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[nicknicknicknick]

I'm kind of enamoured with the cartography in Miasmata; I love the mix of wild exploration with the surprise and reward of coming across familiar landmarks.

For the life of me, I can't think of another game like it -- others like Fallout 3 / Zelda / Elder Scrolls and the like feel as though they're just unlocking new levels; it's less primarily about the creation of a map. Not that I don't enjoy exploring those worlds -- there's still plenty of surprise! -- but Miasmata has a style all its own.

Any thoughts on other Miasmatalikes?

[Kekskiller]

I liked the idea but the further I went the less spots I could find that the game allowed to unlock on my map. The cartography mechanic seems sorta broken if you don't pick exactly the stuff it wants you to explore first. Also, the game's performance is a true nightmare. While the atmosphere is nice at night and sometimes at day, too, I can't see any valid technical excuse for it become sooo laggy, unresponsive and instable.

Another thing I simply hated was this dum tree tiger thing. I can swing or throw stones, axes, knifes and burning branches at it but it doesn't take a scratch nor does it care about how often I try. Scaring it never seems to work, finding myself at safe houses all the time.

I think the general idea is very cool but the realisation lacks too much to be actually worthwhile. Let alone the dum plant mechanic which simply doesn't work if you can't make your onw notes on map where to find stuff etc.

[nicknicknicknick]

It definitely suffered from its share of technical problems. I read an article asking whether it was fair to hold two brothers writing an engine from scratch to the same standards as Bethesda/Rockstar/Ubisoft -- my own feeling was that no, it's not entirely fair. I just did what I do in the majority of games on my increasingly aged rig: drop all the settings down to just about minimum and play on anyway. But of course your mileage may vary.

Certainly, there were plenty of spots where you could practically see the developers' hands blocking one line of sight and opening another; and often enough I was able to "trick" the raycasting into giving me a pixel's worth of an opening in the leaves to map out an area I probably wasn't supposed to. But I've always had a thing for finding something new on a game world's horizon, and Miasmata feels like one of the first games built around specifically that.

[Also holy crap Milo is horrendously broken. I imagine it was put in to add a certain constant tension, but I'm not sure that was the best approach. And to my knowledge the achievements for beaning it with fruit and cans are still busted.  ]

[SirNiko]

The Nintendo DS Zelda games (Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks) have poor quality or incomplete maps for each area. Part of the game is that you can pull up the map and sketch on it with the stylus, and puzzles are frequently designed so you need to keep notes on the map or finish parts of the map to know where important things are located.

It's really charming to come back to an early dungeon to hunt down a treasure you missed, and be greeted with all your hand-written notes and feel like you're actually solving the dungeon, not just using the pre-packaged map.

[Martoon]

Sorry to necro an old thread, but I'd also love to see another game with triangulation cartography like that in Miasmata. That is by far my favorite part of the game (and I've never seen anything like it in another game). I actually found the rest of the game (the survival elements) to mostly just interfere with the fun I had making the map.