Mainstream

When thinking of the theme 'explore' the most common idea thrown about is that of a simple point and click adventure. You have a screen in front of you, or several to navigate around, and you click on things until you accomplish an in-game-goal. Like escaping a room, or finding waldo.

This was the second-to-last exploration idea I came up with, and while I like it, it's far too generic by itself to be worth anyone's while. There are thousands of room escape games out there, many of them good, many of them terrible for one reason or another. Poor execution, pixel-hunting, and puzzles with convoluted "space-logic" are the worst killers, especially that last one.

There are some great examples of the genre, though - and most of them are in the genre of where's waldo. Finding one object amid a sea of random obstacles can be great fun, or matching the differences between two concurrent storylines - which has become quite popular lately.

I didn't like the idea of just looking around for one object or another anyways, even ignoring the fact that it would take forever to draw all the art. Although where's waldo reminded me of a comic, and that comic co-starred carmen sandiego, which I think is to this day one of the best games that has ever touched on the topic of exploring.

In the "Where in the world is carmen sandiego" game, there is a random crime in a random city in the world, caused by carmen or one of her lackeys. You have to gather clues by travelling all around the world, and catch the villian before time runs out. It was executed well, it was fun, and it had replay value. But to be honest, I didn't think of this until after I started the game for the final idea I had in regards to the explore topic - although it might be a worthwhile idea to look into later.