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Tour lets you explore a stylised woodland music box

Mapping out a stylised scene

Continuing a week of tinkering with smaller projects we come to Tour by RuanHang [Itch.io page]. I can't remember what led me to it - possibly just browsing the recent additions - but it's a really polished experience where you meander round a space, interacting with dots in a pleasing way. The space you're exploring is somewhere in between a stylised rendering of planetary orbits and a map of the countryside, so little coloured blobs trace out pathways against a blue background but you can make little tree-like shapes pop into being.

You can play in-browser. It's just a matter of holding the left mouse button down and dragging in the direction you want your dot to move. Unlike some of the experiences I've been talking about this week this one does seem to have more traditional game elements, but it only reveals those after you've finished a playthrough. You get a completion time at the top of the screen and a score at the bottom. I think if you want to play it more as a game and less of a toy which sketches a lovely landscape you can try to beat your time, making use of the peach-coloured circles which trace paths across the map and push you around a lot faster if you're standing in their path.

I *think* the score stuff appears when you've activated all the white pads and I'm guessing the score is tied to how much you've uncovered along the way, but there's no high score table so it's only competitive in a loose, personal challenge sense and I imagine most people will be content to fly about, making the chimes sound as you uncover clusters of trees.

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Philippa Warr: Pip wrote for Rock Paper Shotgun between 2014-2017, covering everything from MOBAs, hero brawlers and indie curios. She also had a keen interest in the artistry of video game creation, and was very partial to keeping us informed of the latest developments in British TV show Casualty.
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