Volume Six Six games walked without a route marker 412 hours logged this volume
The Map Room emblem The Map Room Games and getting lost
412 Hours logged Across six games, every session timed rather than estimated.
4 of 6 Recalled from memory Games whose layout could be sketched a week after finishing.
68% Median marker reliance Share of travel where a waypoint was visible on screen.
Zero Guides consulted No wikis, no maps, no route videos during any playthrough.
What gets measured

Four questions asked of every world, none of them about how large it is

Size is the easiest thing to advertise and the least interesting thing to test. These four are harder to fake and much harder to survive.

01

Can it be learned

Whether the world builds a picture in your head. Tested by drawing it from memory a week after finishing, then comparing against the real thing.

02

Marker reliance

What share of travel happens with a waypoint on screen. Every journey is logged as guided or unguided, and the ratio is rarely flattering.

03

Landmark density

How many structures are distinctive enough to be used as a reference point. Counted per region, and separated from decoration that looks identical everywhere.

04

Recovery cost

What happens when you are lost. Some worlds make it a pleasure, some a punishment, and a surprising number make it impossible to be lost at all.

This volume

Six worlds, walked end to end

Each played to completion or to the point where the map stopped teaching me anything, whichever came first.

Full index
A traveller on a high ledge holding an open paper map above a valley of forested ridges Exploration 9.2

Fathom Coast

No map screen, no compass, no markers. Navigation is entirely by coastline shape and the position of three lighthouses, and it works better than any system in the volume.

41h loggedRecalled fullyMarkers 0%
A dense medieval city of tiled roofs seen from above, a figure crossing a rooftop plank Urban 8.7

Tallow Quarter

A city of nine districts with no minimap and a shop sign system that quietly teaches you the whole layout. The best urban navigation design I have logged.

34h loggedRecalled fullyMarkers 4%
An explorer with a lantern at a junction of three cave tunnels with chalk marks on the wall Underground 8.4

Lantern Deep

You draw the map yourself, badly, on a grid page in the pause menu. Forty hours of caves and the only game here where being lost is the intended state.

40h loggedRecalled partlyMarkers 0%
04

Marker Fields

Ninety-one square kilometres with a waypoint visible for ninety-four per cent of travel. Beautiful, enormous, and impossible to remember a single junction of.

62h · markers 94%
05

Signal Tundra

Navigation by marker poles across white fog. A brutal, narrow idea executed perfectly, and the only game here where losing the line is genuinely frightening.

28h · markers 11%
06

Hull Nine

A derelict station where the deck plans on the walls are correct and the ones in your inventory are three refits out of date. A joke that stays funny for thirty hours.

30h · markers 22%

The finding that keeps repeating: the map screen is where worlds go to die

Six volumes in, the pattern has not broken. The games whose worlds I can still draw are the ones that refused to draw them for me, and every quality-of-life navigation feature added since has made worlds slightly less memorable.

This is not a claim that markers are bad design. It is a claim that they are expensive, and almost nobody accounts for the cost.

  • 9.0–10 Drawable from memory a week later, in detail
  • 8.0–8.9 Layout learned, some regions still vague
  • 7.0–7.9 Familiar routes only, no overall picture
  • 6.0–6.9 Navigable but never learned
  • Below 6 Followed a line the whole way
Notes

Longer pieces counted across every game logged

Where the volume-by-volume figures accumulate into something arguable.

All notes
■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Twenty-nine games with a compass and nineteen without. The compass games are consistently easier to travel and consistently harder to remember, and the gap is now wide enough to argue about.

The Compass Tax29 games surveyed
■ ■ ■ ■ □

Every landmark I used as a reference point across six volumes, sorted by what made it usable. Height helps less than expected. Asymmetry helps far more.

What Makes A Landmark184 landmarks logged
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The drawing test itself, explained and criticised: how the sketches are scored, why the scoring is generous, and the one case where it produced a result I still do not believe.

On Drawing From MemoryMethod note