Many games have fully featured maps, with all the bells and whistles from zoom to sorting to various icons. Some are good (Elden Ring, Monster Hunter), and some are bad (as with most UbiSoft games). This article isn’t about them.

This article is about games that ask you to play the role of cartographer, mapping your own journey. Games like Tunic, Veritus, Lunacid, and Subnautica give you either no map or very limited access to uninteractable maps.

While you can play by memory, there is a certain unique fun in getting out a paper and pencil and making your own relic, a permanent reminder of your time with a game.

Next time you play a game like these, try making your own map. For 2D games, it’s easy to make a very accurate map: on graph paper, make each screen a square and follow the connections. For 3D, feel free to be more creative, like a medieval mapmaker: the strict accuracy matters less than your ability to correctly navigate by it. Feel free to add your own notation and doodles, this is your map. You can incorporate everything you find useful, or fanciful.

Not only is it fun, you might be surprised by how much it will mean to your family decades later. We’ve discussed framing my dad’s maps for The Legend of Zelda.

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Featured Image: Alex Andrews

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