Journey

Journey is a beautiful game that tells a story without any dialogue from the characters. A great example of a walking simulator, with very simple mechanics, this game tells a story through the environment that leaves a lot of the narrative up to interpretation by the player. To me that is what a walking simulator is: a game that focuses on the story rather than the mechanics, and tells the story through the game environment.

Throughout the story you travel through a desert land and passing through ruins. By meeting strange creatures and exploring the environment, you are guided through the story with no dialogue, and have to figure out your way. While there are some elements of “solving puzzles” in figuring out where to go, the player is forced to solve these “puzzles” through exploration. The de-emphasis on dialogue combined with the emphasis in world creation and artwork creates such an interesting dynamic that I haven’t found in many games, where I can be fully immersed in a story game without having any explained background or context, and having no direct explanation about the objective. The only thing you know is the environment that you are in, and using that environment combined with minimal non-verbal guidance from the creatures and environment help you to move through the story and interpret the story. There are other walking simulators that have plenty of dialogue guiding the story, but still tell the story through the environment. Stray is a game where you play as a cat that has been separated from its friends, and are trying to get back to them. In this game, you come across robots that talk to you and try to help you in the story. In this game, the story is less up for interpretation, and there is dialogue with the robots, but you still move through this underground world and have to figure out how to get back to your friends. This is one part of how walking simulators like Journey can tell a story, which is through the environment. Another important part of Journey as well as other walking simulators is that they aren’t hard. There are no complicated controls or mechanics that the player must learn in order to get good at the game, in fact I don’t think that you can be “good” or “bad” at a walking simulator, you just play it. If we look at the MDA framework for game design, walking simulators would be very heavy on the aesthetics and dynamics of the environment and how the story is told, with very little emphasis on the mechanics. Some of my favorite story games like Spider-Man 2 and Ghost of Tsushima are so heavily focused on learning mechanics that sometimes I would forget what the overall story was, as I would just be focused on defeating enemies and getting the mechanics down. In Journey, eliminating the need to learn and apply mechanics allows you to be fully immersed in the story. I’m still not entirely sure what the story of Journey was supposed to be, but while I was playing it I was fascinated by the artwork, the environment design, and enjoyed just moving through it.

There is a wide spectrum of walking simulators, and Journey is probably one of the most extreme in terms of storytelling without dialogue or context. The focus on using the environment rather than direct guidance through the story is what keeps the player engaged in the game despite the lack of mechanics, and is a big part of what it means to be a walking simulator.