Indie Game of the Week 410: Carto

As a subtle(?) appreciator of explormers (don't worry, this week's game is not one of those) I've always held a lot of respect for the amount of thought that goes into each of those respective games' map tech. This equally applies to RPGs (especially dungeon-crawlers) and the open-world format in general too, of course, as we depend on these little cartographical conveniences to help us stay oriented and moving towards our next destination, whether it's something we strictly need to visit or not. It's no surprise then to see a puzzle game based entirely around the concepts of navigation and drawing your own maps, albeit in a cozy and approachable way that makes it ideal for an audience of any age. Sunhead's Carto is precisely that: A story about a young girl separated from her famous explorer grandmother who uses the skills she's been taught to track a path back home.

Using a familiar top-down perspective as its foundation, each of the game's chapters drops the titular heroine into a new biome and has her take the various squares that constitute the world map and either twist or place them to create new pathways through the current environment. This mostly serves in opening up routes to new map pieces that can then be appended to the atlas you have already, introducing NPCs and other important landmarks necessary to make further story progress. The game will occasionally toss puzzles your way based on manipulating the map in a specific fashion—being told that an NPC will only appear in the center of a circular river, for instance, will require you turning the four river bend tiles you already have to create an unbroken circuit—and each zone also incorporates its own rules, like the volcano section having an immutable underground tunnel system that can only be modified by shifting or spinning around their associated tiles on the overworld above. Despite the trickery these puzzles are nothing if not intuitive even before you take in the hints proffered by nearby allies.

Much of the way Carto operates reminds me, blissfully, of Dark Cloud 2 and its geography-based Georama puzzles. The way you'd have all these limitations to overcome, though with just enough wriggle room for some creative expression, to ensure you'd never be overwhelmed with options when trying to fulfil a checklist of requisites. In Carto, every map tile you've given has four sides that need to match with the tile they're adjoined to: this doesn't necessarily mean all four have to match since you can connect it to the outmost tile, thus only needing the one side to fit, though there'll be instances where you might need to combine tiles into a big square to make something appear in the middle, for example. The game does not restrict movement of the tile you're on either, which can be handy for quickly getting to the other side of the map since you can just pick up and plop down the area you're standing in, and even if you find yourself jogging from one side of the current map to the other the game quickly tosses a pair of speed-increasing boots your way to alleviate the legwork. It's in this sort of attitude that the game implies that the restrictions are purely to make the puzzles more interesting and that it has no interest in actually making you jump through too many hoops or perform too much busywork to solve its puzzles. Even the potentially one black mark on the game—an accursed "Tower of Hanoi" puzzle—is immediately forgiven by the manner in which its last "phase" can be approached with the tools the game has imparted to you.

It's naturally a very cute game also, as you can tell from the screenshots and premise, and the simplification helps tremendously in keeping everything visually coherent on both the micro scale with the map screen and its assemblage of pieces to the macro where hotspots are obvious and terrain types don't easily bleed into each other when trying to figure out which tiles can attach to others (I can't really speak for colorblind folks, but since the game mostly works on shades in this respect—if you're in the forest, you're dealing with a lot of greens—it might be fine for them). I also found the writing to be uniformly great, capable of some amusing gags despite the language barrier (it's a Taiwanese studio). Either the development team found some quality localizers—the game was published by the now-defunct Humble Games, making this a likely possibility—or they're pretty sharp with the language themselves. My personal highlight was a family of entrepreneurs running a hotel and spa resort next a volcano, despite the evident level of danger involved, who are in full marketing mode throughout.

Carto's a delightful puzzle game with a novel premise, an appealing presentation, and a strong sense for creating cartography puzzles that aren't too taxing or complex. It can be a bit short and doesn't go quite as far as it could with its central gimmick but I suspect concessions were made for the usual Indie reasons of budget and giving themselves room for a potential sequel further down the line. Like those that make managing inventories (such as Backpack Hero or Save Room) the sole focus of its gameplay, there's clearly some real mileage to be found in isolating one recurring mechanical feature in games and elevating it into the star of the show. Equally so if they can be as charming and silly as Carto.

Rating: 4 out of 5.