Carto

Carto was another GamePass find! Also another short game, clocking in around 6 hours.

Carto is a puzzle game blended with adventure. You play as Carto, the shy granddaughter of a cartographer/airship pilot. She never talks; only reacts with ascii emojis like “;-)” and “<3”, etc. After you accidentally shift a map around, causing a storm to hit your airship, Carto is swept out of the airship, along with all the pieces of map onboard. Yes I said she shifted the map to cause an accident!

The whole premise of this game is that you have to collect all the map pieces again, and put them together. Here’s the catch: you can rearrange the map whenever you want! That’s actually how the puzzle aspect comes into play. To get through the game you have to find map pieces, and arrange them many different ways to get through. Oftentimes the same pieces will connect multiple ways to create different paths. Luckily all the NPCs drop really good hints on how to arrange the pieces to solve the puzzles. They’re so good at it, I never once had to look at any online guide to finish this game. Sometimes I had to think a bit, but never once did I ever feel so frustrated that I just gave up and Googled it.

Each chapter has its own map to create and change, and each has their own gimmick. One of my favorite challenges was a Fishing Festival where you had to rearrange 6 map pieces four different ways to cause different fish to appear for you to catch! 

Carto is a heartwarming adventure about friendship and exploration that you don’t want to miss!