Journey
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and iOS
Genres: Adventure
Released: March 2012, updated in 2019. Added to this library 5 months ago, last updated 11 weeks ago.
Overview
This is an adventure in a desert. Exploring the eerie sandscape, you discover a world abandoned by the race that created it. The sense of space and scale evokes feelings of aloneness and being lost. But then the game pairs you with other players, one at a time, who appear on the horizon. You can communicate only using wordless chirps but it’s enough to create a camaraderie to take on the wild, vast landscape. This creates a beautiful journey from sand to snow and water that creates an unusual appreciation of help from unknown others.
The game works the emotions successfully and in unexpected ways. While the esoteric journey through the landscape inspires awe, the presence of another anonymous person creates surprising comfort.
This game is good if you want to step up and help out, harm no living thing, connect with grandparents, escape life's storms for a while, dip your toe into online games, muse on deep topics or engage your emotions.
Commitment
Players: This is a single player game. You can play with up to 2 players online. Other players may appear in your game, although they can't send verbal or written messages they often lead you in the right direction. How fast you finish the game depends how focused you are at progressions versus exploration.
Costs
You will need PlayStation Plus to play online with PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4.
This game is free with PlayStation Now.
Ratings
Accessibility
System settings: Windows has extensive accessibility features. Some, like colour correction, work with games. Lots of accessibility software can be used with PC games, from voice recognition to input device emulators. PlayStation 4 has a range of accessibility settings. Some are system only, some work in games (invert colours and button mapping). iOS has a very extensive suite of accessibility settings including ways to navigate with voice and comprehensive screen reading, though most of the features don't work with games... read more.
Similar Games
The following games address a similar topic or offer a similar way to play. They are good options to play after Journey, and also offer a range of alternatives for different age ratings.
PiAwk
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Duration: Between 3 hours and 3 and a half hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
PiAwk is an adventure you explore as PiAwk, a little bird-like creature that is both a little awkward and shy, but also bold and curious. As you interact with the environment, architecture, landscape and other characters you realised you are enclosed in...
Mountain
Genres: Creative and Simulation
Duration: Between 45 hours and 50 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
This is a game from the same developer as Everything that simulates a mountain. You influence how each of the rising land masses turns out by drawing different objects. The game then evolves before you, offer a gentle...
A Short Hike
Genres: Adventure and Open World
Duration: Between 1 hour and 3 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
In A Short Hike you play penguin-like character Claire, who needs to climb a mountain in a beautiful national park to receive an important phone call. Presented in cute pixel graphics, the game invites you to explore the park, help other animals, find...
The Endless Forest
Platforms: PC
Genres: Open World and Simulation
Players: This is a single player game. You can play with up to 50 players online.
Costs: Free.
This is a whimsical online multiplayer game where you play deer in a peaceful forest. You freely explore ruins and ponds, and meet other players, communicating in symbols. The world is like a moving painting, but one that players have a strong sense of...
Skate Story
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch and PC
Genres: Action, Narrative, Rhythm and Simulation
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Skate Story is a skateboarding game that focuses on the skill, weight and locomotion of controlling the board. Running through the game is a story where you explore the underworld beneath New York City.
Lake
Platforms: PC and PlayStation 4
Genres: Adventure and Narrative
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Lake is a narrative adventure where you play Meredith Weiss on a career break in 1986 while she returns to her hometown and ends up delivering the mail. As you talk to locals, meet up with old school friends and even fan a few romantic flames from your...
Way To The Woods
Genres: Adventure, Narrative and Puzzle
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Way to the Woods is an adventure game where you play a fawn and a deer trying to survive their long journey home after human civilization has collapsed. Interacting with the world and exploring both urban and barren landscapes leads you to discover the...
Deep Time Walk
Genres: Narrative, Open World and Physically Active
Duration: Between 1 and a half hours and 3 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Free.
Deep Time Walk is a game where you go for a walk as you listen to a history of the Earth that's tied to each step. The game calculates your speed and distance to match your real-world progress and translates it to a journey across 4.6bn years of time,...
Proteus
Platforms: Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita
Genres: Open World and Simulation
Duration: Between 1 hour and 4 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
This game takes you to a pixelated island. As you explore you discover that your presence changes the seasons and time of day. Delving deeper, there are rudimentary interactions with the creatures that inhabit the land, and rain clouds that blow in from...
Feather
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch and PC
Genres: Open World and Simulation
Duration: Between 1 hour and 2 hours to complete.
Players: You can play this with 4 players online.
Costs: Purchase cost.
This game brings you, as a bird, to a beautiful island. You can explore freely, collecting items and soaring on the breeze. Often, other players will join you to create a flock of birds to fly together, making music on the wind. Communication is kept to...
Flower
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and iOS
Genres: Open World, Racing and Simulation
Duration: Between 2 hours and 3 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Control the breeze blowing across fields of grass and blow petals into other flowers to make them bloom. Flower is simple and single-purpose in evoking the feeling of the wind. What starts as an awkward struggle to control the breeze soon turns into a...
Everything
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4
Genres: Adventure, Narrative, Open World and Simulation
Duration: Between 3 hours and 7 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
This is an unusual game that simulates a world where you can become any object. It sounds strange and not much fun, but the enjoyment is in discovering how small or how big a thing you can become. From tiny atoms to whole planets and everything in between.
Abzu
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Genres: Adventure
Duration: Between 2 hours and 3 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Abzu is an adventure in a lush underwater world. You descend into the heart of the ocean to find ancient secrets and encounter majestic creatures. This combines the beautiful weightlessness of diving with an ancient story of meaning and place in the world.
Ori and the Blind Forest (Series)
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Adventure, Narrative and Platform
Duration: Between 9 hours and 13 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Free-to-start.
Both Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps place you in control of a diminutive elfish spirit called Ori. You run, jump and solve platforming challenges to progress through the world. As you do new powers are unlocked that allow you...
Sky Children of Light
Genres: Action, Open World and Simulation
Duration: Between 6 hours and 10 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game. You can play with up to 8 players online.
Costs: Free-to-start. Season pass and in-game purchases.
This is a huge open-world online game designed to create altruism between players. From the developer of Flower and Journey, it takes you on a social adventure in an ever-expanding world with up to 8 other players.
Arise: A Simple Story
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Genres: Narrative, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 7 hours and 9 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Arise: A Simple Story is a narrative game about an old man living in a pre-agricultural tribe. He has just been cremated and as get travels to the next life, begins a pilgrimage of revisiting memories of his life.
Rime
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Genres: Adventure, Narrative and Open World
Duration: Between 5 hours and 6 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Rime is an adventure on an island where you play a boy led a fox-like spirit as a guide. To progress through the beautiful environments you solve puzzles across five large levels. You can run, climb, carry objects, and push or pull larger objects across...
Gris
Platforms: Android, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and iOS
Genres: Adventure, Narrative and Platform
Duration: Between 4 hours and 6 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Gris is a platform game where you guide a young girl through a crumbling world. Through beautiful metaphoric landscapes and soaring music, the game touches on emotions of loss and longing but doesn’t resolve to a firm narrative. Although not hugely...
The Last Guardian
Platforms: PlayStation 4
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fighting, Narrative and Simulation
Duration: Between 12 hours and 15 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
The Last Guardian is an adventure, that follows Ico and The Shadow of the Colossus in the Team Ico trilogy. As the other games, it has an artistic look that is unusual for a video game, and a minimalist approach...
Journey is in These Lists
In addition to the similar games listed above, which have been linked to this game specifically in the database, you may find games with a similar theme to Journey in the following lists:
Wake Up Your Emotions
The games selected below create emotionally rich spaces in which to explore scenarios with feelings rather than facts. In some games this is achieved with beautiful or soothing interactive visuals; others create charged relationships and settings that invite players to take a role in processing these emotions.
Find Calm From The Storm
Free With PlayStation Now
- PlayStation Now costs £8.99/month
- PlayStation Plus costs £6.99/month
- Screen Share – Let's someone in another place watch your game on their PlayStation. PlayStation Plus is not required for either party
- Pass the Controller – Let's someone in another place take turns on a game you own, without owning the game themselves. PlayStation Plus is required for the host, but not for the guest
- Playing Together – Let's you play local co-op or split screen games with someone in another place who has a PlayStation. PlayStation Plus is required for both players
Be A Good Neighbour
"What if video games have more to offer than just an exciting diversion into a digital battlefield, fantasy war, or alien invasion? While these types of games are certainly the loudest and most financially successful, there are a growing number of games asking important questions about life, the human condition, and even God."
"Our list is not 'Christian' games, but rather a list of games that pose important spiritual questions to those who play them. These are games that provide us with the opportunity to consider what a truly 'spiritual' life looks like by encouraging us to have empathy for the suffering, love for our neighbours and our enemies, and an imagination vivid enough to contemplate a better world."
Journey's understated yet deep mythology, lack of guidance and mysterious ways it brings players together will have players thinking about the course of their own lives. Dropsy is, on the surface, a silly point-and-click adventure game about a creepy but misunderstood clown, dig deeper and you’ll see this a game that challenges players to love everyone, even their enemies. Kentucky Route Zero is at its core, about rediscovery, of adventure-game mechanics and modernist aesthetics, of a more spiritual outlook on the physical world.
Gris is a platformer about the stages of grief that highlights the indelible impact of our most sacred relationships. That Dragon, Cancer is a game where Ryan and Amy Green share their grief and their hope by drawing us not only into their lives but into the common grace of the Christian faith. Myst, one of the best selling titles of all time, is a puzzle game about the beauty and mystery of creation. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a game about the spiritual impact our most precious relationships have on us. Wandersong is a game about transforming the world with music. Heroism isn’t measured in bulk or recognition but in the melodic tones of compassion and kindness. The Last Guardian confronts us with our own self-centeredness and challenges us to give rather than merely take.
Pyre is a game about mercy that deconstructs player’s perceptions of winning and losing, encouraging them to see and meet the needs of those who are oppressed. My Child Lebensborn is a game that challenges players to care for a child born into a fascist regime--this is a game about the power of empathy. Celeste strikes at the centre of what it means to be a person in all of our messy humanity a wonderful reminder that even when we fall, we are lifted up again through redemptive love, forgiveness, and grace—both for ourselves and for one another.
Commit No Violence
Many of them are aimed at children and families, but you'll be surprised how many explore deeper, more mature themes in their narratives, or require just as much skill as a fast-paced first-person shooter. This means there's plenty of offer for parents who might lack the reflexes (or interest) to survive a round of Fortnite.
We've focused on the games you might not expect to be played non-violently here, but you can find the full list at Non-Violent Games Of the Day curated by James Batchelor.
Interpret Deeper Meaning
These are two publications for Christian audiences, that have invited me to shed light on what a range of video games might mean for those communities. I aim to make connections with faith, the bible and the experience of these video games. This is one way to interpret them which of course invites further and possibly counter interpretations from other perspectives. YCW articles:
Firewatch | Everything | Bury Me My Love | Abzu | Wilmot's Warehouse
Thirdway Articles:
Proteus | Joust | Uncharted 3 | Alan Wake | This War of Mine | Journey | Limbo | Spaceteam | A Dark Room | Altos Adventure | A Year Walk | Bioshock Infinite | The Last of Us | Disney Infinity | Everybody's Gone to the Rapture | That Dragon Cancer | Spec Ops The Line | Papo and Yo
Ease Loneliness With Intergenerational Games
Video games are one way that we can reconnect with each other, without needing to be in the same place. Finding games to play online with grandparents and carers is not only a good way to keep in touch but a lot of fun.
The games on this page are part of the PLAY&TALK Weekend, which has launched in time for National Loneliness Awareness Week, aims to reduce feelings of isolation by getting people to talk with friends or family safely online. Backed by over 30 companies in the games industry, the Play&Talk weekend hopes to initiate 10,000 extra conversations across the UK through the power of games.- Co-operative: Some of the games are good ways to connect and play co-operatively online (like Feather, Overcooked 2, Ibb and Obb, Skylanders Children of Light).
- Competitive: With some practice there are easy and fun online competitive games (like Tricky Towers, Videoball)
- Asynchronous: Other games are a way to connect and play without being online at the same time (like Horizon Chase Turbo, Worms, Words With Friends, Wargroove, Animal Crossing).
- Community: Then there are games that connect you with a wider player community in a gentle non-invasive way (like The First Tree, Journey, Lost Words, The Endless Forrest).
First Steps Into Online Video Games
The games in this list offer small steps to go from local play to online play. Some games, like Roblox are designed for young players with lots of special safety settings. Other games, like Sky, are designed to lead players into co-operating with each other with in-game purchases you give away, and interactions that start limited and expand as you gain experience. Then there are co-operative games like Ibb and Obb where you work together and communicate with gestures on the screen.
You can use Family Settings and Parental Controls on your system to limit how your child interacts with other players online. As well as finding the right games to get them started, it's also important that you play with them and keep game screens in shared family spaces so you can see what they are doing.
Thanks for using our resource. We are editorially independant, written by parents for parents, but welcome sponsorship, partnership and suggestions. It is supported by the Get Smart About PLAY campaign from AskAboutGames.com. For more advice and guidance on video games, also check out my Taming Gaming book.Tweet
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