Far: Lone Sails is one of those "Just Go Right" games, and it sits somewhere in middle of the spectrum between INSIDE and the unplayably basic examples. It's quite pretty, but don't expect any real puzzle or story payoff other then whimsically contemplating the vast majesty of nature.

You're a pipsqueak that drives a train (named the okomotive) which goes right. You need to manage fuel, steam pressure, and your sails, while deciding to stop to collect fuel. The otherwise very pleasurable plate-spinning is hampered a bit by the awkwardness of the control scheme; you need to push or slap buttons around the interior of the Okomotive in order to do things like brake, apply gas, release steam, or pickup things on the ground. Unfortunately, the cramped interior camera is too myopic to enable you to react intelligently with any foresight; if you manage the resources well and travel quickly, you'll often find yourself slamming on the brakes and hopping out the back to collect objects you missed (since the train only goes right). You will accidentally trigger things, especially the consumption of fuel, simply because your train will fill with all the useless junk you will collect. Which, obviously, has a payoff for you at the end for collecting. Right? (It does not).

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It looks really good. That much is undeniable. Beautiful skyboxes, well paced moments of serenity, terrifying natural disasters that threaten your little okomotive, dark mysterious swamps around industrial ruins. This stuff really works, very very well. The only real issues I can find with the visual design are some poor interactive effects like water and fire, whose low quality can be explained by their need to broadcast gameplay messaging, something they do effectively. The environmental art nearly never fails; the only thing I can recall that comes to mind as not working is a tornado. It's great.

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While the player mechanical narrative is fairly compelling (I was running hot, and picked up some fuel, so I failed to vent steam in time, so now the sail retraction mechanism is damaged, and I need to put out the fire before i... etc), the diagetic narrative is barely there. There are some vague allusions to inheriting a parents machine, but there is not even a reason given for going right. There's no real building-out of the desolate world beyond its desolation. There's also hinting that the player is just one of many okomotive pilots who have made the "Great Journey Right"... without really offering a compelling reason why. I am sure a narrative of grief or mental health could be spun up for this, but I have doubts it was deeply considered by the developers.

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Barely there. Often you will Go Right until you slam into an obstacle; you'll repair your train, and then interact with red things until the train moves again. There were only a few puzzles that even really asked anything of the player, and in such a narratively sparse game, I feel like I needed some more compelling challenge to speedbump me from the Great Journey Right.