Exploration Games: What They Are and the Best Adventure Games
Exploration games are increasingly gaining fans, as they offer an immersive experience by navigating through new worlds. They feature extensive maps, appealing graphics, and new discoveries with each mission, making them ideal for those seeking excitement and adventure.
If you’re interested in learning more about games in this category, check out this guide with characteristics, main styles, and tips to improve your performance in your next exploration.
What are exploration games?
Exploration games are a genre that combines adventure elements with the search for objects and rewards in a virtual environment. Players need to solve puzzles, find hidden items, and follow clues to advance.
Unlike other game styles, where there is a linear progression along the narrative, this genre offers more open possibilities. This allows each player to set their own path and pace.
Characteristics of exploration and adventure games
In exploration games, players have an open world with vast maps and no predefined script. Additionally, other characteristics of this type of game include:
- Narrative: Besides the elements to be discovered, these games also develop a story around the character’s journey, often featuring dialogues that provide details about the environment.
- Challenges and puzzles: Many titles add challenges that players need to solve to unlock new areas or receive rewards, making the adventure more interesting.
- Character progression: Throughout the game, players can increase their experience and develop new skills that help them explore more complex and hostile territories.
Top exploration games of 2024
Among the best exploration games are titles like The Legend of Zelda, Elden Ring, and Starfield. Each is set in a different universe, with characteristics and challenges that intrigue users. Here are the details:
The Legend of Zelda
This classic title has had many versions over the years, earning a legion of fans. The latest, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), features an open world filled with mythical creatures and magical artifacts.
Players can explore settings, climb structures, and collect items such as apples and nuts to restore energy, as well as weapons and ingredients for potions used throughout the adventure.
Elden Ring
Released in 2022, this game is the result of a collaboration between FromSoftware and George R.R. Martin, the famous author of Game of Thrones. It offers detailed environments, ranging from vast fields to dungeons filled with dangers, making the journey a grand adventure.
Starfield
With an intergalactic journey theme, Starfield was released in 2023 by Bethesda Game Studios.
Set in the year 2330, humanity has left Earth and begun to inhabit space. In this context, players become part of the Constellation, a group of explorers seeking treasures across the galaxy.
Users can customize their character’s appearance, background, and attributes, each with specific skills that help overcome the challenges presented during the journey.
Check out more adventure and exploration games to play in 2024
What are the best adventure games?
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the standout exploration and adventure games in the genre, praised by users for its epic fantasy and highly detailed graphics. Players embark on a first-person adventure in a world filled with landscapes ranging from forests to vast snowy valleys.
Subnautica, on the other hand, stands out as an underwater adventure game, where players explore the ocean’s depths to find materials for crafting tools.
Meanwhile, they encounter marine creatures and must manage available resources to survive, providing a unique experience that combines several game genres in one universe.
Another acclaimed title is Outer Wilds, which won several awards and was named game of the year by multiple outlets when it was released. The game’s success lies in its engaging narrative, which follows a space mission to investigate the solar system. Players embark on an exploration through uninhabited planets and mysterious installations.
How does lag impact exploration games?
Lag, or delay in player command response, can harm the experience in exploration games. It breaks the immersive atmosphere these games offer due to delays in rendering environments, for example.
The delay in executing movements, such as jumps, dodges, or interactions with other characters, can also lead to errors that affect the outcome. In many of these games, completing missions or facing threats along the way is necessary to progress.
In exploration games, timed events or sequences that require precise timing are common. Lag can disrupt these events, resulting in failures in task execution and narrative continuity.
How to reduce lag?
To address lag, it’s important to consider both hardware and connection aspects. First, ensure that your PC’s configurations meet the game’s requirements, such as available memory, graphics cards, and monitor FPS.
Additionally, a stable internet connection is crucial to avoid dropouts that could disrupt gameplay. One option is to use software like ExitLag, a system designed to reduce lag by optimizing the connection route between your computer and the game’s servers.
ExitLag utilizes a structure with multiple connections, ensuring your always connected. If one connection experiences temporary instability, it automatically reroutes to another path without affecting in-game actions.
Similarly, it uses a network of servers located across various continents, reducing response time with the game’s server.
See more:
