Small-Scale Games For Fans Of Open-Worlds

Summary

Some open-world games suffer from bloated filler content, but others, like Dredge and A Short Hike, offer a small scale that enhances exploration.
Dredge, A Short Hike, and Disco Elysium excel in providing concise, immersive, and rewarding experiences within their small-scale open worlds.
Games like Westerado and Gloomwood offer minimalist, tight-knit environments that allow for deep exploration without overwhelming players.

Open-world games are known for their large and expansive environments, but this impressive scale can sometimes be a downfall. Certain open-world games, while impressive, can often be so bloated and padded out with filler that it’s harder to uncover the more worthwhile content.

Other open-world games, however, make use of a small scale that compacts the overall experience and ensures players rarely have to waste their time exploring uninteresting areas. Some of these titles aren’t full open-world experiences, but are sure to appeal to open-world fans with their emphasis on free-form exploration.

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8

Dredge

Fishing In A Minimal Archipelago

Dredge is a small-scale open-world game that’s minimalist in its design. This minimalism is truly elegant, both in the game’s visuals and gameplay. In the game, players explore a small but mysterious archipelago, collecting and selling myriad fish as they avoid eldritch horrors.

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Perhaps the greatest strength of Dredge is how immediate of an experience it is; Dredge is quick to let players loose in its world, to play with its mechanics, to explore its nooks and crannies. This is facilitated by intuitive controls and the small scale of its world, which allows players to explore freely without getting lost.

7

A Hat In Time

A Colorful 3D Platformer

A Hat In Time is a nostalgic 3D platformer that excels with its colorful visuals and free-form exploration. In the game, players explore a variety of large and unique areas with fluid movement controls, searching every nook and cranny to uncover countless collectibles.

With its expansive areas and emphasis on exploration, fans of open-world games are likely to enjoy A Hat In Time. Furthermore, its small scale keeps each level compact, ensuring each level is dense and rewarding to explore.

6

Westerado: Double Barreled

A Minimalist Wild West

Westerado: Double Barreled is a decidedly minimalist experience. This pixel-art shooter tasks players with enacting vengeance on the outlaw who murdered their family. This underlying mystery leads to deeply emergent gameplay as players explore classic Western environments and partake in myriad shootouts.

Best of all, Westerado’s world isn’t too large, allowing players to hunt down this desperado without getting overwhelmed. Furthermore, the game is infinitely replayable, as the murderer is different every playthrough.

5

A Short Hike

A Small & Wholesome Adventure

A Short Hike is a minimalist open-world game with a clear focus on exploration. Supporting this emphasis on exploration are intuitive movement controls and a truly cozy, small-scale landscape that’s densely packed with NPCs, points of interest, and beautiful vistas.

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A Short Hike‘s small scale is perhaps its greatest strength, allowing players to easily stumble across the game’s many wonders. It also means players are unlikely to get lost, and can instead sit back and soak in the game’s cozy environments.

4

TUNIC

A Zelda-Like Adventure

Though more of a Metroidvania/souls-like mash-up, fans of open-world games are more than likely to enjoy the Zelda-adjacent gameplay of TUNIC. Combining the large-scale boss fights and stamina management of Dark Souls with the adventurous spirit and exploration of Zelda, TUNIC excels in more ways than one.

From the very beginning, TUNIC is able to make players feel lost while clearly directing the adventure. This is thanks to the game’s small scale, which provides dense environments and twisting dungeons that slowly unveil as players progress, allowing TUNIC to maintain a brisk pace.

3

Outer Wilds

Exploration Of A Minimalist Solar System

Outer Wilds is an expansive adventure game that focuses its efforts on meaningful exploration and an immersive atmosphere. Despite the massive scope of this time-travel adventure, Outer Wilds is decidedly small in scale.

It never comes across as small, as the game does an excellent job of immersing players in its world. However, the game’s solar system is tightly packed and minimalist in its design. Despite this, Outer Wilds is packed with points of interest and memorable locations, all of which are easy to find thanks to the restraint of the game design.

2

Gloomwood

A Dark & Interconnected Victorian City

Taking place in a dark and interconnected Victorian city, Gloomwood is a first-person mash-up of old-school immersive-sims and classic survival-horror. There’s plenty here for fans of retro experiences, but Gloomwood remains a decidedly unique experience despite its influences.

Gloomwood‘s painstakingly designed environments provide constant opportunities for expression within the game’s systems. Best of all, the often small scale of these environments ensures players are able to easily access resources and handle enemies without getting lost or overwhelmed. That said, Gloomwood does often hint at a larger world, and some areas are more expansive than others.

1

Disco Elysium

A Limited But Evocative Setting

Disco Elysium is a point-and-click adventure game that excels with its small but incredibly detailed open-world environments. The painterly art-style, abundance of intriguing characters, and evocative writing all work together to provide an immersive experience, backed by meaningful RPG systems.

Despite the small scale of Disco Elysium’s open environments, the game frequently hints at a larger world. This world-building is elegantly woven into the dialogue, the environments, and the very fabric of the game. Best of all, this world unravels naturally as players progress, though it requires attention and intent to fully understand its finer details.