Less a walking simulator and more of a hiking simulator, Firewatch captured hearts when it took gamers for an adventurous, lonely summer in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest. From unravelling thrilling mysteries to building a complicated relationship over walkie-talkie, Firewatch is a unique adventure game with few analogs.
Firewatch developer Campo Santo announced a second game, In The Valley Of The Gods, at The Game Awards in 2017, but it has since fallen into development difficulties after the studio was acquired by Valve. In lieu of any more games on the horizon from the developer, we’ve collected 15 of the best games like Firewatch that explore similar gameplay, themes, and narratives.
From games that focus on walking, exploring, and solving puzzles, to games that celebrate the lonely beauty of the great outdoors, there are plenty of gorgeous titles to scratch that Firewatch itch.
If you’re craving exploration on a larger scale, check out our picks for the best open-world games, or dive into narrative-heavy titles with our list of the best games with great stories.
Gone Home
Developer: The Fullbright Company
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS
Release Date: 15 August 2013
Considered by many to be the originator of the walking sim genre, Gone Home tells a story about family using only an empty house and the traces left by the people who lived there. Like Firewatch, Gone Home is played from a first-person perspective and features no other characters, instead unravelling stories about the past through objects, notes, and other remnants left behind. While Gone Home is a relatively compact game that you can play through in a single session, some of the family’s secrets are more well-hidden than others, and may require further playthroughs to discover.
Lake
Developer: Gamious
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 1 September 2021
Just like Firewatch, Lake is a contemplative narrative game set firmly in the comfortable nostalgia of the 80s, following a protagonist who retreats to the country after finding themselves at a crossroads in life. You play as Meredith Weiss, who has taken on the job of mail delivery driver after returning to her hometown of Providence Oaks, Oregon. Complete Meredith’s daily mail run, interact with the town’s residents, and make your own choices on what you’ll do with your off-time. Without an overarching mystery to investigate, Lake is firmly rooted in Meredith’s relationships with the people and the town around her–and also gives you the option of establishing a relationship with one of two potential romantic interests.
Journey
Developer: Thatgamecompany
Platforms: PS3, PS4, PC, iOS
Release Date: 13 March 2012
Journey is a uniquely beautiful adventure game, taking players on an adventure across a vast, scenic, and sometimes unforgiving desert. Journey tells its story entirely without words–including when another player joins you in randomized online co-op–simplifying your interactions with a stranger to simple vocalisations and actions. While the way Journey unravels its narrative is far different to Firewatch, the sense of exploration and discovery in its evocative open world is not to be missed.
Jusant
Developer: Don’t Nod
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: 31 October 2023
Where Firewatch is a game based around hiking, Jusant is centered on climbing, tasking players with ascending an ancient tower long abandoned by its inhabitants. The player character is a lone traveller who makes use of various climbing techniques to ascend through the tower’s various biomes, encountering remnants of a lost civilization along the way. The game by Life is Strange developer Don’t Nod was praised for its climbing mechanics, faithfully recreating the balance between adrenaline and calm.
Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture
Developer: The Chinese Room
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC
Release Date: 11 August 2015
Another game that takes place in a beautiful world devoid of other human beings, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture tasks players with discovering what happened to the former inhabitants of fictional English village Yaughton. The game’s idyllic country village is populated with floating lights, leading the player to echoes that play out scenes from the past that gradually piece together the events of the titular rapture. Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture presents a wistful, lonely apocalypse to explore, unravelling a haunting story in beautiful surroundings.
Oxenfree
Developer: Night School Studios
Platform: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Mobile, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: January 15, 2016
In Oxenfree, a group of teens visiting an island for an overnight camping trip manage to accidentally unleash a mysterious supernatural force. Explore the island to unravel its secrets, while also learning more about your friends and companions, building or breaking your friendship along the way. Like Firewatch, Oxenfree balances the compelling mundanities of human relationships with a larger mystery to unravel. Unlike Firewatch, Oxenfree is played from a 2D sidescrolling perspective, with unique backdrops sketching out the island’s various locales.
What Remains Of Edith Finch
Developer: Giant Sparrow
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, iOS
Release Date: 25 April 2017
Winner of BAFTA award for Best Game in 2017, What Remains Of Edith Finch is a beloved entry in the narrative-heavy first person exploration genre popularized by Firewatch. The game is told from the perspective of the titular Edith Finch, a seventeen-year-old girl who is the last surviving member of a family she believes to be cursed. Edith returns to her eerie ancestral home for the first time in seven years, discovering the circumstances of her various family members’ deaths in a story that is both beautiful and heartbreaking. The game plays out in a series of semi-connected vignettes that blur the line between reality and fantasy, leaving you guessing how much of its story is actually true.
Abzu
Developer: Giant Squid
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: August 2, 2016
Abzu is the debut game from Giant Squid, an indie game studio founded by former Thatgamecompany developers–and the influence from the Journey team is easy to see. Explore an ocean teeming with life, taking the role of a diver who descends from shallow, cheerful seas to dark and dangerous depths. Abzu’s story unravels entirely through visuals and music, with no dialogue or expository text to be found. The game’s seas are inhabited by real-world aquatic creatures, and you can use a meditation feature to leave the player character behind, identifying and following various fish and other animals as they swim through the world.
A Short Hike
Developer: Adam Robinson-Yu
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One
Release Date: 30 July 2019
Explore Hawk Peak Provincial Park as Clare, a young anthropomorphic bird with the goal of climbing to the summit of Hawk Peak to get cell phone reception for an important phone call. Just like the name suggests, A Short Hike doesn’t take a long time to get through, but once the player completes the main story they are free to explore the game’s warm and nostalgic setting as much as they want. As well as hiking, Clare can explore the world through climbing, swimming, and flying, giving you plenty of ways to while away some pleasant time in Hawk Peak Provincial Park.
That Dragon, Cancer
Developer: Numinous Games
Platforms: Ouya, PC, iOS
Release Date: 12 January 2016
That Dragon, Cancer is an emotionally devastating but unforgettable autobiographical game by Ryan and Amy Green, based on the couple’s experience of raising a young son who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The game is designed in the style of a point-and-click adventure, with the player exploring and interacting with a number of vignettes covering the time between their son Joel’s diagnosis and his eventual death. That Dragon, Cancer is not an easy play, but it is an important one, providing a raw and emotionally vulnerable insight into two parents’ grief.
The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter
Developer: The Astronauts
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 26 September 2014
While many games like Firewatch toy with eerie themes and unsettling events, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter sits firmly on the horror side of the fence. Play as Paul Prospero, a paranormal investigator who was drawn to the picturesque small town of Red Creek Valley, Wisconsin, after receiving a letter from the titular Ethan Carter–only to discover that he has since disappeared. Prospero can tap into supernatural abilities to investigate a string of grisly deaths in the town, learning more about a malevolent paranormal force that seems to link them all together.
Proteus
Developer: Ed Key and David Kanaga
Platforms: PC, PS3, PSVita
Release Date: 30 January 2013
Proteus is an experimental exploration game that distils the beauty of the great outdoors into a simplified pixel landscape. The more notable thing about Proteus is its soundtrack, which is dynamically generated by the flora and fauna in the surrounding area. Proteus has no distinct narrative and no real goal other than to explore the game’s procedurally generated world, taking in the beauty of the island, including weather patterns, day cycles, and even astronomical events.
The Witness
Developer: Thekla, Inc.
Platforms: PS4, PC, XBox One, iOS
Release Date: 26 January 2016
Released in the same year as Firewatch, The Witness features a similar sense of exploration, but differs in execution. While both games see you exploring a beautiful open world inspired by nature, The Witness eschews a formal narrative in favor of intricate puzzles presented without any form of instruction. The Witness prioritizes player exploration above all else, letting players unravel its mysteries at their own pace, figuring out matched sets of puzzles through trial and error. While this might be infuriating for some players, the sense of achievement on figuring out a puzzle that was previously incomprehensible can easily become addictive.
Copycat
Developer: Spoonful of Wonder
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: 20 September 2024
Where most of the games on this list follow human or humanoid characters, Copycat is an emotional exploration game centered around a stray cat turned housecat. Shelter cat Dawn is adopted by a lonely older woman named Olive, but Dawn’s new life is turned on its head when a literal copycat steals her place in Olive’s home. Dawn is forced back onto the streets, resulting in a poignant adventure game that tells a tale about abandonment, loneliness, and love through its feline avatar.
Neva
Developer: Nomada Studio
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: 15 October 2024
Neva follows a young woman named Alba and her wolf companion for whom the game is named, as the duo team up to cleanse a world corrupted by darkness. The second title from the studio behind Gris, the game follows Neva and Alba through four seasons and multiple chapters that see the two grow from girl and cub to grown woman and wolf. Though Neva has a combat system alongside its environmental puzzles, requiring the duo to defeat creatures of darkness to cleanse the corrupted world, the emotionally evocative narrative is always the focus.
