Over the course of years, apocalyptic games all find themselves in some kind of theme. Whether this is the zombie, nuclear, Nazi, or what have you apocalypse, there’s always something out to get the main character that can usually be shot down or easily taken care of. However, developing team Okomotive decided to take on a zombie-less approach in their title Far: Lone Sails.
Far: Lone Sails had originally been titled Far back when it was first announced at E3 2016. It was conceptualized first as a thesis in 2015, drawing inspiration from stories like Mad Max, and it shows in some of its designs and locations.
The game focuses on a small character who drives a box train-car like machine that carried them across a completely dried up seabed. There’s not much left of the world as you might have known it, as pieces of a past life and civilization are scattered around the world. As the Steam page describes it, “it’s just you and your machine versus the big nothing”.
There’s a button for each section of the locomotive, including a sail that can be raised up to carry it forward if the wind is blowing due east. Each button provides a new mechanic, and allows the player to keep moving ahead. Knowing every button and how the machine works is key when the player comes across obstacles. Not zombies, or warboys, or Nazi’s, but rather aggressive weather and fallen buildings.
It was set to release in 2017 according to the developers, but wasn’t released until May of 2018 for PC and Mac only. Though there was a tweet soon after its release (shown here) that did promise that it would be heading to console players at some point. Some point became one year later, and Far: Lone Sails finally has a release date. This lonely story of a man and machine versus the world, is set to come out for PS4 and Xbox One on April 2, 2019. No price is listed currently, but there is a good chance it will match its PC counterpart at $14.99 USD.