Exploration is one of the best parts of a video game, especially a modern one. In an exploration game, players would be able to immerse themselves in fantastic worlds and scenery.
In this article, Gurugamer is going to showcase the top 5 best exploration games to play on PC in 2022.
1. No Man's Sky
One of my favorite games of all time. I have 'wasted' an embarrassing number of hours in this Sky. It is not a game for those who like a strong story or those who need a strong sense of direction. It truly shines as a kind of "chose your own adventure" game.
Do you want to just see how far you can explore and how many planets you can discover and name after your cat? You can do that. And while there is more than a little repetition in the plants and animals found on those planets, there is enough variety to keep it interesting. I have a rather extensive folder of the very different and exotic animals I have discovered in my travels including a cute teddy bear creature as tall as a building and others that you can ride just for the fun of it.
Do you want to just try to find and upgrade the best ships in the galaxies to add to your collection on board your premium freighter that you finally found? You can do that. I have spent hours just looking for the best crashed ships that I can nab for free. It is like a galactic treasure hunt to find (and then upgrade) the most beautiful rides until you have a collection that Jay Leno would be envious of.
Or maybe you dream of building the most luxurious, extensive, elaborate and just plain kick-ass base (or twenty of them) that anyone in this reality has ever seen? You can do that. In fact, you can build one that reaches into the sky, is underground, is under the oceans, on top of a mountain with a gorgeous view. And if you build more than one, you can travel to all of your vast real estate holdings in the blink of an eye thanks to the magic of portals.
2. Grounded
Grounded is a very memorable childhood movie, Honey I Shrunk the Kids turned into a game. It starts with a nice mystery as to how you ended up in your current predicament. You wake up from a suitcase with 5 perfectly human-sized cutouts with some form of breathing apparatus but there are only 4 of you currently (you and 3 other coop players) shoved underground.
As you explore, discover many landmarks and biomes along with the dangers, wonders and new materials that come with them. The crafting is quite extensive for structures with some minor hiccups here and there. You're mostly building similar to the shapes of Fortnite but with a more whimsical Lilliput-style construction. There's a lot of potential here from what I can see with the early access. Armor sets have stat bonuses so mixing and matching might not be the best but some individual pieces also have innate bonuses as well. If they have a diverse range of armor, there is potential for a lot of different builds.
Combat is fairly tight and timing is important for blocking. Dodging is not as active as you can outrun most enemies or at least weave through terrain or use vertical movement to your advantage.
3. Don't Starve
Don't Starve is fantastic. It combines roguelike and survival gameplay, dumping you in a strange territory to explore, forage, learn, craft and progress on your own terms. For the most part, the controls and interface are intuitive, so it's simply a matter of deciding where to go or what to do.
The game is called Don't Starve, and hunger is indeed a major theme. If you go a few days without food, you will die. That said, there are plenty of other things to kill you - a variety of animals and monsters, environmental hazards, and your own dwindling sanity. To battle this, you rely on building your own equipment, consumables and structures, ranging from weapons and armor to crock pots to unwholesome magical devices.
Don't Starve can be brutal, so you should expect to die, but just making good progress is rewarding in itself. You unlock new characters as you play, each with little touches or specialties to diversify your experience. And while there are some pretty powerful or useful items you can make, there are still a lot of ways to play, and they're all valid (which is good, because sometimes you don't have much choice).
4. Subnautica
Subnautica is undoubtedly one of the best games I ever played.
The first words that come to my mind are "deep immersion". Developers created a huge, beautiful and very realistic world. Subnautica is mainly focused on exploration and it is extremely good. In fact, I think that there are no enemies in this game; at least, I could not perceive any creature as an enemy. They are not monsters but just local fauna that lives their life, in fact, they are not even aliens, they are at home and you were not invited. There is only one alien on the whole planet and this alien is you. Once you learn the behavior of animals you will very rarely encounter any aggression. If for some reason you want to fight... well, you may find prey, but bloodshed is absolutely senseless and unnecessary.
The game is quite peaceful but it does not mean that there are no dangers in the ocean. Pressure, lack of oxygen, cramped caves, limited light... deeper and deeper you went, more and more awe you feel. When your submarine hangs over the abyss and you can see nothing but endless cliffs and depth... it is scary... well, I hardly can remember another game that gave me such intense emotions.
World in Subnautica is open for exploration, from the very start you can travel... well, everywhere. Still, amount of accessible locations is cleverly limited by available technologies. You can try to explore deep caves immediately after planetfall but without a supply of oxygen, you will just drown. So game softly push the player to explore safe shallows first.
5. Death Stranding
Most of this game revolves around making deliveries of various cargo from point A to point B. And often times that's really just it. The challenge comes with how much cargo you want to carry at once and what tools you want to use for your short journeys ranging from carriers to battery-powered exoskeletons. You can even set modifiers for most orders to increase the difficulty. There are also a handful of cargo items that require you to play a specific way such as avoiding warm areas or fragile items that make you think twice about taking a risky shortcut.
There are stealth and action elements, but it is neither an action nor a stealth game. There are horror elements in the form of the game's supernatural enemies, the BTs, but it is also not a horror game. Death Stranding is, for 90% of its playtime, a slow and methodical exploration game in which you walk around a world ravaged by a cataclysmic event.
And that is really the undisputed star of this game, its world. There are two main open areas you get to traverse. They are so intricately and well designed, that despite most of it being "just" wide open green fields and mountains I never got tired of it and wanted to see all of it. For the most part, you are left alone, with not much fanfare around you, to explore this landscape at your own pace. There is a particular feeling of isolation and peace and quiet in the gameplay that made this a very meditative experience for me. I often found myself playing this game in short bursts of 1-2 hours at night, and for those sessions, I would forget everything and everyone around me. It's a very special experience that is hard to describe in words. This is, as I've said, not an action game. It wants you to be slow and take in the scenery.
>>> Read more: Top 5 Best Open World RPGs To Play On PC In 2022
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