Exploration is the hardest part of an adventure game to fake. Combat systems and crafting menus can be copied wholesale, but the moment you spot something odd on the horizon and decide to walk towards it depends on dozens of quiet design decisions: what the landscape shows you, what it hides, and whether the game trusts you to work it out.

The five games below all answer the same question — how should a player find things? — in different ways. One uses sightlines. One uses depth. One runs on a time loop. One gives you almost nothing at all. Comparing them is a useful way to work out what you actually want from a game before you spend money on one.

The short version

  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom — see a thing, go to the thing. Guidance by landscape.
  • Outer Wilds — a 22-minute loop where knowledge is the only thing you keep.
  • Subnautica — an ocean that gates you by depth, air and nerve.
  • Hollow Knight — a map you have to buy back, piece by piece.
  • Elden Ring — rumour, half-sentences and almost no quest markers.

Each one teaches you something different about how to read a world. The rest of this article breaks down how they do it, and what kind of player each one suits.

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom: following your eyes

Both modern Zeldas hand you a pair of binoculars and very little else. A tower reveals the shape of a region, a shrine glows in the distance, but nothing tells you where to go next. The trick is that nearly everything worth finding is visible from somewhere else, so curiosity does the work a waypoint would normally do.

You might spot a strange rock formation from a hilltop, glide down to investigate, and stumble into a hidden cave. Or you might see a dragon winding through the sky at dusk and decide to chase it, only to end up in a completely different region entirely. The game rarely says "go here"; it just puts something interesting in your field of view and lets you connect the dots.

Tears of the Kingdom doubles the effect with two extra layers — floating islands above, and the Depths below, a gloom-dark mirror of the surface map that stays disorienting for a good hour. The Depths in particular invert the usual logic: instead of following light, you follow darkness, using glowing seeds to plant your own trail of breadcrumbs.

The trade-off is admin. Stamina wheels, cold weather, weapon durability and cooking all interrupt the wandering. If you want pure, uninterrupted travel, this pair will irritate you. If you like a bit of logistics with your mountains, nothing else comes close.

Outer Wilds: exploration as knowledge

There is no inventory in Outer Wilds. No levels, no keys, no upgrades. You have a small wooden spaceship, a translation tool, and 22 minutes before the local sun explodes and everything resets.

The only thing that carries between loops is what you know. A shortcut through a cave, the fact that a planet's crust collapses after a certain point, the route into a room you couldn't crack last time — all of it lives in your head, or in a notebook, which is a genuinely sensible thing to keep beside you. You cannot finish the game until you understand why the ending is possible. That is rare, and it is the whole point.

Consider Brittle Hollow, a planet whose surface is slowly being pulled apart by a black hole at its core. On your first visit, you might fall into the black hole and die. On your fifth, you know to aim for the gravity crystals on the ceiling. That shift — from panic to confidence — is the entire progression system. Or take Giant's Deep, where cyclones toss you into space, and Dark Bramble, where anglerfish lurk in the fog. Each planet teaches you a rule, and each rule is a key.

It is unforgiving in one specific way: some solutions demand precise flying. When you get stuck, resist the guide for the middle sections. The understanding is the reward. Use your ship's log to track rumours, and use the signalscope to hunt for music. The game is generous with clues if you slow down and listen.

Tip: If you're stuck in Outer Wilds, don't look up the answer. Instead, ask yourself: "What haven't I tried at this location?" The answer is usually a matter of timing, not skill.

Subnautica: depth, air and nerve

Subnautica's ocean is a ladder of limits. First you are limited by how long you can hold your breath, then by how deep one tank of air will take you, then by pressure and predators. Progress means building better equipment and pushing a little further down.

The map is handcrafted rather than generated, and it uses radio signals and beacons to nudge you towards the next area without ever saying "go here". What makes it memorable is the way fear does the work of a locked door: you often know where you need to be long before you feel ready to swim there.

The early game is all about the Safe Shallows and the Kelp Forest, where you can hear the reassuring hum of your lifepod. Then you build a Seamoth and venture into the Grand Reef, where the water turns a deeper blue and you start to hear unfamiliar sounds. Later, the Lost River and the Inactive Lava Zone demand a Prawn Suit and a Cyclops, and by then you've become the kind of player who can stare down a Reaper Leviathan without screaming. Probably.

One practical tip — build a small forward base with a fabricator as soon as you can. Long swims back to your lifepod are the main thing that drains the fun out of a session. Drop a beacon at every interesting landmark, too. The ocean is big, and your memory is not.

Hollow Knight: the map as a resource

Hollow Knight is a metroidvania, so the world opens up as you gain abilities: a dash, a wall cling, a longer jump, a double jump, and eventually a shadow dash that lets you phase through enemies. But the real exploration mechanic isn't the moves — it's the map.

You start with nothing. No map, no compass, no idea where you are. To get a map of an area, you have to find Cornifer, a cartographer who hums and leaves a trail of paper behind him. Buy his map, and you'll see the rough shape of the region. But it's incomplete. You have to fill in the details yourself by wandering, and the map only updates when you rest at a bench. Die before you reach a bench, and you'll lose your Geo (currency) and have to fight your way back to your shade to recover it.

That system makes every new area feel genuinely dangerous. You are not just exploring for treasure; you are exploring to make the world legible. Charms, which modify your abilities, are another layer of discovery — you find them in hidden corners, behind false walls, or as rewards for tough optional bosses. The game never points them out. You just have to poke around.

It's demanding, but it's also one of the purest expressions of exploration as a resource. The map isn't a convenience; it's a reward. And the moment you finally unlock a shortcut back to a bench, you'll feel like you've conquered a mountain.

Elden Ring: the world as a rumour

Elden Ring takes the opposite approach to Zelda. Instead of giving you clear sightlines to your next objective, it gives you a vast, hostile world and almost no directions. An NPC might say, "Seek the throne of the Erdtree," and then vanish. That's it. No quest marker, no arrow, no glowing trail.

What you get instead is rumour and half-sentences. A merchant might mention a hidden cave to the north. A ghost might be weeping over a grave, and if you listen, you'll learn about a catacomb nearby. The map only shows major landmarks when you find a map fragment, and even then, it doesn't label every ruin or cave. You have to look at the terrain and think, "That looks like a place where someone would hide something."

The Erdtree itself is a constant visual anchor, visible from almost everywhere in the Lands Between. But it's not your destination for most of the game. It's a reminder that the world is bigger than you are. The real exploration is in the detours: the mine you spot on a cliff, the caravan you follow, the dragon that dive-bombs you in the middle of a lake. You will miss things. You will look up a guide later and discover an entire underground region you never found. That's okay. That's the point.

Elden Ring's exploration is communal in a way the others aren't. Without in-game markers, players share knowledge: "Try jumping," "hidden path ahead," "beware of dog." The messages left by other players become a kind of folk map, unreliable and often hilarious. It's a modern twist on the old playground rumour mill.

How to choose which one to play

If you're trying to decide which of these five to start with, match the game's core tension to your own patience and preferences.

  • Zelda (BotW/TotK): Best if you want constant visual guidance and don't mind inventory management. You'll always have something to do, but you'll also spend time cooking and swapping weapons.
  • Outer Wilds: Best if you love puzzles, don't mind repetition, and enjoy the feeling of a mystery clicking into place. Avoid if you hate timed sequences or flying controls.
  • Subnautica: Best if you want survival crafting with a strong

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