Expanding the RyanSchultz.com Blog to Cover Non-Combat, Open-World Exploration Games

I have been playing Eastshade for four days now, and it has been an captivating experience to be able to explore a first-person open world like Eastshade, solving puzzles and completing quests. I am utterly charmed by this game, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!

In fact, it’s been so much fun that I did a little more investigating and I discovered (via this recent, thoughtful video essay and Eastshade review by RagnarRox) that there is actually something called the Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt, which is actually an educational, non-combat version of the game Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which allows you to interactively explore various sites in ancient Egypt and learn about them!

So, I have decided that I am going to include a very specific (and rare) kind of game to what I cover on the RyanSchultz.com blog. I will now be including those games which meet the following two criteria:

1. the game is not focused on combat and killing, but exploring and/or puzzle solving; and
2. the game features an open world in which you can freely explore.

I now realize that many of my favourite computer games from the past have fallen into this category: Myst, Riven, Obduction (all by Cyan).

The key similarity between social VR/virtual worlds and non-combat, open-world games is that they allow you to navigate and explore freely, and interact with your environment. The key difference between social VR/virtual worlds and these sort of games is that the latter do not allow for multiple users in the same experience (you are alone in that world, except for NPCs). You cannot share your experience with other people. But I find these sorts of games to be so fascinating (and personally fulfilling to play) that I am broadening the scope of this blog to include them, and creating a separate list of non-combat, open-world games on the sidebar of this blog.

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