This is for fans of Obra Dinn and Golden Idol, but also for those who just love gorgeous alien environment maps. Locator is a detective puzzle game in which you play as an interstellar cartographer tasked with tracking down a missing archaeologist named Abigail Lidari on an alien world. It is inspired by the browser geography game Geoguessr. You’ll study a set of photos and compare them with notes in Abigail’s diary, then pinpoint her location on a series of lovely maps.

Once you’ve placed three pins, you’ll find out if you got it right and then follow Abigail’s trail to the next set. What starts out as a simple game of identifying landmarks quickly evolves into a case of cross-referencing cryptic notes in her diary. But it does feel like a game about considering perspective; trying to put yourself in Abigail’s shoes and see the world her way. An early puzzle requires you to find a specific Cyclops statue in a giant alien tomb. Abigail gave her favorite names, like Milton and Orville, and added a beard and glasses to the diary sketches, which felt like what you would do if you were completely isolated on a strange planet. matter.

“Locator combines the spatial reasoning of Geoguessr with the logical reasoning of detective games,” reads the Steam page, which also includes a demo. “Use constellations, alien structures, wildlife, cryptic symbols, and even temperature to determine the location of your photo.”

I love a good map not only because of their place in language and metaphor, but also because of their existence as physical objects. One of my favorite new words is the concept of “cartographer’s folly” – also known as paper towns or fictional entries. Copyright traps are actually some geographical artifacts that cartographers can use to label their work. Then there’s Alfred Korzybski’s famous quote “The map is not the territory” – always a compelling reminder not to confuse semantics with reality. I wanted to see how Locator explores our empathy for Abigail when we can only truly understand her through the model of the journey we ourselves have built. There is no release date yet.