel in any direction that isn’t limited by water or steep elevation. However, the environments have been expertly designed so that by doing so, you’ll inevitably get lost if you’re not paying attention. As darkness falls, you’ll likely misstep and tumble down a hill–or worse, encounter one of the island’s unhelpful hungry creatures. Limping and dying of the plague, you’ll succumb to death as you wander around in circles with no clue where you are.
Instead, if you move slowly, take your time, enjoy the scenery, find new plants/fungi and mark landmarks on your map then the game’s not really hard at all–and it becomes calming and pleasant (minus the creatures of course). If you want high-octane action, then this isn’t the game you want to play. However, if you want something that’s a bit of a mix of Skyrim’s Alchemy and the old Myst games with (dare I say) the first game where cartography has been a major focus, then give this one a try. For me, it’s Tier 1–I just need to play it when I want something less explosive.
