Adventures (Secretly) Open From The Start

Like most forms of media, video games often save the best and most interesting chapters until the end. However, there are many games that set you loose in their world without barriers or restrictions. Most interesting, I think, are games that do this without it being obvious that the world is your oyster.

These games seem to offer dense, impenetrable worlds that require special knowledge and equipment. However, these restrictions to progress are often psychological rather than practical. If you know where to go, or which buttons to press you can progress right from the start.

Whether an intended part of the design or something players discover to hack around intended barriers, being able to progress in this way is the bread and butter of speed runners. This is the player community that specialises in completing games as fast as they can. Games that seem to take many hours can, in this way, often be finished in minutes. Many of the tricks used to achieve this are hiding in plain sight if you know where to look.

Games provide worlds with everything unlocked from the start:

• Adventures without Artificial Barriers: So you can progress things in any order, and you have all the abilities you need to go anywhere you want.
• Sandboxes without Barriers: Open worlds, like Minecraft, where you don't have to unlock or synchronise areas to access them, like Assassin's Creed.
• Chapters In Any Order: Narrative games where you can play the chapters in any order, as well as skip chapters when you want.

This list includes 29 games from the last 29 years, with 1,284 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to find secret ways to progress. We break them down into the following areas:

• Adventures without Artificial Barriers
• Chapters In Any Order
• Sandboxes without Barriers