App Army Assemble: FAR: Lone Sails - Is this beautiful, story-driven adventure a must-play?

FAR: Lone Sails is a story-driven adventure game that has an absolutely stunning visual aesthetic. Our reviewer Catherine was a big fan of what the game had to offer, enjoying its bleak subject matter and deliberately slow pace. So, we decided to see if our App Army agreed with those sentiments.

Here's what they said:

Far Lone Sails is a beautiful game, directly throws you in action, no narrative, no tutorial, just figure it out on your own. Its atmosphere is also good. The controls were ok, slightly on a smaller side on phones and I would like the developer to add the option to increase the size of buttons as there is plenty of space at the bottom of screen unused. So you go from a house to a vehicle of some sort which is obviously powered by fuel which you collect on the way of your journey.

The colours are abstract, black and red mostly to distinguish between them. Once you get to the vehicle it's easy to figure out how to move it. It's a slow-paced game for my taste. You don't get too far in one sitting. I played around 30 minutes and was just collecting fuel and use it to power the vehicle to move on the journey. It changes after that but not a lot. I recommend to people who like a relaxing and slow chill paced game.

iPad Air, iOS 12.4.8. I am gutted by the fact that I can not play this game on my device as it looks really promising and atmospheric. It takes ages to load and the moment the game finally loads it immediately crashes to the home screen. I made sure to check the list of supported devices on the App Store and looks like I should have no technical issues at all. This is very sad and frustrating, but I guess it is what it is. Hopefully, people responsible for developing and publishing this title will take note and fix the problem, although I am beyond doubtful. Thank you FAR: Lone Sails: our encounter turned out to be extremely short-lived and easily forgettable.

I started the game with slight annoyance as it had no tutorial, but it was easy enough to pick up the general controls and aims of the game. The idea was to take a strange boat and side scroll, picking up supplies and clearing objects as you go. While it had great graphics and the game was enjoyable for a while, it did begin to become a little tedious and moved along very slowly. It was good entertainment for an hour but after that, it was time to quit. However, you want a game that takes you on a slow journey without the frantic pace of a lot of games today, then this really fits the bill.

I am a suckered for the atmosphere in a game and this game delivers in spades. Essentially, this is a light resource management game with some puzzles and a feeling of exploration and survival. You pilot a large ship with treads across a barren post-apocalyptic landscape in search of fuel for your ride. Along the way, you need to think a bit and plan but mostly I see this game as an experience. The sounds and music are great at setting the lonely tone of the game.

Most of the mechanics of the gameplay are pretty easy to pick up and doled out to you early on. I felt myself sort of narrating in my head the story of my journey. The concept is pretty simple (load items into the fuel loader, hit the gas, let out steam when the meter gets high, climb hills, etc.) but it's the mood of the game that engaged me. It's a rather chill game that doesn't frustrate, despite a few touch control and zooming features occasionally, which I like sometimes. This game is worthy of the purchase and is great to come back to a few times. This is a case of quality over quantity and I'm OK with that.

Far: Lone Sails is billed as an exploration adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic world. The game never offers any real narration or exposition, choosing to tell its tale through the imagery and music. It seems. It's a beautiful game, and evocative art set in a steampunk post-apocalypse. The desolation broken by hulks of ancient monoliths tells a tale of civilization gone. Not a lot of action to animate, but what there is looks good.

While it’s billed as an adventure game, FAR: Lone Sails is really a puzzle game with light platform elements. That’s not a bad thing, but I was looking for free and open exploration. What I got was one linear path with multiple challenges. Also, and this may be more of an issue on my smaller iPhone XR, but the controls are not user friendly. Small directional icons that are spaced to close together do not make for precision play. It definitely added difficulty to the game at times.

Overall, FAR: Lone Sails is a gorgeous game that is good for one playthrough, but I don’t know that I’d be thrilled with a purchase here.

When you start the game you are not told anything, being a person who plays games, I instinctively did what most people would do and move my character to the right and kept going, through a house and then through to a weird vehicle. After pressing about on several buttons inside the vehicle and moving some objects about, the whole thing starts to move, again to the right. The aim of the game is literally to keep the vehicle moving to the right, across different terrain and through stunning scenery. Why you don’t know and really you don’t care, you don’t need to know, its just as much an experience as it is a game.

For me, the game was to slow, collect stuff, use it as fuel, press buttons and manage the energy it generates, and upgrade the ship as you go along. Graphically the game is stunning to look at, its muted colours make relevant objects stand out, but doesn’t distract from the overall look of the game as the overall aesthetic makes the game pleasingly moody and atmospheric, it also seamlessly shows areas in a sort of cutaway view when you enter them, so you can see inside wherever you are.

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I didn’t want to talk too much about the actual gameplay because it’s one of those games that you need to experience without being told as its lack of instructions are there for a reason, discovery is part of the gameplay. The pace was not for me though, some will call it “relaxing” but it was just too slow for me. I can see why people would like it though. It does what it sets out to do, a beautiful, slow-paced, relaxing game, with easy controls and its not too long, but not too short. I just don’t think I will see then end of it as it didn’t hold me enough to want to complete it.

One of the most beautiful looking puzzle game. Excellent game design and background sound .for casual gamers you should add hints. Just add one feature if the user wants to play with hints then hints should be present

Bit of a funny one this, it looks gorgeous but is painfully slow. Too slow for me.
After 10 minutes glacially moving a tractor across the landscape, loading fuel in along the way, it rolled down a hill while I was outside leaving me so far behind I couldn't face trekking to catch up.
Maybe if the controls were a little better, the levels more tightly packed, or if the protagonist moved faster than an arthritic centenarian I would have carried on playing. None of those things were true though so I didn't. Not one for me.

I was really excited about Far: Lone Sails from the moment I saw the first trailer and spent the weekend trying to get into the game only to be let down by the controls. The initial impression is great. Beautiful graphics and music pull you into this intriguing and lonely world. Finding the landship was exciting, and discovering how to drive it was immaculate.

But actually trying to pilot the landship was horribly frustrating with touch controls. Each time I ran out of energy I would need to hop out, pick up item after item, jump back in, ride the small elevator by jumping to hit a button, jump to hit another button to load the item, run to a third button and push it with my body, run and hit the fourth button with my body to vent steam, etc... You get it.

All of this might work well with a controller, but the touch controls leave a lot to be desired. On my iPhone Xs Max (with its huge screen!) the left/right controls are so small that I kept losing them and so close together that I kept hitting the wrong one. I went to the settings a few times thinking that there must be a way to resize or move the controls around, but as of this writing, there is not.

I want to uncover the rest of the world, but piloting the landship is so finicky that I kept becoming frustrated to the point of quitting. Hopefully, a future update allows us to tweak the controls on the screen because the game underneath seems so intriguing!

If you’ve played Inside or Stela on mobile than playing FAR: Lone Sails is going to feel very familiar as you guide your character from left to across a ruined landscape. There is an added complication that you can pick up and use objects to solve problems in your quest. This does slow the pace of the game down at times but not unbearably so. The controls can be fiddly and lack of instructions can be frustrating at times but this good looking game is well worth a play.

This is a fascinating and moody side-scrolling survival game of sorts. I fell in love with my strange little vehicle, as I tried to get it moving and keep it moving. At first, I was put off by the lack of any kind of tutorial, but I decided that that actually adds to the appeal, in that you have to figure everything out, adding to the survival aspect. When it caught on fire I was kind of distraught, and when the sail went up and it started moving again, I was excited.

The moodiness and loneliness really works and gave me an emotional investment in the game... which is a rare thing for me. I haven’t finished it yet, and now I want to. I did find the controls a bit difficult- really just that the jumping didn’t always work as well as it could. And while I didn’t like to see my character almost vanish as the camera pulled back if I took him too far from the ship, that also added to the feeling of isolation. So that added to the game for me in a strange way. All in all, I put this above most new games that I find. It’s got emotion and art and creativity to it. Easily recommended.

I had the chance to play a great game. It is pretty simple in its conception, as your task is to scroll left and right through a deserted, post-apocalyptic land, and ride the most improbable vehicles. You need to provide fuel and light, which is simple yet entertaining (I missed one fuel tank, and ai had to walk for legitimately three minutes to retrieve it).

The game has stunning artwork, music and sound effects that make the whole game experience almost magic. My only (minor) complaint is that the controls on the screen are too small, and sometimes it is hard to balance jumping with the right or left arrow. It would be great if the developers added zoom in the settings to let the player adjust the size of the arrows. Overall, I highly recommend this game.

I had a chance to play through FAR: Lone Sails this weekend and wow, what a game. Gameplay has you traversing a semi post-apocalyptic terrain full of broken-down vehicles and deserted land from left to right in your odd little vehicle. There are puzzle elements and some light resource management which keeps things pretty interesting but it’s the artwork, music and atmosphere where the game really shines. It’s beautiful to look at and you really grow attached to your vehicle as you balance refilling fuel and using your sail. It’s a fairly short campaign but the experience is like nothing else. Very highly recommended game.

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